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How to Pick the Optimal Platform for your Weblog

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I can’t think of a more common question or concern among both novice and experienced bloggers alike: which blogging platform should I pick? Aside from learning how to blog, it’s an almost universal concern.

And there is no definitive answer. All bloggers SHOULD own their domain names, but platform choice is mainly dependent on the individual blogger’s needs and possibly, finances. That said, I’ve compiled a list of pros and cons of the two main platform categorizations below.

Hosted Platforms

Hosted platforms refer to services whereby a service provider gives you access to their network connection, hardware, and software, and you create a blogging account for use on their service. With a hosted blog, you have access to an admin panel for your blog, and that’s it.

Common hosted platforms include packages like Blogger, TypePad, WordPress.com and LiveJournal.

Advantages of Hosted Platforms

  • Economical: many are free; others (like TypePad) are offered with multiple price points
  • Quick to setup: just sign up for an account and then quickly  learn how to create blog posts
  • Automatic updates: you don’t need to concern yourself with keeping hosted software up-to-date and patched.

Disadvantages of Hosted Platforms

  • Rigid: there are fewer customization options with hosted platforms.
  • Not as many design options: you typically only get to choose from a limited number of standard designs, and you often can’t make updates to them
  • Generic URL: some hosted platforms don’t offer the choice to use your own URL
  • Lack of control: you are at the mercy of the platform
  • Migration issues: moving from some free hosted platforms results in a lot of effort and often the temporary loss of search engine rankings

Self-hosted Platforms

Self-hosted platforms consist of a web hosting account you establish with a host, and the blogging software you install on the data center’s server. With a self-hosted blog, you have access to an administrative panel for your blog, but you also have access to a server account and the blog software where you can do almost anything.

Common self-hosted software includes WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

Advantages of Self-hosted Platforms

  • Design flexibility: you have complete control over design and layout
  • Great software: the best software exists on self-hosted platforms
  • Custom URL: custom URL’s are ubiquitous on self-hosted platforms
  • Adaptability: as your needs change, so can your blog
  • Easy migration: should you ever want or need to move to a different platform or another server, migrating is a snap

Disadvantages of Self-hosted Platforms

  • Difficult setup: setup can sometimes be difficult, but this can be overcome with a good blogs how to
  • Cost: while the blogging software is free, the hosting platform and domain names will cost you money
  • Hosting issues: unless you choose a good host, you might have to suffer from down-time or poor support. ( i personally recommend Hostgator as a web host, I use them.)
  • Upgrades: you will need to keep your software patched

The majority of my blogs are self-hosted, and it’s what I generally advise anyone looking to create a professional presence. There are too many advantages to turn down, and you usually have the option to host many blogs and domains on one account, driving the cost per blog down to a small amount.




Blog Carnivals = Blog Traffic + Expert Credibility (Part 1)

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Let me just say that I’m a huge fan of blog carnivals. They’re not without their drawbacks, of course, but the benefits entirely outweigh the investment of time and effort that you put into them.

That’s why it confounds me that blog carnivals aren’t as popular as they should be. Yes, the first few times that you participate in them, it might take you some extra time to learn the ropes. And new carnival networks can sometimes be more unreliable than one would like. But get hooked up with a good group of bloggers in your field, and carnivals are effective ways to:

  • Increase your authority
  • Immediately get profitable, regular subscribers of your partner blogs
  • Get a quick boost of traffic to blog posts
  • Get a longer term improvement in search result rankings

Carnivals: Just the Facts

A blog carnival is a web event consisting of a loose partnership of bloggers writing about a predefined topic. The posts created (or linked to) during a carnival usually resulting in a magazine-like format. The carnival has a title, theme, editors, writers, and consumers. Most carnivals are held regularly with rotating hosts.

A carnival usually has an owner, who is the organizer of the overall carnival, deciding or collaborating on concerns like rules, frequency, how to blog in the carnival, editorial guidelines, and such. The owner also acts as the coordinator, determining the hosting schedule for the carnival.

Each carnival has a specific host, and the host’s blog is where all the blog articles for that particular carnival are held. In reply to the submission call, every blogger participating in the carnival submits their post to the host, where it is reviewed, edited, and published in the host blog as one giant post (link bait) or a series of smaller posts. Obviously, you’ll need to know how to create blog posts that are effective and compelling to get the most benefit.

Carnivals usually draw loads of qualified traffic, so bloggers participating in the carnival receive a powerful back link from the host and the immediate traffic surge associated with the initial readers. The carnival host receives links from each of the participating bloggers who have teamed together to advertise the carnival, knowing that the better the carnival is, the more powerful the links will be when it comes time for them to host.

Now that you know what a carnival is, we’ll talk about how you can maximize your carnival participation . . . in our next post!

You can have your own affordable online success

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Many online business ideas require some level of financial investment to get them started. When you are short on cash you must do the legwork and the promotion for yourself – in the beginning anyway! At least you know it will be done right.

There are however several affordable online success methods and techniques that can be started on a shoe string budget. Imagine that you have a budget of $100 (£50) to start your first online business. How would you use your grand budget of $100?

I’ve been running my own websites since 1995 and blogs since 2006 and I’ve barely put any money into them other than the cost of domains and hosting.  You really don’t have to spend much money to have online success if you are willing to work hard at promoting your sites and networking with other bloggers/ site owners.

So how can you have online affordable success?

You first need to research a theme or niche that your website will focus on. You can use a number of tools online and many of them have free versions. Wordtracker is the best trial software to use to complete your keyword research. So do your research to find a niche that has people looking for answers. Try to find keywords for your niche (usually three word (long tail keywords) are best) that have less than 50,000 competing pages. You will have more success if there’s less competition out there on your chosen keywords.

You’ll also need to find a good and relevant item to sell from your webpage, whether it’s an affiliate product that complements your site or a product that you’ve created on your own. Actually, the cheapest thing to do is make up your own product and the easiest product to create is an e-book. If you do create an e-book with information about your chosen niche, you should convert it to PDF.  You can convert a word document to a pdf using one of the many free PDF converters available.

Having written or sourced your product, you now need to work on a sales page that will convert website visitors into customers. The hosting and website can easily be taken care of in the beginning by creating a blog on blogger.com.  The sites are easy to manage and you can set it up in minutes, plus it’s free so you can spend your funds elsewhere or save your money for future projects.

To take payments you can use a Buy Now button from Paypal. The Buy Now buttons are quite simple to set up on your page. IF and when you begin to make sales of your product, Paypal will charge a small processing fee on a business account.  You now have your own internet business. It’s not that hard, really.

So, just to recap, in order to have affordable online success you can use free keyword tools to help you discover a niche that you will be successful in, you can set up a blog on blogger thus eliminating hosting and domain costs in the beginning and you can create or find a product to sell. The only problem is that you still haven’t spent your budget of $100. What to do eh? that’s what I call affordable online success.

You could of course spend some of your budget on low cost advertising to help get visitors to your site, but there are many ways to do that for free as well. I’ll discuss how to get free traffic to your site in a future post. Watch for it!

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