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When you are a blogger there are many decisions you have to make in regards to your blog so you can continue to grow. One of those decisions may be should I go self-hosted or should I not? Some people don’t need to go self-hosted because they are not serious bloggers and have no interest in making money but some of us who want blogging as a career may want to think about it. It makes your blog look more professional and will attract more readers becuase your in complete control of it. What is a self-hosted blog? In simple terms, it basically means that hosting companies like WordPress do not own your blog or any of the content published but your the owner. If your not self-hosted technically the hosting service owns your blog and all of it’s content so they can shut you down whenever they feel like it but usually that won’t happen. Creating a self-hosted website may sound like the obvious solutions that all creators should consider but it’s expensive so it’s not an option for some people. I recently had the opportunity to make my blog self-hosted because there was a sale and it was much cheaper than it normally would be so why not give it a try? Are you thinking about going self-hosted but aren’t sure if it’s a good idea? In this post I am going to talk about why I love being self-hosted and what led me to that decision.
I have full control of my blog- When your on the WordPress premium plan you may own your domain name but if your not self-hosted technically you don’t own your blog or any of the content. Some people are doing this for fun and doing ‘really care whether they own or not posts are deleted but if you are trying to build a bring it can be a big deal if posts start to disappear. When you are self-hosted you own your blog and all of it’s content so WordPress legally cannot come in and start deleting stuff without a very good reason. I never really like the looked of my blog and have played around with tons of different things but nothing ever seem to me and there was very little I could do about it. It was probably looked fine and was just the perfectionist in me that wanted everything to be a certain way. The appearance of my blog is important to me becaause that is what attract readers so it was frustrating that I couldn’t make it look the way. Self-hosted blog are not limited and you can even add payments options so you can monetize more freely and even give people the option to donate to help offset the cost of your blog. Blogs aren’t cheap and one of the biggest struggles of a blogger is finding way to pay for it so it helps out there are tons of different way you can make money.
I have more security– When you are a blogger one of the things that you constantly thinking about is the security of your blog and do you have enough to protect readers information? Is there enough security to prevent my blog from being hacked or infected with virusues? Like any website your blog can be hacked and it’s the responsibility of the creator to make sure that your blog is secure and that does not happen. I would be embarassed if my blog was hacked and I had to notify hundreds of subscribers to let them know that there information was not safe and to change there passwords because that would totally be on me for not having enough security. Every WordPress plan comes with some basic security to protect your blog but you never truly know how reliable it is. With self-hosted blogs you can get even more security by installing plugins with firewalls to even better protect your blog from virusues and hackers It will still be possible for someone to break through your security so you want to have strong password but it will be much less likely. You can also make it more difficult for people plagarize your content by adding plagarize plugin making it nearly impossible for people to steal your work and take credit for it. This is something you always have to look out for as a bloggers so it’s nice when you don’t have to pay as much attention to it!
More storage– I don’t post a lot of photos because people don’t come to my blog to see my photos and alot of people don’t care what pictures I have and only want to know what I have to say about certain issues. Photos are still important because people who have catchy picture in their blogs even if it’s not a lot get more views than those who don’t have any. On my previous plan I had thirteen GBS of photo storage which is a pretty sizeable amount and will work for most people but for me it wasn’t working and it was filling up fast.. The only way to get more space is to delete posts or upgrade then and I didn’t want to do either of those things but eventually I would have had no choice except to choose. Upgrading was too expensive and deleting too many posts affects your rankings so that is not a good idea either. I now have a lot more storage that has allowed me to do more of the things I wanted to before and I don’t think I could run out unless I really went crazy with the photos and videos in every blog post.
People often wonder why bloggers spend so much money on their blogs when you can have a blog free. Some bloggers who only occassioally write can get away with a free blog but people who are more serious won’t be able to do that actually be happy with it. I couldn’t have a free blog even if I wanted because there isn’t enough space it would make it incredibly difficult to work with brands because that screams amateur! I started out as a free blog and didn’t started paying for it until after I had been blogging a year because I don’t think you should pay for something that you might give up on in three months. Going self-hosted can be a wonderful experience but if you are brand new it might not be the best idea to do it immediately. Self-hosted blogs have a lot more work and like building any website there is a learning curve so you want to have some knowledge on how to build a website or it will just be frustrating. Take your time and don’t feel like it’s a decision you have to rush because it’s okay if it takes you five years before your ready. I may only be able to be self-hosted for a year because it’s expensive and I don’t know if I’ll make enough money to pay for it but that is okay. It’s an experience I never thought I would have and a goal I can always work towards! Is your blog self-hosted and what is your experience?
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