Blogging 101: Free Hosting vs. Self Hosting

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. We had a very busy weekend and ended perfectly with a Polar Express dance party. Sadly, I think watching that movie brought cold weather sooner than I had wanted… I had to turn the heater on for the first time this season 🙁 I guess my hopes of summer lasting until December are long gone now. Do you look forward to cooler weather or are you a fan of highs in the 80’s like me?

Well back to blogging. One of my favorite things about blogging is that I get to do it in the comfort of my home. If it is cold or snowing outside I don’t have to trek through the elements to go to work. Last week we talked about The Five W’s and how they apply to blogging. By now you should have a good idea of what you want to blog about, why you want to blog, who you want to blog with, where you are going to do your blogging and how often you want to post. Now, lets talk about the platform you want to blog on.

You have a few options when it comes to the blogging platform; the two most popular being Blogger and WordPress. And with-in those platforms you can choose to do free hosting or what is called self hosting. Free hosting is just like it sounds, free; and your web address would look something like www.myblog.blogspot.com or www.myblog.com (on WordPress). Self-hosting is where you own your own domain (not free) and your web address would look like www.myblog.org or www.myblog.net. You could still have a .com web address as well if you have a unique name. It all depends on if someone has already purchased that domain. When I went to register Tastefully Frugal every other ending was available but .com so .org it was.

To decide whether you want to do free hosting or self hosting you first need to look back at one of the Five W’s; why. Why do you want to blog? Is it to stay in touch with family or just keep a record of recipes? If so then, free hosting is probably the best track for you. If you want to make money with your blog then you will definitely want to do self hosting. The nice thing is you can always start at free hosting, if you’re not sure if you want to monetize, or if you don’t have the money right away to start self hosting (it can cost $25+ to get your self hosting site started), you can switch to self hosting at anytime. I started out with a free Blogger account and knew about 4 months into it I wanted to make the switch.

So if you are not 100% sure if you want to make the leap into self hosting at first, start with free hosting and then make the switch later. I’m all about living frugally, why pay for something you aren’t sure you are going to use.

Tune in next week to learn everything you’ll need to know for setting up your self-hosted site! And don’t miss any tips, crafts or recipes sign up for weekly updates here.