Why Free Hosted Blogs Suck
May 13, 2009 by Lara Kulpa
Filed under Blogging
Over the past month, I’ve been working as an admin in the newly launched ProBlogger Forum. It started as part of the 31 Days To Build A Better Blog Project which ended last week (but you can still sign up for the course and take it at any time, or you can wait and buy the ebook), but the forum is still open.
This was the first time I realized the huge diversity in ProBlogger readers – most significantly in the difference between those who use free blogging services like Blogger or WordPress.com versus those who have a self-hosted blog built using WordPress software or TypePad.
There were quite a few discussions that started with people on free hosted blogs that wound up with them being frustrated because they didn’t have the ability to do some of the things that were suggested in the project. That’s reason Numero Uno as to why free hosted blogs suck: Lack of freedom.
This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for quite some time now, even before the forums, but I didn’t realize the need was so intense until now. Before I get started with this… let me first explain the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org:
WordPress.Com is a free blog hosting service. It’s built on the WordPress software, however your blog is hosted on their servers. You can point your domain name to it, but you’re not blogging on your domain, per se.
WordPress.Org is where you download the WordPress software, access support, tools, training, and other helpful things. Using the software means you have purchased hosting through another hosting company (such as GoDaddy, HostGator, etc.), have your domain name resolved to that hosting account, and have installed the WordPress software to your site using a MySQL database to store the information. (And no, it’s not as complicated as it sounds. It just means you’ve paid either a monthly or annual fee to the hosting company.)
Okay, so now that that’s cleared up, let’s move on to all the reasons why free hosted blogs suck.
- As I said previously, lack of freedom. Lack of control. With a free hosted blog, you tend to lose flexibility with what you may want to put on your blog. This could be in terms of content, advertising positioning, even design. Sure, if you pay for upgraded service on your free host, something like $7 – $10 a month, you can customize SOME things – but um… why then wouldn’t you be paying a hosting company $4 a month to do the very same thing on your own domain, where you’re 100% in control instead of only 80%?
- They’re simply NOT search engine friendly. Not even Blogger (which is owned by Google). Go to Google right now, and punch in your favorite keyword phrase. I’ll give you a hand: Here’s the results for the phrase “personal finance blog” (opens in new window). How many of those are on blogger, blogspot, or wordpress.com? ZERO. Not convinced? How about “diet blog”? Zero free hosted blogs again. Sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions have likely been online for 5 years or more, and it’s SO rare.
I can almost say with 100% certainty that you can’t come up with a phrase that will have a free hosted blog in the top 5I’ve been corrected on this in the comments of this post, however there are still many highly searched keyword phrases where this applies. I’ll admit that right now I haven’t the time to do the research, but the mention of this has piqued my interest, and I plan on doing some case studies soon. - Limited income opportunities, if any. Sure, not everyone who puts up a blog gives a hoot about whether or not they make any money from it, but those people are few and far between. At some point, pretty much everyone wants to at least make a few bucks a month off their blog. Guess what? Advertisers don’t WANT to pay free hosted blogs because of reasons like above #2. There’s no “juice”. There’s no way to get that search traffic in there. If you’re not willing to pay $4 a month to help you rise to the top, why should an advertiser have faith in you enough to pay you even $5 a month, which is well below average ad rates? People read ProBlogger to learn how to make money from their blogging, yet they’re not willing to put forth the small effort of eating one less fast food meal per month to give themselves the edge? To look like they take their “job” seriously? I understand if you can’t afford it right now, but you’re not going to make the money to pay for hosting off ads if you’re on a free blog, so save up and do it right.
- Credibility. Okay, I know this is super un-PC of me to say, but imagine walking down the street and you see two stores.
- Store A has clean, shiny windows that allow you to see into the store. The store owner is standing outside on the stoop in a well-tailored suit. He’s neatly groomed, and is offering a 50% off sale on his wares.
- Store B has flaking paint on the exterior walls. The wood around the windows is cracked, dry, and damaged. The store owner is on the stoop in rags you just know came from the trash bin because they were free. He’s wearing greasy hair, is missing a front tooth, and is lunging at you as you pass trying to get you to come in and buy something for a rock-bottom price.
Which store would you walk into? Be honest.
Liken this to cars even. When you see an old beater driving down the street, puffing out smoke from the tailpipe and making obnoxious sounds, verus a nice, clean, affordable car… what are your impressions? That the driver of the first car is jobless? Unclean? Living in a trailer park? That the driver of the second car has a decent home and just got done eating a nice meal out with friends? Seriously… think about it!
