Need Advice On Paid Blogs
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Let me state up front that I’m aware if I took the time to keep reading all the topics in the forums, I’d likely discover the answer the question I’m about to ask — but I’m truly swamped with things on my plate right now — so I cop the plea to being guilty as charged.
My question is regarding paid blogs. Currently I have a free wordpress blog that’s about a month old. I’m already realizing the free blogs are not going to give me the freedom I’ll want down the road in terms of hosting ads, etc.
My blog is business related covering everything from stocks & bonds on Wall Street to covering people who run businesses, to how the economy is affecting the everyday citizen in smalltown America. In between giving people what I perceive to be insight on what The Street will be watching that day, I also post video interviews.
For instance, today I posted a video interview I shot yesterday with Mark Wahlberg and Donnie Wahlberg’s brother, who’s a chef in Boston; and earlier this week I shot a video of how the cost of fuel is affecting boaters at yacht clubs in Massachusetts.
Anyhow, I already have a ton more people lined up to do video interviews with down the road, and realize I need to figure out exactly what site I want to use for my blog. So, for anyone who has had paid blogs on different sites — can you give me some pros and cons of wordpress’ paid blogs versus what I might be able to find elsewhere?
Much appreciated,
Cathleen
http://www.cathleen222.wordpress.com -
WordPress paid blogs will cost you a lot more than other hosted blogs. They basically only offer services to higher-end (more volume) web sites like (IIRC) CNN, Fox News, etc. that use WP.com as their blog hosts. If you expect that you’ll do okay, but not in that range, then using another host provider will probably be more cost effective for you.
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Thank you, James, for the answer.
Would you be kind enough to mention a few other sites that may be better in terms of letting me host videos, plus allow me to run ads on my site?
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What type of ads are you thinking of running? Google adsense only works if you have enough traffic. Unless you’re looking at sponsors which tend to pay more. I have a friend this weeks telling us on his site he’s making about $30 dollars a day from Google because he’s getting 30,000+ hits a day thanks to a NY Daily News reference. Unless you have lots of traffic, Google won’t work much for anyone. maybe stay here at WordPress.com and build your blog more.
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There’s a gazillion hosts out there and virtually all of them don’t care if you put ads on your site hosted by them (unless it violates some other law or terms of service, etc.).
If you want to use a WordPress.org blog, then you should go to wordpress.org. WP.org has a list of recommended host providers on their site that are WP partners, etc.
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Thanks for all the helpful information. I’m in the fortunate position in that I work for a newspaper, who will be promoting my personal business blog on their Web site. Right now, I’m just feeding it with little things here and there. Eventually my plan is to not only kick it into high gear by posting lots of video interview with fairly prominent individuals, but to also invite people to live interactive chats with special guests.
I’m just sort of thinking out loud right now and trying to figure out if perhaps I should probably just buy a Website where I have full control over ads and everything else. I’ll probably just keep feeding the blog here for another month or so, and then kick it up elsewhere.
Thanks again.
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At the minimum, you should get your own domain NOW and map it to your blog. That way, you won’t lose readers when you do finally move.
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Thats a good remark from vivianpaige, to claim your own domain and direct it to you blog. Since 2 years I have a webhost and I installed WordPress on it. The domainname and the webhost don’t cost much, €50,- a year together and WordPress is for free!
The actual hard part is to get familiar, tweak and customize all of it. Installing WordPress is easy, but putting up a nice blog you really like costs time. Knowledge about how WordPress works, what the options for certain custom themes and how to configure the server is important. Plus you problably need to know a little bit about PHP and CSS.
I discovered that it takes a lot of time. But im very happy with all the options and choices that are available!
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If the newspaper is willing to promote your blog on its website, it might be willing to let you have some of its web people’s time to set up your blog.
Apart from that, I agree with the suggestions to check out the hosts recommended at wordpress.org, and to get your own domain. -
I will also endorse Vivian’s suggestion. An alternative would be to move now or work out a timetable because you can’t, for instance, buy a domain and map it here one day and move the domain to an independent host the next. I believe there’s a 60-day waiting period to move domains.
Surely your newspaper has a site? Their host provider might be willing to give you a deal or your paper might be willing to make your blog a subdomain, since they’re going to promote it.
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with re: to james’ comment, just to be clear, you can have a blog using WordPress software for whatever price you can find hosting. It’s only VIP blogs that are hosted by WordPress.com and they cost hundreds of dollars per month. That’s a totally different service.
Thirding Vivian’s advice. Get your domain NOW. Do not wait till tomorrow, and do not name it after your column if the column name belongs to the newspaper; name it after yourself or make up a new word.
You should check out WordPress.org. I understand they have a list of recommended hosts, and EVERYONE there, by definition, has a blog outside of WP.com.
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Thank you again to everyone for such great responses.
Since the business blog is my idea, and I use my own time to oversee it, I really am trying to keep the paper I work for out of it as much as possible. I oversee another blog already that is completely hosted on their site, but there has been, and will be, a lot of cross-linking going on between the blogs. The extra benefit is next to my photo on their Web site promoting my blog for them, they also provide a link to my “personal” business blog. I think that’s all I can really ask for from them, as they won’t reap any benefits of any advertisers on my site.
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