Is there a real difference between creating a free WordPress Blog and one that uses paid hosting? The answer is definitely yes. The biggest differences will be what you can do with your site and while your site may start off small, expandability is important and with a self-hosted site, you have many more options as your online business evolves and grows.
Free WordPress Blogs
If you have chosen to set up a free WordPress blog (with a URL that is something like www.yourblogname.wordpress.com), your options for style, SEO features, plug-ins, layout / themes, and monetisation will all be limited.
For one thing, there is only a page or two of generic theme templates to choose from. You will be able to select from some very basic options regarding style, colour, and layout.
If you are just blogging for yourself without commercial concern, these themes might be fine. But if you are using your WordPress site as part of a commercial venture, you will want to be able to utilise your own branding and logos.
Self-Hosted WordPress Accounts
A WordPress Blog that is hosted through your own domain is definitely the preferred way to ensure that your site is not only completely optimised for search engine ranking, but it provides the highest level of customisation and ways to monetise it.
First of all, the theme templates you can use with a self-hosted account are limitless. There are many great free themes that have been created by third parties that allow the user to easily change them and you have the option of having a customised or premium theme used as well. If you want to use a different colour on the sidebar or a personal photo for the heading, you can do that. Do you want to include your logo at the bottom of every page? You can do that, too. Add another column? This is easily accomplished when the site is on your own domain.
Another nifty feature is that many of the available free themes come SEO ready. They contain all the necessary features and code to make search engine crawlers find them and give the site a higher page ranking. Little, if any, effort on the part of the domain owner is required. You are able to add plug-ins such as Comment Luv, extra social bookmarking buttons, and meta tags, along with other many, many other options.
Monetising a self-hosted site is not difficult, either. You are allowed to add a shopping cart and any number of plug-ins for tracking, click-throughs, and other widgets that generate revenue.
When it comes to deciding between a free and self-hosted WordPress Blog account, it should be abundantly clear that for any commercial enterprise, there really is no choice. Without paid hosting, your WordPress blog cannot be fully customised or optimised.
You can often host a blog for as little as $5 a month on its own and if you have a website already, you can often add a blog to your domain (such as yoursite.com/blog) for no money at all.
You can continue to use free WordPress blogs for link love and promotion of your other sites but a hosted blog is a much better solution for those looking to make money online.
