Blog Has Been Removed
For the longest time I wasn’t too serious on the whole self-hosted vs free-hosted topic. Why? It hadn’t really effected me personally. Sure I’ve heard stories about blogs being deleted overnight but I assumed they must have been doing something that caused such an action.
(Okay, just spent 30 minutes searching the terms affect and effect to see if I used it properly in the above sentence. Results? I am still confused. Did I use it properly? Please let me know. 🙂 )
January 23, 2013 changed that for me. This is the day that crochetbusinessblog.blogspot.com was deleted by Google. Why? Still not sure as no explanation was given. I did go through a re-evaluation process which you can view on the Google forums. Nitecruzr was very helpful and I believe instrumental in me getting my blog back if only for a few days.
What Did I Do Wrong?
I’m not certain I did anything wrong. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this blog – is there anything spammy about it? My blogspot blog was deemed a ‘spam blog’ by the robots so what exactly did they pick up? I’m not sure.
So, I went through the evaluation process which took a couple of weeks and my blog was made live on February 5th as you can see in the above forum post. A couple days after my ecstatic proclamation my blog was again deleted – this time permanently.
Now I am a self-hosted advocate and dare I say evangelist.
5 Reasons You Need to Move Your Business from Free Hosted to Self-Hosted
1. Take Responsibility for Your Business
Investing in a hosted blog is your way of saying, I own this business and am willing to invest money in it. Frankly, if you can’t do this you may (like me) be deceiving yourself. You are really only ‘playing business owner‘.
2. Control What You Write
You have the ultimate say on what gets published and what doesn’t. On a free-hosted site you are subject to their rules and acceptable content terms. This may not seem like an important reason for you because you don’t spam or write jibberish posts BUT remember my example. Check posts from this blog (March 2012 – January 2013) and judge for yourself whether what I published was spam or not.
Another way your content can be removed is if someone (intentional or not) reports your blog.
On a self-hosted site you still have to obey the overall rules of acceptable content so you aren’t exempt, you are just given more control.
3. Control Ads and Links
On a free-hosted site you agree to use their service in exchange for their links and credit. On a blogspot blog you have the blogger bar as well as a bit of code in the meta tags and on the bottom of your site. Now, you can probably override these but that is against their terms and can cause your blog to be deleted. (WordPress.com has their own top bar and code but again you agree to have this in exchange for free use of their hosting)
On your own hosting you can choose to remove these links/ads and even add your own. Although you can add your own advertisements on the two free-host examples you are still subject to their rules.
4. Own Your Domain
Now I do realize you can get a .com domain for a free-hosted site but really it’s just a cloak for your real domain which is yourname.freehostedcompany.com.
The thing about this is that you are among millions of other blogs on the main domain which is freehostedcompany.com.
Why does this matter?
Your blog is actually a sub-domain of your free host company. This means that all the ‘search’ juice goes to the main site before it goes to your sub-domain. Now, this may not be such a big deal for you but for me I believe as a business owner you need to consider this.
One more reason is that sub-domains are ranked lower than the actual domain.
5. Vanity Bells and Whistles
Okay, this might be a vain reason but I’m going to put it out there. You are limited under free-hosting. This includes how many pages you can have, how much bandwidth you have, and what kind of bells and whistles you can have.
I like having the option of adding what I want. Now that I know more about target market and lead generation having the ability to have certain pages for certain results is important to me. It allows for better tracking.
What Are Your Thoughts? Please Share Your Opinion in the Comments Below
Awesome points! It took me quite a while to get used to the new set up when I moved over to self-hosted. But I am still glad I did it! I worry a lot less about what “they” may do to/with my blog.
Jessie, yes, getting used to doing the FTP access and cpanel can be a bit daunting at first but once you get past the learning curve it does make things easier.
affected
😉
I need to make the move.
I just don’t want to! I wish Google had a self-hosted option of blogger!
Rhondda
Rhondda, YES, omg I couldn’t for the life of me figure that out. (affected) Thank you.
You know you can buy hosting and still use the blogger platform. Self-hosted doesn’t necessarily mean WordPress. I recommend WordPress because of everything you can do as far as plugins and the fact that it helps your SEO.
Sara, you will not see this now (most likely), but here goes: The word “effect” is almost always a noun, and the word “affect” is almost always a verb. That’s the best way to remember the distinction. In the blog entry above, you should use “affected.” When “effect” is used as a verb, it means “to cause.” Example: “To effect a change sales, we gave a workshop to our employees.” “Effect” is typically used as a noun, meaning “a result.”
The verb “affect” means “to impact.” Example: “We were not affected by th change in prices.” It is rarely used as a noun, except in psychology. The noun “affect” (the “a” is pronounced like the “a” in “cat”) means emotion. When you are looking for the correct verb, you will almost always want “affect.”
Cynthia, thank you so much for your response. This is perfect. I will now remember that “effect” is a cause and “affect” is emotion (most of the time). ^_^