Where Do You Host Your Blog?

SCCTrim

I think I'm going to follow through with this, leap into the 21st century and..start a blog. For those of you that are doing this already, where do you host yours?

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mdshunk

I'm going to watch this thread... I've got a million things in my head I could blog about, but I need to figure out a way to make money off it.

KillerToiletSpider

Blogger is free and easy, and is owned by Google so integrating Google Adsense is simple and painless, the link in my signature is my Blogger blog. Wordpress is also free, and has more advanced options, but integrating something like adsense is a bit more of a challenge because it is not associated to Google. There are others out there, but I have never personally used them to how simple they are to use or not.

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A flush is better than a full house.

Winchester

I also use Blogger. On my website, my Projects and my Blog pages are both on blogger. Except I actually host them on my own website.

Blogger uses my FTP info to upload my posts to my website every time I create a new one.

However, on all the SEO checkers or whatever they're called that check to see if you have a blog, it still shows that I have none for some reason...

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Ryan

SquirrelNmoose

I manage a couple of Blogger sites and several Wordpress ones. They are both free and failry simple to use. I lean towards Wordpress though. Wordpress is more flexible and more actively developed for.

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Len,
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gallerytungsten

First off, as KTS mentioned, blogger is a good place to start. But once you get into it more, you will want something with more features. I use blogger as a "test platform" when I want to try out a new idea. But for full control, I prefer to host my own blogs. When you have full control over your server, you can customize however you like it.

If you don't have the technical chops to run your own server, maybe find someone on your crew who can learn? Or just hire a pro for more immediate blog results. For any kind of serious blog, you will have to hire a programmer and a designer. (Usually not the same person, for best results.)

There are also all kinds of intermediate solutions, between blogger for free and your own server. These may be the right choice for some blogs where you want a modicum of control, but want to keep costs low. Of course, as with anything else, you get what you pay for. There is usually a catch in the hosting contract you'll sign for these kinds of deals. For example, it might take 3 days for a tech support response, vs. an immediate fix by a live person from the "pro" service.

Ok, now on to MD Shunk's question about the money! Yes!

You can make money with your blog. This can be either "hard" money or "soft" money. I'll define "hard" money as immediate sales from something you sell off your site; advertising revenues; or any other immediate cash transaction. "Soft" money is jobs that come in down the line, via building goodwill. It's a funny and tangential thing how this aspect of blogging works. When you get started blogging, you might be blogging away there for a while before you make any money, hard, soft, or otherwise!

I will leave the whole "hard" revenue thing for later. For the rest of this post, I'll just add a little more about soft money, goodwill, and blogging strategy.

What do you know? Your business, your work. Stick with what you know. In fact, a number of the people on this very forum could easily turn some of their choicer posts into blog entries. Make it interesting. Make it fun. Make it individualistic. Give it a voice.

Maybe you blog about some Craigslist hack...and how you made him mow your lawn for $20 bucks? Or how about, for the most part, examples of your work? Anything and everything that interests you is fair game for blogging. Just tie it back into your main thing, whatever that happens to be. Ask your readers to email you. Get interactive with it.

As you do all these things, making your blog fresh, read daily, forwarded by email, youtubed, and so forth, your readership will increase. (Assuming your blog entries are actually good. If they're not, all of the above will have no effect.)

So everyone's reading your blog, the phones are ringing, and you're picking the business you want to do. Because now you're Joe the Shunk, Electrician to the Stars. Or whatever snappy title you want to dream up.

Sky's the limit. Get blogging.

tinner666

Wordpress. No idea what I'm doing or what to write about though.

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Frank Slate Roof Repairs, Richmond, Va.

SCCTrim

Same here...I got an account setup through wordpress. I guess the best thing about a blog is there really aren't any rules per say. We'll see how it goes

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S.Colwell Construction
York County Remodeling
Adams County Remodeling

orson

Might need to submit a sitemap so Google knows where to look....I'm no expert, just an idea.

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Bryan C

I use Blogger. Gets old writing about the same stuff over and over it seems, but they all rank very well for my keywords.

Hydroblast Pressure Cleaning Blog

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