Tag Archive | fresh sparks

Is Blogging Still Worth It?

By Cheval John

May 24th, 2017

You might be wondering if it’s worth it to have a blog after seeing these stats

There are over a billion websites in the world- Internet Live Stats

About 2.7 million blog posts are published everyday-Hosting Facts.com

The answer is yes because your blog is the home base for your website

Here are more stats about blogs:

Websites with a blog have tend to have 434% more indexed pages-Impact

43% of marketers who work for business to business tells everyone that blogging is very important for their companies-Social Media Examiner

81% of businesses consider their blogs to be an important asset to their businesses.-Search Engine Journal

Out of the millions and millions of blogs, the top hosting sites for blogs are Tumblir and WordPress (WP).

Though Tumblir host 175 million blogs, I am honestly not a fan of the platform.

WP hosts 75.8 million blogs in the world.

You might not know that WordPress has two different platforms for blogs.

There is WordPress.com, the free hosting site, and WordPress.org, the self-hosting software.

Before we get into the details of WordPress.com and WordPress.org, I want to chat about another hosting site that emerged over the last few years: Medium.

Medium was created in 2012 by Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter.

The vision for Medium was to create long form content in the manner people could express themselves more since Twitter has a 140 character limit.

People who creates an account on Medium via Twitter or Facebook will automatically increase their audience depending on the number of followers on either platform.

For example, Rachel Rofe, who is the author of 50 plus books, created her Twitter account in 2007 and built a strong community.

When Rachel started using Medium in 2014, almost 1/3 of her Twitter audience “followed” her to the blogging platform

This is an advantage for those who are looking to start blogging for the first time.

And you also keep the blog content according to the people at Medium.

With the above being said, here are the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

Pros of WordPress.com:

It is free

You can interact with fellow bloggers on the platform and build a community

Your blog could be discovered

Cons of WordPress.com:

You have limited features which can hinder you from expanding your blog

Pros of WordPress.org

You have access to the plugins which can improve your website

You can design the website which fits your business

The website is yours forever

Cons of WordPress.org

You have to pay a hosting company to run your website

In reality, it is not a con because they are hosting companies which are compatible with WordPress.org and are very affordable for small businesses.

The two hosting companies I highly recommend for hosting your website using WordPress.org are
Blue Host and Host Gator.

(Disclaimer: I use host gator for my business blog and I am not getting a commission at all.)

If you have to choose between wordpress.com and wordpress.org if you are planning to start a blog, I would select the latter.

When you built an audience over the years using wordpress.com and you want to switch to a self-hosted site using wordpress.org, you will end up “losing” the total number of views for your blog.

It will also cost you between $129-$200 to transfer your content from wordpress.com to wordpress.org.

I started this blog on wordpress.com in 2011 while simultaneously blogging for the collegiate newspaper and myself during my time in graduate school.

When I was placed on probation from graduate school, I decided to buy the domain name and upgrade the blog to vallanomedia.com using wordpress.com in January of 2012.

A couple days later, I formed the company as an llc and continued to blog about sports, travel and current events.

After looking at articles from experts like Nathalie Lussier regarding blogging platforms, I knew I had to switch my site over to wordpress.org.

So on October 1, 2012, I paid around $140 to switch my blog over to wordpress.org.

I had no idea at the time I was going to “lose” over 3,900 total viewership I built before switching from wordpress.com.

In conclusion, I want to add having a blog is important because it is your main real estate.

The social media platforms are just rented land.

If you want to build your business via blogging, you must do your research on which platform is right for you.

Here is a quote from Sonia Gregory, Owner and Creative Director of FreshSparks, which sums up the importance of having a blog:

“A blog is an opportunity to shake hands and introduce yourself. You can gain a reader’s trust through quality content.”

Are you planning on starting a blog? You can leave your comments below.