Feb
2 Options For Paid Blogging
The two ways to go with paid blogging services are self hosting and remote hosting: self-hosting and third-party paid hosting.
Self-Hosting
With self hosting, you could in theory host the blog on your own hard drive and try to cope with all the hassles of administering it and keeping it online. For most people that is simply not practical. There are much better and more productive ways to use your limited time! That is why the vast majority of bloggers who choose to host their own blog use a professional web hosting service as their platform.
This is not difficult. All you need to do is open a web hosting account (Hostgator.com and Bluehost.com are currently popular options for this type of thing), get a domain name and point it to your blog platform. By far the most popular blog platform for self hosting is WordPress.org. A good web hosting service such as Bluehost.com will enable you to install a WordPress blog platform with a click of a button. Pointing your domain to the blog will be just as simple.
With this model, the blog platform itself is free, but you do pay for hosting and for your domain name for a total cost of about $100 per year.
The chief benefit you get from self hosting is that you have complete control over what you do with your blog. However, to some extent, you have to work things out for yourself. If you have set up a WordPress site you may sometimes need to refer to WordPress.org for help, or failing that, seek out help in a forum that deals with blogging issues.
In spite of that, WordPress.org is easy to plug in and to use. It also gives you great flexibility in terms of blogging, monetization and blog design. WordPress has thousands of different blog designs, and more are being produced by independent designers every day. It is possible to completely change the design of your whole blog in less than a minute via your control panel. Everything can be plugged in and unplugs or moved about quickly and easily.
Third-Party Paid Hosting
Third-party paid hosting gives you the freedom to build a full-blown business blog, and the security of knowing that many of the issues will be dealt with by the logging company. Typepad.com is the leading model of this kind of comprehensive service. Typically, third-party paid hosting gives you both security and control as well as a wide range of professionally produced templates so that you can set up a fantastic looking blog plus full professional support to help you with any technical problems that you may encounter.
With both self hosting and third-party paid hosting options, you can build a complete website around your blog and post static HTML pages such as sales pages, or terms of service pages, as you wish. With blogging 2.0 technology you can also control access to your blogs and if you wish, turn your blog into a complete membership site with password access restricted to your members or subscribers.
So as you can see, there are several options available to anybody wishing to start a new blog. If you are eger to make your blog a part of your business, or to build your business around your blog, then making the right choice will be vital for you from the start. So consider exactly what you want your blog to do and then make the appropriate choice.