This post is for those users who are still hosting their blog on free hostinglike wordpress.com or blogspot.com.
To make it clear I started my blogging career from BlogSpot and then I moved to wordpress self hosted blog. I love BlogSpot and I will highly advice all the newbie’s who 
doesn’t have any prior experience with blogging, they should start from BlogSpot or wordpress.com.
I will suggest register yourself for wordpress.com because it’s free and soon you will get familiar with wordpress dashboard.
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.
Why Wordpress or any other self hosted blog is better than free blog ?
Control over your blog :
This is one of the reason why I support self hosted blog. Blogspot is owned by Google and there are chances that they can delete your blogspot account without any intimation. 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 happens to many of the blogger.
Winner : Self hosted blog
Also read : Tips to select great domain name
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”. The kind of search engine optimization wordpress provide with lots of plugin, blogspot can’t beat that.
Here are few posts which will help you to optimize your wordpress blog for search engine optimization
- List of SEO strategies which I used to make my wordpress blog search engine friendly
- All in one SEO plugin for SEO
- Wordpress categories to help you with SEO
- ALT-Tag image plugin for wordpress to receive traffic from wordpress
- Robots.txt technique for wordpress and self hosted blog to avoid post duplication issue.
Plugins and support :
Though blogspot has a vast audience and many users are die hard fan of BlogSpot. When I was on BlogSpot I spent lots of time editing my theme to show related posts and such features. Wordpress makes your life easy using simple plugins for everything you need.
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 people use 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 project and work.
Theme and templates :
It will be wrong to say that blogspot doesn’t have quality theme after I wrote about comfy magazine , but then the kind of support , themes and plugin wordpress has, it make it unbeatable.
Adsense :
Adsense is life line for any blogger who is looking forward to make money from his blog. Initially adsense 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. Though you can use this trick .co.co domain trick to get your blogspot adsense approved. With wordpress and your own domain email address, getting your blog approved is very easy. Another advantage of self hosted blog.
If you are a adsense user, you should consider checking out following posts on adsense :
- Tip to increase your adsense revenue
- Improve adsense revenue with RSS adsense unit
- Maximum number of adsense unit on a single page
- How I earned $345 with adsense in a day
Reselling your blog :
Google strictly doesn’t allow reselling of BlogSpot blogs, but the case is different here with self hosted blog. You can always resell your self hosted blog.
Probably that’s why many of my friends believed me when I announced that shoutmeloud sold for 8000$ to socialtechinclusive
Social media websites :
Those who are active on social media and bookmarking sites like Digg, 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. If you have some experience with Buzz! Yahoo, you will notice that most of post submitted from blogspor is instantly deleted.
I’m sure many of you might not share the same opinion here. Feel free to give us your own insight on self hosted wordpress blog vs BlogSpot blog?
Do check out my earlier article on How to Install self hosted wordpress blog?
If you looking to migrate your blogspot blog to Wordpress, see my blogspot to wordpress service and testimonials.
Related posts:
- Shoutmeloud opens Blogspot and wordpress.com to self hosted Wordpress blog migration service
- Why you should have a custom domain name for your blogspot blog
- Step by step guide to Install self hosted wordpress blog
- 5 Wordpress tutorials, 12 wordpress plugins and 3 Premium themes to enhance your Wordpress blog
- Why you should select wordpress as your blogging platform?
- How To Set Custom Domain Name for Blogspot blog [Video]
- How to install wordpress plugin from your blog dashboard
- Wordpress plugin: How many plugins we should use?
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I definately think that if you are serious about building a reputation and influence you have to have a self hosted blog!
That’s true TOM , self hosted blog shows the seriousness towards blogging.
More than seriousness it gives you best out of your hard works.You can easily make it your professional identity as well.
You are right honey,
Seriousness, hard work , dedication and passion. In my views all of these qualities will lead anyone to success.
Right Harsh. Thats what why we people are getting better and better especially the hardworkers. I certainly feel the advantage and power when i migrated to wordpress and i thatk you once again Harsh for helping me for opening my way to success. We are proud of you harsh.
Nice post man… Wordpress (self hosted really rocks).
