So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone. Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing and Blogates. A quick search for “free blog” on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

Word Press(the most popular software)

Apache Roller

Blosxom

Geeklog

Textpattern

LifeType

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community Server

Movable Type

Radio User Land

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

• It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting.

• It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily.

• Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting.

• Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

• You don’t have as many options to customize your blog.

Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features.

• The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog.

• Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

• You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking.

• Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site.

• The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites.

• More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need.

The Cons

• There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard.

• Updates aren’t as easy to post.

• You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog.

However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be too hard.

• You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Closely examine all of the pros and cons mentioned above.

That way, you’ll be able to make the best decision for you!

If you use Wordpress.org as your blogging application (meaning you host your Wordpress blog through a third-party blog host), then you can add Google AdSense ads between your blog posts and boost your earning potential. Ads between posts typically convert well, but they can be considered intrusive. It’s up to you to test the placement of ads on your blog and determine if the performance warrants the placement. If you want to give it a try, use this 3-step tutorial to add Google AdSense ads between posts in Wordpress.If you’re using Wordpress.org and hosting your blog through a third party blog host, you can add Google AdSense ads to your blog and earn money.To display Google AdSense ads (image ads or text ads) between your posts, log into your Wordpress dashboard, go into your theme editor screen (see the red circle on the left in the image above to find your editor screen), open the index.php file (see the red circle on the right in the image above to find your index.php file), and enter the code in the red circle in the center of the image above, which is:You can change the number in the code from “1″ (meaning the ad will appear beneath the first post on your blog) to any number you want in order to place the ad under the specific post on your blog where you want it to appear.Warning: It’s a good idea to copy the original code and paste it into Notepad or a similar text-editor program. That way, if something goes wrong, you can simply delete all of the code from Wordpress and replace it with your original code.

Visit adrianchilders.com to learn more details about how to set up and monetize your own blog.

Ever heard of affiliate programs? These are forms of internet advertising that reward affiliates for driving traffic to an advertiser. The advertiser pays the affiliate to place a link on their website, and the affiliate sends traffic to the advertiser in return. Simply put, it’s about paying commissions to people who help you make sales. It’s that easy.

How long does it take Adsense to credit my account with the money after a click?

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