So what I’m saying is this: You can’t possibly expect to be taken seriously if you’re using a free hosted blog. Period. You get no search traffic, no ad revenue, and no credibility. I don’t care if you have a main website for your business and have attached an external, free hosted blog either… that’s the worst! If you already have a website, with paid hosting, why on earth would you even consider NOT putting the blog software on your hosted site?
I’m fully aware that the economy’s put a serious pinch on everyone. But you have to stop thinking about this as “spending money” on a hosting plan, and start thinking about it as an investment. Blogging isn’t nearly as volatile as the housing market – in fact it’s growing stronger all the time. If you do it right, you should make back your annual $60 before you even spend it (if you need to pay month by month of course), or at the very least by the end of your first year. Honestly!
Now if you’re worried about the technology of it all, the act of migrating your free blog to a paid one, really, I can help. It’s what we do around here. But if you’ve read this and are still thinking that free is the way to go, really… have fun with that, I dare you!
Oh, one more source of proof: ProBlogger’s What Blog Platform Do You Use Most? Poll. Yah. Check out those results! Self-hosted WordPress wins, HANDS DOWN. Even though there are over 400 people still using Blogger.
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I’ve been self hosted since ‘02 and I don’t regret it at all. It gives you infinitely more freedom than a free hosted service.
Not to toot my own horn but I was on CNN and CBS News recently and I think that having a self hosted wordpress blog and my own domain went a long way in establishing my legitimacy to the national media.
Lara,
Thanks for writing this post. I agree with everything you have said and more!
Have you any opinion on name.com as opposed to name.com.au (I am in Australia BUT want to “own” the world!)
Sadly, I have my own domain and just started as a web hosting reseller – so I actually own “space” on a server. (I have just started putting some sites together for local small businesses)
This one: http://tiny.cc/5jDly was done in Wordpress (and is still “under development” – they don’t know what wording they want!)
I just don’t have time to take the plunge and transfer from blogger to self hosting! Must do!
Interestingly, I can get domains here for $A25 ($US18)and we can host Wordpress sites for around a $A100 ($US75) a year.
Looking forwrd to your comment and next post
Frank
Very nice. Thanks for this.
Lara: Thanks for this very comprehensive list. I had no idea that free hosting had such an negative impact on SEO. I have a self hosted blog which I’m very happy with. I study as much as I can about SEO since being on the first page of Google has a big impact on my bottom line. I haven’t monetized this blog, and I don’t know if I every will, but never say never.
I’ll be sure to let my friends who are using free hosting for their blog that they are impacting their SEO.
I was just on the 31 day problogger Forum. I made a comment to encourage someone. You came back quickly to show me the errors of my thinking. So I came to your website to check you out. This article is wonderful. I think you should have refer me and masf47 to this page. I am now changing my goal date from Sept to June.
Thanks Michelle, Corey, and Frank… and Chick J, I was hoping you’d find your way here!
I’m glad you’ve upped your deadline! Best of luck to you in your efforts!
Preach on, sister! This is information I try to share with my clients and people I meet, but your post sums it up nicely.
I’ve just moved my Blogger blog into my website, and I agree with you. However, I have an old blog at Xanga (an old free blog host)which is high on p. 1 of Google for many searches. I’m about to move it (for the sake of control, freedom, etc., but I know I’m going to lose all my great search results when I do. I’ll have to start over and rebuild. And that’s a great reason to start your blog at your own domain.
By the way … pretty website!
What I find puzzling is the acceptance of the discrepancy between main web site design and an externally hosted blog. You’d think people would not want this mix and match vibe attached to their business site. I always say professionalism equals trust – mix and match is not professional looking.Of course you make a good point: they can’t make design changes until they upgrade and why pay for that if they can spend as much on their own hosting?
Many blogs hosted by blogger or wp that are ignored by search engines might be because the user puts very little work into them. Often there are only a few short posts spread around several months. The topics you mentioned have great competition in the SE’s
Then you have the people who paid someone to build them a static site and tacked the blog link on because they wanted to get in on blogging for the $.
— it is not just a matter of the tool itself being the reason they aren’t succeeding — a blog is work whether on blogger or self hosted. If someone’s main reason for keeping a blog is for the monetization and not because they really want to write they will probably fail.
