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Free, a word that can make your blood run wild. We are all interested in getting anything for free. But in the case of blogging, you should be a little careful. Today’s post deals with this question : whether you should choose a paid hosted blog or go with a free one like Blogger.
The Blogosphere is a humongous place. There are already millions of blogs out there. And thousands more are added everyday. So, you see, the competition is pretty tough. You want to make sure that you’re blog stands out. Having a free blog makes you look cheap. Whereas, if you have a paid hosted blog, it shows that you are a bit dedicated to your blog.
Reasons why a Free Hosted Blog is not good
- Difficult to brand - This is not the right platform to build your business. You cannot create a brand for your blog.
- Less control - Free hosted blogs don’t offer much flexibility or customization. You can’t make your blog look the way you want.
- Gives less returns - Suppose, if you start a Blogspot blog, build it, get a lot of rankings and traffic and wish to make money from it. Its very difficult to monetize it. There are too many rules and restrictions. You won’t be profiting from your blog.
The Cost Problem
If you have been thinking that hosting expenses are too much, think again. Hosting today is very cheap. Plus every web host has an affiliate account. Join the affiliate program and use your own link to sign up to that service. For example, HostGator pays an affiliate $50 for every sign up. So, just sign up to HostGator using your affiliate link(use this link to sign up) and pay $0.01 for hosting and make $50 for referring yourself! How’s that?
If you want a free domain name, you can use the DNTemple forums to get one. Each post you make there earns to some points. You can exchange these points to get a domain name of your choice. On an average, you can make enough points for a domain name within 4-5 days.
So, all in all, opt for a paid hosting blog. How did you like this post? Tell me in the comments below.
This is the first post in the series of Better Blogging, a series of posts on blogging tips that can make you a better blogger. Make sure you subscribe to my feed so that you don’t miss any of the posts in this series.
Traffic is what makes visitors come to your blog. Traffic is what makes people like John Chow rich. Isn’t that true? So today’s post deals with how you can get more traffic to your blog.
Ways to increase Traffic
- Use Entrecard - Entrecard was the first source of traffic for this blog. In the first month, Entrecard contributed the majority of traffic to my blog. Keep dropping your cards on other blogs and you’ll get plenty of traffic. Here are my stats for the first month of my blogging. You can see that most of the traffic came through Entrecard.
- Comment on other Blogs - Comment on other blogs in your niche to receive more traffic. My real traffic came one month after starting the blog from comments. Target blogs that have dofollow comments. You can search for a list of blogs that have dofollow comments using DoFollow Diver Here is how comments increased my blog traffic.
- Participate in forums and message boards - Forums like Blog Premiere and Bloggeries are good places to do some promoting about your blog. Participation in discussions at BlogCatalog is also a great way to get more traffic.
- Use the power of Social Bookmarking - Hitting the front page sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can generate massive amounts of traffic to your blog. However, the main disadvantage of these sites is that the traffic is generally not targeted and visitors will stay on your blog only for a few seconds. Carl has written an excellent (and humorous) post on how to game the Digg system. You can also read Tom’s post about StumbleUpon traffic. Bryan has written a post about social bookmarking.
- Create a fantastic linkbait - Do you remember that John Chow asked everyone to review his blog in exchange for a link in his blogroll? That was a very clever idea. Suddenly hundreds of blogs started writing about John Chow. The root of all evil, John Chow received a lot of traffic from this. Just like that, think of some ideas, start a contest. Go use your imagination.
Those are some of the ways for driving more traffic to your blog. What do you do to get more traffic?
