Most individuals, once they start running a blog, begin with a free weblog on a hosted service, like WordPress.com or Blogger. Straightforward-to-use and cheap, these providers are perfect for a hobbyist or somebody simply testing the blogger waters.
As your weblog begins to take off, although, and the viewers will increase, there’s a great likelihood that you simply start to see the constraints of the free platform, and want you may do extra to customize your weblog and take it to the following stage.
Whereas free-running blog providers have many nice options, they aren’t at all times perfect for the intense blogger. There virtually inevitably comes some extent when you must ask yourself if it’s time to make much bigger funding and self-host your weblog. Should you aren’t certain, listed below are 5 telltale indicators that it’s time to make the leap.
Whereas free-running blog providers have many nice options, they aren’t at all times perfect for the intense blogger. There virtually inevitably comes some extent when you must ask yourself if it’s time to make much bigger funding and self-host your weblog. Should you aren’t certain, listed below are 5 telltale indicators that it’s time to make the leap.
There virtually inevitably comes some extent when you must ask yourself if it’s time to make much bigger funding and self-host your weblog. Should you aren’t certain, listed below are 5 telltale indicators that it’s time to make the leap.
What is self-hosting?
Self-Hosting is the act of hosting your blog on your own computer or server. You can use various hosting services such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Digital Ocean.
Self-hosting refers to software that is installed and maintained by the user on a generic web hosting service such as a VPS.
Each hosting service has its own unique benefits and disadvantages. For example, you have full control over the look and feel of your site and can choose to include your branding in the header.
Why self-hosting is important for bloggers
Digital marketing is all about communication with your followers. They need to be able to find you, know who you are, and get what you have to offer.
Keeping your blog hosted on your computer or server allows you to keep control over who sees your content and how. You can decide whether to display your logo in the header or not.
You can also choose to include a link to your website in the footer or do other things that you would like to have on your website.
How to self-host your blog
There are lots of ways to self-host your blog. The most common method is using WordPress, which you can install on your computer or server. You can use other blogging software such as Joomla or WordPress.org’s default blog platform. You can also create a custom blogging platform.
The only requirement for this is registering with a web hosting company to host your website. Search for a hosting company that meets your requirement like reliability, guaranteed time, cost, and performance. You can either host your blog on your computer or server. A server is a big computer that stores data and serves the documents to the users.
A good server will cost you between $50 and $300 per month, depending on the traffic and the size of the blog. A server costs between $0 and $50 per month, depending on the number of blogs you have and the amount of data you want to store.
The benefits of self-hosting
There are a lot of benefits to self-hosting your blog. The main one is that you get to set your own site URL. This means that you get to choose where your readers go to find more information about you.
It’s a lot more than just an option – it’s something that needs to be considered for any blogger worth their salt.
In addition to the numerous benefits of self-hosting, your blog provides, paying for hosting from a company like Hostgator.com, Domaincot.com, Bluehost.com, Godaddy.com, or WPengine.com is one option.
A hosted blog—usually a free blogging site—is usually inexpensive but costly in the end. You cannot do everything necessary to appear professional, add automated processes, or monetize your content on a free (hosted) website.
The following are some of the reasons why you should move from free-hosted to self-hosted or start your website with self-hosting from the beginning:
Full Control of Your Website:
A self-hosting site is very important because you own it and can make decisions about where and how it is served.
You do not get the same level of flexibility and customization with free websites as you do with paid ones.
You set the rules, so you are not subject to those set by WordPress.com or blogspot.com, for example. Hosting companies typically do not have regulations for how you run your site.
Technical Support Offer:
Every self-hosted package comes with some level of technical assistance. Unless you have a computer science degree, you will probably require technical help occasionally.
Having more plugins, customizations, and pages means that troubleshooting becomes much more difficult, and the more complicated your site becomes.
Setting up a WordPress site (using WordPress.org, not WordPress.com) can be difficult, and many hosting companies will assist you get started.
Additional Storage:
When you sign up for free web hosting, you may be restricted on how much space you have on your account. These limitations can easily have a damaging effect on your content if it includes a lot of videos and high-pixel images.
As you blog, you’ll need more storage space. Self-hosted services have a range of storage prices you can modify to fit your needs.
Reliable Back-up:
Most self-hosting service providers offer regular back-ups for all of your content. When your site crashes, it is usually much easier to restore it to its previous glory
Monetize your website:
If you want to make money off of your website through advertising, you need a self-hosted site that allows you to install and customize special plugins for banner ads, Google AdWords, and more. Many free blog options don’t support this method.
Ability to customize your domain name:
The benefit of having a self-hosted blog is that you can pick a unique domain name for your site.
Domain names can be a very effective marketing tool, and they make you look like a professional. The self-hosted site helps eliminate .wordpress.com at the end of your domain name and makes it a memorable and easy-to-memorize URL.
Offers A personal email address
Using a self-hosted email address, you give the impression of professionalism and credibility, which is maintained by matching your domain name to your email address.
A self-hosting plan includes a personal mailbox. You can create folders and run filters just like you can in Gmail.
Marketing Opportunity
In self-hosted websites, every time you publish a new post, you create one more page that can be crawled and indexed by search engines, like Google.
This will increase your SEO by providing your posts more opportunities to appear in search engines, which in turn increase new organic traffic to your blog. You can also see this as an indicator to search engines that your website is being updated, which will improve your ranking position.
Your posts can get a lot of exposure once they are published. Search engines rank them immediately, which means more people can find you. Your sews today can reap substantial rewards in the future.
The downsides of self-hosting
Unfortunately, there are also some downsides to self-hosting your blog. The first one is that you are sharing a lot of your data with the world.
Your server, associated hosting costs, domain name, and website are all valuable assets that you will need to share with the world. If someone were to take them away from you, you would not be able to host your blog on another server or computer because the data would be different.
Additionally, if someone were to hack your site, your blog data would be vulnerable to being stolen. So, make sure that you are adequately secure when it comes to your data.
Self-hosted gives you more freedom to monetize your blog
You will be terribly frustrated if you decide to go the free route. Blogs that are free limit you in numerous ways. WordPress.com is a popular blog platform which is why many successful bloggers make money via ads on their blogs.
Blogs hosted by yourself give you all the tools you need to add advertising to your blog, set up an online store, and expand your business online without restrictions.***
Conclusion
As you use a self-hosted site more, you will become more knowledgeable. And as you become better at blogging, you will learn more and more. Some things that used to be difficult to understand will become less difficult and less time-consuming. You may have to study some tutorials or watch some YouTube videos in the end, but eventually, you’ll be amazed at your success.
The benefits of self-hosting your blog far outweigh the downsides. If you are a blogger who wants to have complete control over the look and feel of your site, self-hosting is something that you need to consider.
There are a lot of benefits to self-hosting your blog and one of them is the freedom to set your own site URL. The only thing that changes when you self-host is the URL by which your readers will find you.
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