Why should I have a custom website for my blog?
So, you want to start a blog? You have your idea, but now you have to decide what route to take to build your blog for sharing. You need to decide whether it would be better to pay for a custom website with a blog feature designed by a professional or to create a free one. This is probably the biggest decision you’ll have to make. So, let’s take a look at your options.
Free sites
The first option you have is a free site with WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger. Awesome, right? Well not quite, it’s great for those who aren’t very serious about blogging, but it does have downsides:
You have to build it yourself
Free platforms provide the tools, but part of the deal is that you have to build the blog yourself. If you don’t know what you are doing this can become a very time consuming and frustrating process. You might also end up with a site that isn’t quite what you envisioned, as you don’t have the skills to build it.
No Custom Domain
On a free blog, your blog’s web address (URL) will be very generic. It will include the name of the platform that you have chosen and will look something like this:
- yourblog.wordpress.com
- yourblog.blogspot.com
- yourblog.tumblr.com
This isn’t ideal, especially since you are trying to promote your blog and not their platform. Instead you can have your own custom domain like: yoursite.com
You will have many limits
Free blog platforms limit the content that you can upload as well as limit your choice of themes when designing your blog. If you want to really grow your website, you’ll need a custom website designed.
You won’t be able to monetize your blog
Monetization is how blogs make money and become sustainable. You can read more about how to monetize your blog here.
- Static advertisements such as Pay Per Click with Google Adsense
- Online Sales of Products with E-commerce functionality
- Sponsored links and posts
All of these avenues allow for the generation of income for your blog. However, if you use a platform to build and host your blog you won’t be able to monetize your site.
Instead the platform monetizes the site for themself by placing ads on your page and taking all of the profits.
You don’t own your blog
Using a free platform means that you don’t own your blog. It is hosted on someone else’s web property and they can elect to delete it or if they shut down for no reason you lose all your content.
Your own website
Alternatively, you could opt for a custom website for your blog designed by a professional. At Woww we can build you a website for your blog that is unique, customizable and affordable. The advantages of choosing a custom website are:
You don’t have to build it yourself
When you need to build a house, you don’t do it yourself. You hire a professional. It should be the same with a website. Get it done properly and not only will it look and run better than if you’d built it yourself, you’ll save yourself the time and it will actually work out cheaper in the long run.
We’ve written a more in depth article about it, see: Why you should hire a web designer?
There’s also the human element. Having a real human, who can help, and understand what you want and need makes the world of difference than searching through forums and FAQ’s when fixing issues or getting the particular feature you’ve been needing.
You can choose your own domain name
You can completely customise your URL. You choose what you want whether it be
- “YourBlogNameHere.com” or
- “BestBlogEver.co.za”.
You won’t have a platforms name and you can even choose how you want your URL to end, be it “.com”, “.co.za”, “.net”, or “.org”. Woww, when building your website, offers you a free, custom and personal domain of your choice.
(this is however dependent on the domain name being available!)
Personalised website – make it your own
Because you have an independent free-standing website, the rules that apply to free web design platforms don’t apply to you. You can upload all of the content you want, and best of all you get the look and feel that best describes your blog. You can choose the colours, the fonts, the layout and features to fully tailor and design your perfect site.
You can monetize your blog
By building your own website for your blog, you have control over the monetization. You can choose how you want it to operate, depending on your goals. A Woww website can be used with online ads such as Google Adsense, or even privately managed ads. You can read more about how to monetize your blog here.
You can get e-commerce enabled with Woocommerce allowing you to sell merchandise on your blog.
Show me the money!
But Wait there’s more!
A custom website for your blog offers so much more than a free platform ever could.
Faster
We have all had the struggle of a slow loading page. You can prevent this by opting for a custom website with Woww. We optimize your images and use the best hosting services so that your website loads quickly (unlike on platforms, where your website is on a server shared with hundreds of other sites)
Your viewers will appreciate the speed especially if your blog goes viral, you wouldn’t want it to crash!
Improved credibility and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A custom website will help your website to stand out on a Google search. It also will have its own domain (without a .wix added on) and a high Google ranking due to good SEO (read more).
Custom websites index better due to their custom domain and better optimized page code for search engines.
All of this gives your site credibility, thereby increasing your traffic and potential revenue from advertisements.
It’s cheaper than you think
If you’ve been hyped up until you started thinking about what it’s going to cost. We have good news. It’s really affordable, and if you think about the long term, it’s a tiny investment to stand out amongst the millions of other blogs.
Conclusion
While free platforms have their place for hobbyist bloggers, if you are serious about your blog or want more than the bare skeleton, a custom blog website is essential to your success.
At Woww we build bespoke blogging websites, leaving you free to focus on your content and readers.