And I have no reason to disagree with you
I got one reason. Free Is Best
Blogger rocks \m/
That’s true Bariski free is good but certainly not the best.
The potential self hosted blogs has m free blogs can never complete it.
Please check the spelling mistakes on 12,40,63rd line. Thanks shoutmeloud for the beautiful post.
Thanks Himanshu for finding the mistakes. Updated the post.
Nice reasons you have listed.
When I wanted to start my blog, I first had to read about the pros and cons about free hosting blogs and self hosting blogs. With hosting yourself, there is just so much more you can do. You full control over how and what your blog does and no one can tell you otherwise.
That’s true George, Imagine how anyone will feel when his 1-2 year hard work is simply taken by blogspot or wordpress.com within second?
I prefer and suggest self hosted blog to all the blogger’s.
Apart from self hosted blog has more potential to make money online.
Same with me, I’ve start blogging with blogspot and just after 3 month I move to wordpress and really glad I did it.
Moving from blogspot to wordpress was one of the best decision of my blogging career too.
Thanks for stopping by! I’m thinking of opening up a brand new blog on wordpress. Feel free to contact me via email with any suggestions! Cheers!
Dave I’m glad that you made up your mind for going with wordpress. Feel free to get in touch with me using contact form in case if you need any kind of help.
Good article! I have a question about the SEO of a wordpress-hosted blog with your own domain :
Don’t you think the inlinks related to your tags (from wordpress.com/tag/yourtag) are good value? I mean, when you put 10 tags to an article, you get 10 links from wordpress.com/tag to your domain. If you do the same thing with a self-hosted blog, you get 10 links, but internal links because coming from your domain/tag.
Do you think it is potentially interesting, or pointless regarding to the other advantages of self-hosted?
I usually keep them as nofollow to keep my link juice to main articles. Though it plays a good role in getting traffic from technorati. If you are using technorati plugin on your blog.
I think I found an answer to my question: as the links on the wordpress.com/tag/yourtag page have the attribute “nofollow”, no advantage at all (except for the search engines not using it).
It depends, you can keep the tag nofollow or dofollow.
Though depending on how your tag page show, if its shows the excerpt and title, keep them noindex and dofollow else keep them noindex and nofollow.
Yes for self-hosted wordpress, but when hosted by wordpress (yourblog.wordpress.com), you can’t change the nofollow, do you? So it’s not useful to have your blog hosted at wordpress.com just for the inlinks via tag pages.
yes there isn’t support for blogspot blogs in terms of plugins as for wordpress.Wordpress has lot of features where blgospot blog lacks.
venkat™s last blog post..Conficker Worm still alive,infecting 50,000 PCs per day
This post made me remembering of my blog WP that have self hosted, but some days ago my blog was suspend without confirmation and actually the limit is still next November.
Many of your points are not very credible or are extremely broad.
So why would digg/reddit/etc dislike Blogger? Those sites are driven on user input and ratings, and I’m pretty darn sure the general user has nothing against viewing Blogger blogs, since it’s the most popular blogging system that exists.
Just glancing at my reader I see that about 80% of blogs I subscribe to are Blogger blogs, and I didn’t even purposely look for them.
Blogspot has an EXTREMELY high user base. The community of bloggers on blogspot are loyal and follow each other. Google Reader also allows simple subscription to blogspot blogs.
You just sound like a fanboy of WordPress. Clearly each system has pros and cons. Your basic user will most likely enjoy Blogger over WP because of its simplicity.
FYI, I use neither B or WP, but I do develop WordPress.org blogs for others. My own blog runs on Drupal – now that’s complete customization and the real SEO/Adsense/whatever magnet.
Hey Karen
I appreciate your insight, regarding your Digg/reddit question, it is mostly because Blogspot is a free blog and most of the spammer are using it to generate link backs or mostly one time traffic. Thats the main reason Blogspot blogs find it hard to get into Digg FP. You can see Digg.com and check how many blogspot posts are on FP.
Regarding Loyalty, I do not see any point in it, because its the quality of blog. It can be blogspot/WP / Drupal or any platform. That will not make any difference.
