6 Most Important Reasons To Use WordPress For Blogging
One of the questions that we often get asked is: Why should I use WordPress? Isn’t my old site good enough? Why do I need to switch to WordPress from another platform? If you’re asking these questions, then you’re at the right place.
I started my blogging journey with BlogSpot. It’s not until the 6th month that I decided to switch my BlogSpot blog to self-hosted WordPress blog. It’s my stepping-stone in getting started with blogging career. The only regret is that I didn’t start directly with WordPress.
There are lots of benefits to using WordPress. In order to give you a perspective, I would like to share with you some of the main reasons why WordPress is my choice as a blogging platform.
1. Professionalism
The main downside of using a free blogging platform like Blogspot is it looks unprofessional.
Companies, advertisers and your visitors will know you’re using a free platform. You’re limited to some basic blogging tools, generic-looking themes, and low-quality design.
It gives a very unprofessional first impression of your website.
And first impression matters.
Did you know you have as little as 50 milliseconds to capture the interest of potential visitors?
You only get one chance to create a good first impression, make it count.
It’s nothing wrong with using free blogging platforms. But in order to achieve long-term success online, self-hosted WordPress is the best choice for your blog!
With WordPress, you can create a more professional impression to your readers than a free blogging platform. You’ll have your own website address at www.yourname.com instead of subdomain www.yourname.freewebsitename.com.
Truth to be told, nobody will take you seriously if you aren’t willing to invest in your website or blog.
2. Build Trust
Without trust, you can’t build a deep relationship and without a relationship, you won’t be a successful blogger.
Often free blogging platforms like BlogSpot are used by lots of spammers to create backlinks. Thus, many people will tend to avoid Blogspot blogs.
By having a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can establish yourself an expert in your niche and build an engaged relationship with your audience. Your readers will trust you and become your loyal followers.
3. WordPress Support and Community
I’m not a tech-savvy and felt intimated with the thought of setting up my self-hosted blog. But really you don’t have to be afraid even if you have no knowledge of coding or any technical stuff.
WordPress is very easy to use and is supported by an enormous online community. You can have your questions answered with the help of the WordPress support forum.
They offer a variety of resources to help the beginners, from installing WordPress to Everything you need to know about WordPress.
Besides that, just do a simple Google search will help you find the related help and WordPress information that you’re looking for.
4. Control
Unlike other free blogging platforms, WordPress gives you full control and authority over your blog. You can do whatever you want with your website and customize it as much as you wish.
WordPress Themes
There are thousands of WordPress themes to choose from. To create your WordPress theme, you use one of these methods:
- Download a free WordPress theme
- Purchase a premium theme
- Create your own custom theme (if you know how) or hire a professional WordPress theme designer
Most people will go for the free or paid theme. I used a paid theme for this blog, I found this design and layout work best for my business. Browse through the available themes and find the one that most suitable for your business and style.
WordPress Plugin
Plugins are one of the most important features of WordPress. You can easily add or remove whatever functionality you want. Having troubles in choosing the right plugins?
Here are some of the essential WordPress plugins that you should install.
Edit your website’s code
You have complete access to the backend file and can make any changes that you like, including but not limited to modify the fonts or colors, customize the codes and more.
Control your own content and website
The worst nightmare that could happen for a blogger is to have your blog deleted without any reason!
Yes, it could happen anytime if you’re using free blogging platforms.
Usually, these free blogging sites will include a clause in their term of service mentions that they have the power to delete your entire site without warning if you violate their terms of service.
If you want to have full ownership of your content, you’ll need to self-host your blog.
The bottom line is you want to retain ownership and have full control of everything you posted.
5. WordPress is SEO friendly
Compare to BlogSpot and other blogging platforms, WordPress is much more SEO friendly.
You can even enhance your blog SEO by using the WordPress SEO plugin like Yoast SEO.
6. Monetize your website
With WordPress you can start to monetize your blog by selling direct ads, sponsored posts, create a premium membership site, selling ebooks or courses and more!
You won’t have this making money opportunity if you’re using free blogging platforms. Firstly, most of the time those free blogging platforms won’t allow you to run third-party ads. Secondly, many advertisers and companies avoid dealing with bloggers from BlogSpot, free blogging sites.
In the long run, it’s definitely worth the investment to self-host your WordPress blog. You can monetize your blog in any way you want.
What are the disadvantages of using WordPress?
The two main disadvantages of using WordPress are...
Cost of hosting
While it’s free to download the WordPress.org blogging software, you still need to buy your own domain and hosting in order to use it.
A domain name will cost around $10-15 /year. While the cost for hosting plans vary widely, depends on the hosting package that you buy.
The cheapest hosting plan costs less than $3/month. So you might need to invest about $50 per year to run your own self-hosted WordPress blog.
But I really don’t think it should be an excuse for serious bloggers who want to build long-term success online. In fact, you can build your own website as little as one 1cent for the first month.
You can easily earn back the cost of hosting your site within the first year. Considering all the benefits listed above, it’s definitely worth the price.
Technical know-how
This is one of the main reasons why I started with BlogSpot in the first place.
I wasn’t sure where to start and how to set up my own website. Thus, I chose the easy road of using a free blogging platform.
Well, after going through the process of switching from BlogSpot to WordPress, I would say it’s not as hard as you think.
If you can follow some simple steps, download and install software, then you should be able to set up your website in less than 15 minutes!
If you don’t have the time to sit down and figure it out, you can hire an affordable freelancer to do that for you.
How you can get started with self-hosted WordPress?
Are you ready to get started on your own self-hosted WordPress blog?
If you are interested in starting your own blog, I created a step-by-step tutorial that will help you start a blog of your own for cheap, starting at only $2.75 per month (this low price is only through my link) for blog hosting.
In addition, you can create a website for just one cent for the first month. If you’re serious about blogging and want to make money online, you’ll need to self-host your blog!
Here are some helpful articles for you!
What’s holding you back from having your own self-hosted website? What made you choose BlogSpot or WordPress?
