If you buy web hosting and a domain name, you can offer a more professional, not to mention unique, experience to your readers. Picking a domain name and registering it is very easy, and many people try to buy the domain name that corresponds to their own name. That’s not so easy these days unless you have a fairly unusual name. However, you can use a little creativity and create an online identity, based entirely around your blog, and the subjects covered in your posts.

With self hosting, you pay a small monthly fee and get to put your blog on a server where you control the subject and editorial rules – within reason. Your hosting company will have rules which bar you from hosting websites on the most unsavory topics or anything that is simply illegal! But within reason, you are not going to have your site or blog deleted because you hate peanut butter, or because you think global warming is a myth. Those are your views and you’re entitled to them. Some of the free providers are more likely to be stricter on which topics they allow. For example, some do not like the whole weight loss category because there is a lot of spam on that subject. This can affect the overall quality of the whole site and lead to everybody else suffering, as the search engines start to block all pages on the site.

Another important aspect of buying web hosting is that often, you can cover your costs by displaying ads on your blog. It is always best to keep these ads relevant to the topic you are discussing, rather than a completely random product. A lot of the free platforms will not let you advertise, and although you might not care about ads, because you are getting the platform for free, you are not really benefitting as your blog looks pretty much the same as everybody else’s. It would be far better to have a blog on a self hosting account that looks fantastic and professional and unique, and pay for it by hosting a few ads. And who knows? Once your blog is established, you might even be able to make a profit from those ads, quit the day job and work as a professional blogger!