Why use Blogspot etc instead of host your own?

[JamesPro]

It's easy to set up your own blog with WordPress or other tools, with your own hosting, and control everything.

What's the advantage to do free hosting instead, like a Blogger site?

I see WF users with these, I assume they're pretty savvy, but I don't get why you wouldn't do your own instead. Better rankings, or indexing, more functionality, or just easier to maintain ...?

 

[Jdog]

Free, and you get a little bonus traffic. I've been using it to test some things out before I go get a domain and stuff.

They are also used by the darkside for spamming links.

 

[JamesPro]

Bonus traffic because people find it if they search Blogger?

Also, can you redirect it to your own server when you want to start hosting it yourself?

 

[Jdog]

Bonus traffic because people find it if they search Blogger?

Yeah, it's not much, but something is better than nothing.

Also, can you redirect it to your own server when you want to start hosting it yourself?

Someone posted how to redirect on here a couple days ago, or you can just change all your posts to be just a snippet and a read more here link to your new site.

 

[SimpleSEO]

The new beta set up is very nice.

 

[Dio]

There's the added SEO bonus of it being an authority domain in Google's eyes.

 

[Jan]

I fear new things and have anxiety issures learning things like WP. haha

Actually, when I started out in May, I didn't have the skills (never did more than search the web, download photos, and check e-mail on my computer) or time to learn (two wage earning jobs) about hosting and WP. Blogger was very easy and a good place to learn a little about html.

My son has skill and making a bit of money (about $15 a day plus revenue from selling ads) but just hadn't made the time to make the switch, he'd rather work on something else, he's got his own domain and WP now since I set it up for him for a Christmas present! (I'm short on funds this year).

 

[SimpleSEO]

yeh, blogger code is nice and clean. Easy to rank for search engines. I did a little experiment the other day, made 2 blogs similar, one with blogger and one on my own new domain. Blogged about the same things, and the blogger blog, had 80-90% more se traffic. + it's a nice layout,

 

[Andrew]

The SEO theory is Google weighs domain trust very heavily in the rankings. If you look at top rankings for some of the spammier stuff (search "viagra pills", for example) the blackhat stuff is always a redirect hosted on someone elses domain name (usually gets there by using an exploit), so right now for "viagra pills" 2,3,4 are:

pharmacyviagra.da.cx/
topos.buzznet.com/user/journal/89533/
palestinehistory.com/pdf/f/11/Viagra-pills.html

Forget the old buy-viagra-pills-online domains, this stuff will beat it any day. One common SEO tactic also is to create a blogspot (or blogger) domain and make posts sending links to your "real" site.

 

[Newbie]

It's easy to set up your own blog with WordPress or other tools, with your own hosting, and control everything.
What's the advantage to do free hosting instead, like a Blogger site?
I see WF users with these, I assume they're pretty savvy, but I don't get why you wouldn't do your own instead. Better rankings, or indexing, more functionality, or just easier to maintain ...?

Traffic is king and you may get more traffic with a blogger site.

Run this test: Set up your wordpress blog, and set up your Blogger blog and do the same advertising for them and see which get's more traffic. Who wins? Blogger site. Why?
1) Google Page Rank Glass ceiling: Did you know, as a one man show blog on Wordpress, the highest rank you can ever achieve is 7? Google reserves higher page ranks for organizations and companys. At least on your Blogger site, you'll have the chance to get a page rank of 8 or 9 if you really make it big someday (note: to achieve this, don't use Microsoft or Yahoo affiliated blog sites, they incurr a penalty in page rank for being Google competition (for example, msn.com and yahoo.com are both PR 9's while Google.com is a 10. You know as well as I that Yahoo.com and msn.com should be PR 10

2) Blogger software is more likely to stay up with the lastest and greatest blog trends and additions. With Wordpress, you may eventually be left in the dust.

3) With Blogger, you just have to compete with the other blogers on blogger to guarentee lots of traffic, becuase blogger is going to get it's share of traffic anyway. With your Wordpress, you have to compete with the whole internet to get lots of traffic.

4) Blogger makes money if your blog is successful so they WANT you to succeed. Think of it like having a whole team behind you on Blogger. On your own, your own your own.

5) You might get lucky and get yourself a few backlinks. Blogger has a whole SEO department working on your behalf.

6) You might spend a few dollars on adsense to advertise your little Wordpress blog. Blogger has a whole advertising department spending A LOT more than you can to get your Blogger blog advertised.

7) etc, etc,

 

[Scheme]

Look's like blogger is the way to go.

 

[heavydisking]

Wow, this is a question I had as well, and I've really been struggling driving traffic to my WP blog. I'm going to have to give blogger a shot, I guess.

 

[darkpedro]

Traffic is king and you may get more traffic with a blogger site.

Run this test: Set up your wordpress blog, and set up your Blogger blog and do the same advertising for them and see which get's more traffic. Who wins? Blogger site. Why?
1) Google Page Rank Glass ceiling: Did you know, as a one man show blog on Wordpress, the highest rank you can ever achieve is 7? Google reserves higher page ranks for organizations and companys. At least on your Blogger site, you'll have the chance to get a page rank of 8 or 9 if you really make it big someday (note: to achieve this, don't use Microsoft or Yahoo affiliated blog sites, they incurr a penalty in page rank for being Google competition (for example, msn.com and yahoo.com are both PR 9's while Google.com is a 10. You know as well as I that Yahoo.com and msn.com should be PR 10

I've not heard this before, so I neither agree with it or dispute it.

2) Blogger software is more likely to stay up with the lastest and greatest blog trends and additions. With Wordpress, you may eventually be left in the dust.

Well, with the open source model of WP, there are tools constantly being created to stay up to date. It is not in the interest of the community to be left in the dust. Blogger did not, however, add tags to thier toolbox until the recent release of the beta version.

3) With Blogger, you just have to compete with the other blogers on blogger to guarentee lots of traffic, becuase blogger is going to get it's share of traffic anyway. With your Wordpress, you have to compete with the whole internet to get lots of traffic.

Blogger is not runing a portal. You are competing against all other bloggers no matter what software you use. Blogger gets its traffic to the top domain, not to the subdomain - the individual blog.

4) Blogger makes money if your blog is successful so they WANT you to succeed. Think of it like having a whole team behind you on Blogger. On your own, your own your own.

Blogger is free. Thier model is to help you put adsense on your page. That's easy enough with WP, or any other website.

5) You might get lucky and get yourself a few backlinks. Blogger has a whole SEO department working on your behalf.

I'd like to know where you are getting these backlinks. You must have a sweet hookup at blogger if they are giving you backlinks. No, blogger's seo dept is not working on your behalf. You'll have to build backlinks the old fashion way.

6) You might spend a few dollars on adsense to advertise your little Wordpress blog. Blogger has a whole advertising department spending A LOT more than you can to get your Blogger blog advertised.

Again, you are competing against all blogs anyway. You might as well try to brand your page a little bit and use a top level domain.

7) etc, etc,

etc, etc.

I set my wife's blog up on blogger when she first started. It was fine to start with, but I wanted to do more with it, so I moved it to WP. The flexibility WP offers far outweighs anything except the pagerank, imo. If blogger was such a better platform, all the big boys would be using it. Guess what? They're not.