Personal Blog Income

I will started out by saying I am not actually going to tell you which blog platform is best because at the end of the day it is all about personal opinion. There are some great platforms out there and while it would take something pretty special to ever move me away from WordPress, you may find things in different packages that is what you want. After all it is your own blog and you should be making it your own. So saying I will be writing most of my posts primarily with WordPress in mind

What I will say is if you are interested in maximising your income from your blog then you are going to make a lot more money using a hosted blog with your own domain name. I will be talking specifically about domain names on wednesday in a lot more detail.

Considerations before deciding on a blog platform

Before you do decide on a blog platform there are some considerations that you need to take into account with your choice:

· What is your budget? It’s a thorny question I know – it can cost a little to a lot setting up a blog. Its my experience that my blogs break even by about 60 days after being started on average and by 120 days they have paid for themselves for year. That’s using WordPress which is free. If you use a paid platform or buy a custom template then that figure is going to blow out

· Design – every platform comes with predesigned platforms plus you may be able to download additional designs for free. However if you want to have that individual look then you can pay big dollars for a custom design. My advice is work up to a custom design somewhere down the track.

· What is available for your platform? Depending on the platform that you choose there are tools available that you can add to do everything from statistics to running an email service.

· How technologically skilled are you? Its another aspect that I will cover to an extend on my web hosting post in that some web hosting packages are more user friendly that others. Depending on your skills there are some platforms that are more suited to your needs until you learn the basics or find someone that can help you out. Most platforms have a strong community knowledge base that you can search to find the answers that you need

· What is everyone else using? Another thing that you might want to do before you pick a platform is have a look at what everyone else is using. It will allow you to get an idea of what it can do and whether it can do what you want it to.

Stand Alone Blog Platforms

This is where the platform is hosted under your own webhosting and with your own web address which comes with its own advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

· While you might be paying for the webhosting, the platform can often be free with many of the popular platforms being open source.

· You have your own domain name, identity or brand to truly make your own.

· Full Control – you have a lot more control over what you can do with the blog including content and advertising within the limitations of your hosting contract.

· Flexibility – WordPress in particular has a lot of plugins which can extend the functions of of the basic version of the blog and many are available for free. There is similar work done with many other plugins also.

Disadvantages

· Cost – as I mentioned in budget above it does cost more to have your own stand alone platform but if you are planning on making some money then it can pay for itself quickly.

· Complicated Set up – setting up your blog can be complicated depending both on your technical abilities and your webhost . The technical side of things is definitely not my strong point and I use webhosting that has an easy to use interface. To set up a blog for me is easy, I just enter some details and a couple of buttons later its done. Its something that I am going to touch on more with tips to finding a good web host.

· Web hosts brings me to another disadvantage. You blog is at the whims of the hosting company you are with. While some are fantastic, there are others who are far from great. I will be providing tips as to how to find a good one.

· Updates . Like all platforms they go through different versions and depending on your webhost it can be complicated to update them. Again it depends on your webhost, two buttons and my blog is updated.

Hosted vs Stand Alone Blog Platforms

You do have the option to use either a hosted blog platform (one hosted by others), it is kept on their own domain. Hosted domains have a number of advantages and disadvantages that you need to consider

Hosted Blog Platforms

Advantages:

· Easy Set Up

· Cheap or even free to run

· Generally they are designed to be simple to use

· Normally Easy to Set up unless you want to tweak things

· Updated automatically – if the blog platform is updated to a new version then that is done automatically for you.

Disadvantages

· As mentioned your opportunities to get revenue from your blog may be reduced and some programs may exclude you from taking part

· Less Control – a lot of bloggers like to have control over their blog and they are at the mercy of their platform when there are content restrictions or downtime

· Upgrading later can be tricky. Meg on Blogpond recently moved her blog from Wordpress.com to a Self Hosted Domain which caused some frustration and serves as an example of what can happen.

· Generic Web address – it can be frustrating to be trying to build your own identity and be tagged with being just another one in the crowd.

Combination of the two

Some hosted applications have the option to post to your own domain, most notably blogger. This does have the advantage of being able to have your own domain name with all its advantages while reducing the amount of technical knowledge required to blog. It still however has many of the disadvantages of hosted domains.

Weighing up the options

I know so far there has been some food for thought and its complicated. My advice is if you want a blog that you can post to as a strictly personal blog then probably a hosted blog is the answer for you. Alternatively if you are seeking a chance to make some money then you should consider a self hosted platform.