Paid-for Blogs versus Free Blogs

I intend to look closely at paying to hosting one’s blog as compared to using free blog systems.I came to know about blogging when I was researching about Content Management System (CMS), for a client who wanted it. I’m a web developer, by the way. At the time (early 2004) I needed the best CMS solution that was easy to implement and run. Blogging did not appear to fit my client’s requirement so I simply noted it in my memory bank, to return to it much later.

Other blogs from Africans were soon sprinting up on a daily basis and it didn’t take long for me to convince myself that I needed a blog; if nothing at all, at least, to be a part of my personal online presence. Incidentally, this blog is the main feature of my personal website as I have not had enough time to layout the rest of my website as I would have wanted. The time came for me to decide how I wanted my blog to look. It took some time for me to decide whether to set it all up myself, or using exist web scripts like WordPress. Being a web developer, I really wanted to have the pleasure of coding my blog, like I did the publishing script behind “Mobile Africa“. Eventually, I settled for ready-made scripts and chose WordPress after a very careful research into all the existing ones.

I had hitherto set up a free blog on Blogger.com – ajao.blogspot.com However, I was never satisfied with it. After only two posts, I knew I would never use it again.

A paid-for blog – by my definition – is a blog you are paying to host. That’s the main thing. You might also have paid for a domain name, to make your URL easier to remember. Most blog themes are totally free. The web designer might only insist that you maintain the web link back to his/her website. Now, back to my comparison.

Advantages of free blogs

They are free and this is the main feature that attracts most new bloggers to them. You do not have to worry about the host of hosting, or about your blog being hacked. Your service provider bears all that.

Quick and Easy: Most free blogs are quick and easy to set-up. You should be posting your first blog entry in a matter of minutes, after sign-up.

Collaboration: Other folks on the same system as you are can easily be identified. If you are on blogger.com for example, other folks on blogger.com who intend to leave a comment can sign-in with their blogger.com username and password, along with their comments. This helps to easily identify the contributor and trace their blogs. Blogger.com for instance includes photos of other blogger.com members, if they sign-in to leave their comments. Good for group blogs.

Disadvantages of free blogs

Limited access to visitor logs: If your blog is with any of the free blog providers, it is very likely that you have little or no knowledge of the number of visitors reading your blog, where they are surfing from, duration of stay, pages they read most and so one. All this information can really help with making your blog better. A way around this is to sign up for an external website statistics site monitoring system with StatCounter.com being the most popular.

Limited themes: Themes are a great way of having a different look and feel for your blog, and therefore look different from the others. Free blogs do not have thousands of templates for you to choose from. Thus, it is very like that there are thousands of other folks sharing the same look and feel, which doesn’t make your blog very unique.

Abuse/Spamming: Some ungrateful folks choose to abuse the free facility being provided and choose to set-up blogs just to post commercial ads that don’t make sense. As a result, I hate to link to free blogs.

Also, free blogs have little or no protection and are relatively easy to hack. The owner of the blogspace also finds a way to place ads on your blog.

Advantages of Paid-for Blogs

Full control over templates (making it easy to integrate onto a website) For me, this is the main feature. As a web developer, I need to be able to satisfy myself with the look and feel of my blog, down to the smallest detail.

Full access to user statistics: If you are hosting with a good web hosting company like Web4Africa, you would have full stats access and this would help you determine how success or otherwise your blog is. You would be able to know where most of your traffic is coming from, and much other useful information.

Templates: If you are using one of the popular blog scripts, you should have access to thousands of templates from web designers who would be willing to share what they have done. If you have skills in web design, you might also be able to customize the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and images, to give your blog a completely unique look. This is what I have done to mine, to some extent.

No ads. This is one of the best part. Since you are paying to host your blog, there should be no strange ad appearing on your blog. If you however intend to make some money, you might be able to make some decent dough by placing ads on your blog. The most popular is Google Adsense. Here, you decide the number of ads, colour, location and all that. In a nutshell, you have total control.

Disadvantages of paid-for blogs

You have to pay. This might not really be an issue if you intend to do legitimate stuff. Hosting is relatively cheap these days, as are domain names.

All the info provided is strictly my opinion and is only intended to guide newbies in blogosphere to decide on the way to go. Whilst writing, I had WordPress and Blogger.com in mind, as my objects of comparison.

Happy blogging!