According to the many experts that have invested their time and energy into teaching, mentoring and training me, the first step in setting up a blog for your business is to get your wordpress hosting established through a reputable provider.

I first started using Hostgator because it was highly recommended by many colleagues. I have continued to stick with it because I have found it to be highly reliable and to have great customer service for when user error gets in my own way a bit. Also, I like it because it’s pretty comprehensive and flexible – I have everything that I needed included all in this one wordpress blog, plus I have good flexibility to customize it just as I need / want for my business.

To learn more about this provider: click here

REPORT – 10 Reasons Why You’ll Benefit From Your Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

Blogs are an excellent medium for marketing a business and getting your point across. No wonder almost one in every five individuals has a blog. Free blogging platforms like Blogspot and WordPress.com make it all the more easier to get your blog up and running. These platforms offer bloggers the bare minimum they need to publish their blog posts. But why settle for the bare minimum when you can have much more? Self-hosted blogs like WordPress.org give you everything that you get with a free blog along with plenty of useful tools and resources which can help put your blog ahead of your competitors.

Following are the top ten advantages that a self-hosted WordPress blog has over any freebie blogging platform:

1. Maximum control

A self-hosted WordPress blog is completely under your control. You own your blog and nobody can interfere with what you post to it. Full control over your self-hosted blog means that nobody can shut it down unlike a Blogspot blog which can get shut down at any time without notice. This is biggest drawback of using a free blogging service. Your blog is owned by the blogging platform and the owner can delete your blog for a variety of reasons.

2. Brand identity

Self-hosted blogs like WordPress allow you to choose and use your own domain name, for instance yourblog.com. This gives you an opportunity to promote your brand identity. It projects an image of authority and professionalism. With a free blogging service, you are restricted to a subdomain such as yourblog.blogspot.com which doesn’t appear too professional as it gives visitors the impression that you\’re not interested in investing in your own brand.

3. Freedom to move

With a self-hosted WordPress blog, you are not limited to a single hosting provider. You have the freedom to pack up and move your blog to another host which allows you to choose a pricing plan that fits your budget. On free blogging platforms such as Blogspot, you\’re stuck with the server your blog is hosted on which can be quite problematic. Because of the large numbers of free blogs that are hosted, your blog could experience slowness and downtime on a regular basis. Self-hosted WordPress gives you the option to select from the finest shared hosting servers which offer maximum uptime and fast page loading times.

4. Reliability

A unique domain name makes your blog appear more reliable than something which ends up in blogspot.com or wordpress.com. This comes in handy particularly if you\’re running a blog for business purposes, but also if you have a personal blog. The aspect of reliability generates more interest and adds greater value to your opinions and content published on your blog.

5. SEO

The single most important thing for any blogger is the amount of traffic their blog attracts. Self-hosted WordPress blogs come with a range of useful tools and features to help you optimize your blog to get better rankings in search engine results. Apart from the in-built SEO features that self-hosted blogs offer, you can choose to further enhance your SEO capabilities by adding a number of third-party SEO plugins.

6. Enhanced usability through plugins

Free blogging platforms have little to offer in terms of tools and features to enhance the usability of your blog. The major reason behind this limitation is that you cannot install third-party plugins and utilities. With a self-hosted WordPress blog you have access to thousands of third-party plugins and tools add functionality to your blog and enhance your blogging experience. Much like the apps that you install on your iPhone or Android handset, these plugins add value by making tedious tasks easier to perform and saving you a lot of time and effort.

7. Custom templates and themes

While free blog hosting platforms do give users the option to switch their blog\’s theme, they are quite limited in this arena as well. You can only choose from a limited set of themes and do not have the option to use a custom theme or one that you purchase. In contrast, self-hosted blogs like WordPress give you the freedom to choose from the thousands of freely available themes and templates, to buy a premium theme or design and use your own custom WordPress theme. This helps boost your blog\’s appearance and helps make it look even more unique, features which go a long way in attracting more visitors to your blog.

8. Adsense ads

Adsense ads allow bloggers to place various ads on their blogs. By using Adsense ads, blog owners can generate revenue from their blogs. Most, if not all, free blogging platforms deny users this feature. With a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can register an Adsense account and start making money through ads posted on your blog.

9. Multiple users

When you get a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can create as many unique users as you like and allow other users to post on your blog or even create separate, sub blogs for them. This feature can also be used as a great way to make money from your blog as it enables you to sell blogging space off your blog. Unfortunately, free blogging platform do not allow the creation of multiple users, or for that matter, reselling blog space.

10. Unlimited resources

Self-hosted WordPress blogs let you choose the amount of disk space and bandwidth you wish to use. This means you have access to all the resources you need and have the option to add more at any point in time. As a result, you can post as much content – including pictures, text, sound and video – as you like. On the other hand, free blogs can limit you in terms of the number of blog posts you can have and the resources you can use.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/top-10-benefits-of-having-a-self-hosted-wordpress-blog-4800299.html

About the Author - Omer Khan

I am an experienced content writer, proofreader, web hosting technical support expert and operations manager for InspiroHost. I love to write articles related to business, search engine optimization (SEO) and web hosting. Virtual Assistance