As a newbie blogger, the most confusing state is to decide which Blogging platform to choose. Though, most suggested platforms are BlogSpot, WordPress, Tumblr. Now, when we talk about creating a blog from professional front, WordPress is a rock-solid choice. There are many things which you can do with a Self hosted WordPress blog, which you can’t do on a BlogSpot blog.
BlogSpot and WordPress both offers free blogging platform which is a good way to start your blogging career, though certainly not the best. If you have been blogging on any of these free blogging platform, read this article to know what are the limitations of using free blogging platform over self hosted WordPress blog.
To make it clear I started my blogging career from BlogSpot and then I moved to Self hosted WordPress blog. As I mentioned above BlogSpot is a good blogging platform to start your blogging career, but for long run self hosted blog is what you should select. Though in this post I will highlight why self hosted WordPress blog is better than free BlogSpot blog and also from free WordPress.com blogs.
If you are familiar with wordpress dashboard and looking forward to move to wordpress, you should have a look at my previous post on Step by step guide to install self hosted wordpress blog.
WordPress vs. blogspot : Why to select WordPress
As I mentioned above, I started my journey to Blogging with BlogSpot and later I moved to WordPress. So, I’m aware of benefits of downside of BlogSpot and here I’m not going to talk any benefits, as WordPress offer all those feature which BlogSpot offers.
Control over your blog :
This is one of the major reason why I support self hosted blog. Blogspot is owned by Google and there are chances that they can delete your blogspot account without giving you any warning. Even if you use custom domain feature (Using your own domain name ), chances are high that if spammers use feature Flag as spam and report your blog as spam. Google might remove your blog. This is something very common and by doing a quick search on Google, you will realize many bloggers faced this problem while using BlogSpot.
Search engine optimization :
Doesn’t matter where your blog is hosted , traffic is the first and last thing any blogger will look for. Search engine optimization in simple words means Optimizing your blog for search engines and getting traffic from search engine”. Comparing WordPress and BlogSpot, WordPress offers more options to optimize your blog for search engine where as in BlogSpot you are limited to certain settings.
Plugins and support :
WordPress is blessed with features like plugin and a strong community to get support. When I was on BlogSpot I spent lots of time editing my theme to show related posts and adding such features. WordPress makes your life easy using simple plugins for everything you need. By using plugins, you can achieve anything and if not, you can take help of WordPress support forum to get custom code and extend the capabilities of your blog.
Reputation :
This can be consider as human tendency or perception, that most of the people doesn’t see BlogSpot with great eye. One of the simple reason is it’s free and mass number of people are using it for Black hat SEO, spamming and for affiliate landing pages. When talking about self hosted blog, people thing that the person has paid for the service and he is serious about his blog.
Theme and templates :
BlogSpot offers many templates but due to commercial nature of WordPress, you will find unlimited free and Premium WordPress themes. More over since you have FTP access, you can alter the complete look and feel of your WordPress theme.
Adsense :
Adsense is life line for any blogger who is looking forward to make money from his blog. Initially BlogSpot used to be the best way to get your adsense account approved, but later on it’s becoming tough to get your adsense account with blogspot. With wordpress and your own domain email address, getting your blog approved is very easy. Another advantage of self hosted blog.
Reselling your blog :
Google strictly doesn’t allow reselling of BlogSpot blogs, but the case is different here with self hosted blog. You can always resell your self hosted blog.
Social media websites :
Those who are active on social media and bookmarking sites like Delicious, Stumble upon and reddit. I’m sure you are aware of the fact none of them love blogspot blogs. Though if you use custom domain, that will work. Also many network for bloggers like Buysellads doesn’t accept BlogSpot bloggers. There is nothing wrong with it, but the point here is WordPress is more accepted in global standard.
Also, WordPress keep updating and releasing new version, which comes with some added features and functionality, where as on BlogSpot, there are very few updates which happens over the time. Now, one of the downside of using WordPress is it’s costly. Unlike BlogSpot which is free, you will be sending money on WordPress Webhosts and at times on your themes. Though, it worth each and every penny you invest here, as with time WordPress will help you to make more more from your blog.
