TimeThief: You are right on about the reasons not to leave WordPress.com. It’s an amazing community and evolving into a better one. For some, leaving that safety net is enough reason to put up with some inconveniences. For others, the community doesn’t matter and the freedom to rip and tear their blog to pieces does. Personally, I love much of the freedom being on WordPress.com gives me.

Dawud: Excellent point. I tell everyone that WordPress.com is training camp. If you can get through that and survive (even though it’s pudding and jello easy boot camp) then you are ready for the big league. Some never leave, others see the justification in moving on to something with more control. And others move, and come back because they liked NOT having all that temptation. ;-)

It varies for everyone. When to move as well as which service to use. Luckily, we have choices.

At the end of the month, we sit down and evaluate their experience. Then I guide them in deciding whether blogging will work for them – and with what level of commitment.

If they don’t feel blogging is for them or if they just aren’t sure yet, I usually suggest that they continue with their hosted service until they’re sure.

However, if they have any interest in blogging to increase their business or find that they love it, I’ll put them on a host and install WordPress with a number of plugins. Then I guide them through a bit of the learning curve. And they’re off. Now as their blog grows, their set and don’t have to worry about moving it later.

http://www.lucianobove.blogspot.com

thanks for visiting, Ciao!

In almost all cases they wish to move to wordpress.org so they can monetize their blogs. And in almost all cases they assume the benefits they enjoyed by having blogs hosted by wordpress.com would continue to flow to their new blogs.

The true cost of self-hosting and monetizing your free blog template from wordpress.org can be summarized:

(1) When you host your own blog or hire a web host the new blog will not be entitled to be “featured” amidst the rest of the wp.com blogs because wordpress.com will no longer be hosting it.

(2) The benefits of having your blog posts appear in the wp.com Category tag pages will not issue to your new blog and you may lose some traffic that was generated by having a blog hosted by wordpress.com.

(3) Your new blog will not be considered for a position among wp.com Top Posts, Top Blog or Growing Blogs. These will not apply to your new blog because wordpress.com will no longer be hosting it.

(4) As your domain will change the Technorati status, ranking and links to your former blog will not be applied to your new blog.

Taken by the points:

-Time For Your Own Identity: Blogger(and I think WordPress) allow users to switch their blog from the “hosted url” to their own domain in a simple easy step. Very little hassle, and your blog looks professional.

They also redirect your old link to the new one, avoiding any missing traffic from earlier posts.

-Fear Of The Flag: I’ve heard the “flag stories” myself, but on Blogger if you “get flagged” all it does is bring you to Google’s attention. Nothing more, nothing less.

Your blog is not shut down, no word verification, etc. If you are suspected of being a spammer (which their machines search for) you will receive a word verification, but its usually painless to prove your legit, and when it happened to me (once) I notified Google and 24 hours later the word verification was gone.

-One Of The Many Not The Individual: Not too sure what you exactly mean here. Most people (that I know of) don’t really care about where you post, but rather the content you post.

-Better Features and Services: As far as email goes, I rather have it off my server than on, as over time they can take up space. Since one would own their own domain, they could simply have their domain email redirect to their yahoo/gmail/hotmail account (and with Google send it underneath their domain email).

Also you can add any analytics tool to a blogger hosted blog, although I am not too sure if its the same with wordpress though. And as far as images go, you can always buy more space on Blogger if necessary (if you need more than a gig, or you could simply host the images elsewhere if you preferred).

-Your Host Ain’t Working For You: The same thing could be said for a general hosting service as well. I’ve personally found Google’s customer service superior to that of most internet companies in America, so I am very happy with them thus far.

-Moving Means Learning and Change: I agree with that. I actually bought hosting for a blog before, and the change was a fun experience. But although I was making a very small fortune blogging, I decided to simply maximize my time (and money) by allowing Google to muck with everything, freeing me up to simply focus on blogging.

Either way I’m content, although ultimately its up to the individual.

Actually, many of these points apply to paid hosting and when it’s time to switch paid hosts. I’m researching a paid self-hosting system now for two of my blogs as I am VERY unhappy with my lousy web host. Change is always hard, especially when there are so many things to consider.

Another tremendous post. You do not mention Typepad. I’ve suffered from a split personality since I started, alas unknowingly. For every metric, I have two stats: the domain name URL, and the Typepad URL. Maybe they cannot be synched in. I’ve written to Technorati several times to see if at least on their site we could consolidate my numbers… no dice.

As for Scoble — I’ve heard his reasons (and reservations) about being on WordPress.com. As for other big hitters being with hosted services, one reason I’ve heard them staying with them is that some of them never anticipated their blog being big — and are worried about losing google juice now about moving to a new domain.

Cheers
t

Because I’m the kind of person who wants to get into the code and hack/create plug-ins that don’t already exist — I should probably be running self-hosted.

As for the famous who stay with a free hosting service, Scoble was a special case as his was the first test of the VIP hosting program for WordPress.com so while he doesn’t have the domain, he has more control over his blog’s look and features. He could change the domain name, but currently stays with this. He doesn’t regret it, according to him. He’s happy enough and puts his energy into the blogging and leaves the rest of the worries such as traffic and bandwidth busting to WordPress.com.

Some “pros” are “bigger than their blogs” so the URL and host is not important, but that’s rare.

I have been self-hosted from the beginning and love it. But to be honest, I think most a-types love control, and love the sense that you *are* in control when you host your own blog.

It also provided me the opportunity to learn about the nitty gritty in design, some quicky programming and other interesting things.

But heck .. that’s just me. ;)

I find that the debate is almost like the archetypal buying vs. renting dilemma when looking for an abode.

On one hand, its cheaper (free even, in the bloggin world), you have things taken care of you, and you just do your thing. On the other hand, you don’t really own the place, and you can’t really do what you want.

I’ve opted to “buy”, but it really boils down to a personal decision, I think.

Another intersting question, perhaps, is would any “real” or “professional” blogger stick with a hosting service? There are a few. Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspirations is an example (labnol.blogspot.com) and so is Robert Scoble (Scobleizer.wordpress.com) Why do they do that? do they regret it? Are they happy with it?