Some good, and some not so good information here. I am using actually both, free and self-hosted blogs. There is one major drawback with free blogs that you haven’t mentioned and that is that you can’t sell them. Now, back to what is not correct: Noting beats a free wordpress.com blog for seo and easy rankings! As you are not allowed to make money from them, and Google “knows” that, they are actually really easy to rank for your favourite keywords. So if your main niche is “dogs”, set up a general doggy blog on Wordpress.com and mention your other sites from time to time in your posts, that is called “writing your own backlinks”. Blogger, you wrote “I can almost say with 100% certainty that you can’t come up with a phrase that will have a free hosted blog in the top 5.” If you search for “make money online” on Google, you will find at least two blogger blogs on the first page and this is a highly competitive niche. Free and self-hosted blogs are both TOOLS, you have to know how and when to use them. I make money with my self-hosted wordpress blog and with my free blogger blogs
SY
SY – You’re right, there are some terms that will have blogger blogs show up. At the time that I wrote this, I did do a couple searches other than “diet blog” and the ones I did do, honestly did NOT have any blogger blogs in the top 5.
I agree that if your sole purpose is to make money online with the types of ways I’m assuming you are (AdSense, affiliate links, etc), then you’re right – free hosted blogs can be a tool to do that in the way you mentioned. Absolutely.
What I had in mind here though in terms of making money was regarding direct ad sales for the most part. (I should’ve clarified that, yes.)
If you look at the current ad rates for a highly popular blog like dooce.com, for example:
The minimum cost for a 125×125 sidebar ad (the smallest banner available) from October 6, 2009 to November 6, 2009 is $4049.50. That’s for ONE ad. Now, keep in mind, the site today doesn’t seem to be running these, but one’s left to assume that it’s because people are choosing different ads. But usually, people show a minimum of two of these in their sidebar.
Okay, so since there aren’t any of those showing, let’s go to the ones that are.
She’s got a 300×250 at the top of her sidebar. The cost for this spot is $6006 per month for the minimum amount of rotations. This works out to $18.20 CPM.
I’ll freely admit, I gave up on AdSense a long time ago after making pennies on it, but I’m pretty damn sure that $18.20 CPM is reallllly good for the publisher, correct?
Dooce runs her ads through Federated Media. They’re pretty exclusive, to say the least, and I know they don’t work with free blogs (and you have to have some really large amount of traffic). So when I say that ad revenue sucks for free hosted blogs? THIS is what I’m talking about.
Now, I know that’s an extreme. Dooce is highly popular, butt-tons of traffic, book deals, talk show visits, etc. But honestly, the basic rate for “everyday” type blogs is $2-$4 CPM. Considering that AdSense is CPC, and affiliate links are CPA – my choice would be to drive traffic to your site in order to get the pageviews so you can 1) Make money CPM style, and 2) Eventually charge more CPM.
It’s not a defunct business model for blogs – it’s one that’s widely used and widely accepted by advertisers in private ad sales.
And thank you for bringing up the sale-able part of it too. Look at BankRate’s purchase of Bankaholic for $15M after it’d only been online 2 years! Now that is some smart thinking, smart SEO, and amazing work all around. John Wu deserves every penny for his genius.
That all being said – SY, thank you for your respectful disagreement. I don’t argue with what you said, I just happened to not make myself entirely clear with the post when I wrote it. (And I didn’t highlight the other terms I had looked at – I picked one that relates to a blog niche that I happen to own a blog in.)
I’m thinking of starting up a few case studies so I can use that material for posts in the future. Thanks again for stopping by and participating in the discussion!
Hi Lara,
I go by the old saying of “not putting all eggs in one basket” that is the reason I have different blogs on different platforms that are monetized in different ways 
If somebody asks me how to start making money online my advice is normally twofold:
Sorry, really have to go now, but perhaps you could post one day a follow up post titled “Cases when free blogs DON’T suck!” SY
Thanks for the very extensive reply. I guess in short we could say that there are different business models available to make money online. I agree, some ad networks will not allow a free blogger blog to participate, others will. And there are always direct ad sales
If you can afford it, buy a domain with your name in the url, start a blog (wordpress) and document your make money online journey. But for learning which keywords make the most money, are easy to rank for etc etc Get yourself a bunch of Google Blogs. If you become successful you want to make sure that nobody “cypersquats” (spelling???) your name. But to learn the ropes, try things out, get your feet wet etc etc, nothing beats a bunch of free Google blogs. Ehm, seems your comment section contains a secret “make your commenters write more then they have time for” ingredient.
Haha SY, that “secret ingredient” is my making post-length replies. LOL
Sorry!
Anyway, I do have my name domain, and am trying to figure out what to do with it exactly just yet. So much other work stuff going on now and I’m really very busy with it all (hence why this blog hasn’t been updated in forever), but I do like your ideas, and thank you.
If you’re ever interested (and have time) to write up a post taking your explanations further in depth, I’ll be happy to post it and give you a link back (haha) with full credit!
Thanks again for stopping by and please keep in touch!
Will do, but not before November, off to do a bit of traveling tomorrow, if I don’t come back to you, feel free to nagg me via my blog, SY
Thanks so much, and have a great time traveling!