Your ideal blogging platform is: Self-Hosted WordPress
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Why Self-Hosted WordPress
Self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) is the best of the best when it comes to blogging and building your own website, and it’s the only platform that gives you full ownership and control of how your blog looks, runs and operates. This is essential when blogging is going to be your business!
It’s also not as expensive as you might think. Downright affordable as blogging platforms go.
Getting started
If you’re ready to dive in signing up for self-hosted WordPress is pretty simple: choose a hosting company (see my recommendations next paragraph), select a plan, and click through prompts to get set up. They’ll walk you through the steps and take care of everything. And you can do everything in one spot with your hosting company — you don’t need to go to WordPress.org or WordPress.com to set anything up separately.
Hosting recommendations: I personally use and recommend Siteground for hosting but others I’ve been hearing good things about lately are Lyrical Host and Dreamhost. Bluehost is big and affordable, but they’ve been getting a lot of bad mentions in recent months for an increase in blog downtime/glitches/failures and poor customer service, so keep that in mind. Also definitely avoid Godaddy and Hostgator as they are subpar in almost every way (and while they seem cheap to start they add upcharges for simple basics that all the other hosts include for free).
Not ready just yet? If you have questions about any of this, or anything blogging related at all, pop into my Facebook group and ask away — nothing is too simple or silly!
And if you still need to narrow down your niche, blog name, or domain sign up below for my 4-day email series that walks you through it all. I’ll help you brainstorm! 🙂
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Please note that self-hosted WordPress.org is NOT the same as WordPress.com. WordPress.com is “hosted for you” and as such has many of the features locked down and other limitations in place that will negatively impact your ability to drive significant traffic to and earn significant money with your blog. WordPress.com is great for hobby blogs! Not for monetized blogs.