Just FYI I started with blogspot and yes its true its easy to manage a blogspot blog, because no server side issues but imagine one day you wake up and realize your blog has been deleted by Google??
You might get an explanation or if you are super lucky, you can get your blog back. but in wordpress, if something goes wrong, restore your database and everything will be back….
Imagine one day you wake up and your PageRank is wiped out by Google ! See Harsh the point is you comply with Google and they entertain you ! Be it Blogger or Google Search , I am agreed to Karen for the fact the every blog system has it’s own advantage and disadvantage ! I have seen many popular blogs with commercial intent which are present on Blogger system ! So what matters is one’s objectivity while selecting the suitable Blog system
Moreover there is nothing wrong in promoting the system which earns bread and butter for you
I also transfered my blog to self hosted wordpress but blogger is too easy to use….. n i love blogger because its was free…… but as u told i also want full control over my blog…………….. thanks 4 article………
hello Harsh agrawal, your point of view is exactly correct ! wordpress is so advanced in technology, but simple in management. it’s very easy to manage and that’s why i liked it. almost all famous blogs are now made of wordpress. thanks for sharing such a valuable information with us !
Self hosted can give you the total control, the freedom for your blog. Naming your domain is also an advantage of the self hosted blog. You can choose for either which extension .com or .net. And lastly profitability, blog is like an investment for in case someone gets interested with your blog you have the option to sell it for them.
I am thinking about starting a new Wordpress blog.And your article is very much impressive….
thanks harsh ..
I am currently using blogspot .I will change to wordpress when i will get some $
Hi,
Saw your thesis customization tutorials.
I have a problem with my thesis theme.
The sidebar drops down below the content.
How to make it proper
There are plethora of advantages in case of Self hosted blog to consider. In fact Self hosted blog gives the real complete control and flexibility over a blog, and that is what i love the most about them.
I really can’t even imagine to blog on blogspot blog.
Wordpress is much better than blogspot. I m feeling the difference as i move to wordpress from blogger this month
the reputation aspect is one thing that make me a big fan of Wordpress….i have paid for this and i am DAMN SERIOUS
That’s another aspect of it. People will take you seriously because they can see you are serious about your blog.
Enough Harsh, I know that wordpress self hosted blog is much better than blogspot blog., but why i am using blogspot blog, that I do not want to lost my blog good stats.
I am preparing to make another self hosted wordpress blog and I will nicely design this blog.
Chandan you may take help of my Blogspot to Worpress migration service http://www.shoutmeloud.com/services
In case you don’t want to lose any search engine traffic and stats.
yes. it really true dude. But one thing that blogspot more easy to customize our template. is right?
Best Regard
I will not disagree with you but will not also agree with you. Some how I find wordpress themes are much easier to customize for simple reason all files are in different folder and also support is amazing for every theme. Though blogspot theme designing and customization is not very tough..but it’s just the way we think. Since I used both the platform my vote will go for wordpress in terms of theme customization.
I agree that Wordpress is more SEO friendly and comes with plugins and widgets. But I am more concerned about the Adsense revenue. One of my Blogger blog moved to Wordpress now has less Adsense CTR and ecpm. I am using similar template and Adsense positions. Traffic also remains the same. Do you guys experienced the same thing or I am the only one having this problem
?
I agree with you Harse… I am using BlogSpot for my very first blog, Cite-Technologian.com- but after seeing some disadvantages like what you’ve mentioned (layout, themes, spam, etc), I use WP for my other blogs. Though those WP blogs are still on sub-domain, I will have them self-hosted.
Hey guys, blogger is equally capable of what wordpress does. I am working on a hack (SEO plugin) which makes blogger blog more SEO friendly. One thing you should know Google favors blogger blog.
What you meant on “Google favors Blogger blog”?
It’s just so easy to set up your blog on your own web host now.
This is the post that I will show my friends who still in Blogspot. Told him so many times and still don’t want to switch over.
After reading your post, I’m thinking of shifting my blogspot blog to wordpress.. may be will do it in coming days…. and can u tell me the steps to shift for wordpress…