7 Reasons To Self-Host Your Blog (and make money) (2024)

It’s a question all newbies must answer… what’s all this about self-hosting? What is a self-host? What’s the difference between a free host and a paid host? Does it even matter?

I wanted to take a moment to tell you why it’s important for most bloggers (but not all) to self-host your blog, and when you don’t need to. The alternative is using a “free” blog host… but free is never really free because they have to make money somehow. Read on.

This is important to do from the onset, so I am writing this post for this sole purpose. Do not start your blog without understanding this first.

What is self-hosting?

I will start by defining what self-hosting means. Self-hosting means to have your website (blog) on a hosted platform that you control. (this does not mean hosting your website yourself on a computer in your home or office… that would be a bad idea)

A self-hosted website is on a paid hosting service that you choose and control. The keyword is control. The opposite of a self-hosted website would be a free host for your site. A self-hosted platform, or host as we call it, is one you pay for. A good paid host is one that is reliable, redundant, and secure. I use and recommend Bluehost (and they are not expensive either… it can cost you more with a “free” host after adding features you need).

There are many people getting started who think getting a free host is a good idea, but it is not… it’s a bad idea for most people for this one important reason:

With a free host, you do not own your links

What on earth does that even mean? And why would you want to own links?

I’ll explain that in more detail, and why it is so critical to your success. It is the first of 7 reasons to self-host your blog. By the way, if you haven’t already noticed, I use the word blog and website interchangeably for the purpose of hosting. A blog is a type of website that provides easy management of posted content.

Alright, let’s get to it.

Seven Reasons To Self-Host Your Blog

1) Own and control your links

As I already mentioned, this is the most important reason of all. If you use a free host, the domain and all your links contain the name of that free host. These links propagate (spread) throughout the Internet, finding their way into other blogs, articles, social media, directories, forums, and search engine indexes. The traffic that comes to your site, comes through these links. You don’t want to ever change your links, because they will no longer work, and all the time and effort to grow you blog will be lost.

You might argue that you will never change your links. And while that is possible if you never want to grow your blog, it is not possible if you want to scale your website. What this means is, if your blog begins to grow and gain traction, you will eventually need to find a host that can handle the bandwidth. But you cannot change to another host without changing your links if you are on a free host.

If you are self-hosted, you can change hosts at any time if you choose because you own and control your links, and that can be moved from host to host, as long as you started out owning your links. You see, you can move your website from free hosting to self-hosting, but you can’t take your links with you because the free host name is part of your link structure.

Does this make sense? There is nothing more important to your blog/website than owning and controlling your links. Think of it like your phone number. If you are making free calls over the Internet without owning your number, you cannot take it with you if you decide to subscribe with a mobile carrier. But, you can move your phone number that you do own, from carrier to carrier. I hope that clarifies things.

2) Growth, migration, and scalability

I mentioned part of this when I talked about the importance of owning your links. Let’s take a closer look at it. When you are self-hosted, you change your hosting plan with your current host, or move to a different host if you choose.

The reasons you would want to do this is because of the growth and success of your blog. When you blog grows, you may need more bandwidth and the higher security of a dedicated server. If you want to move to a different host, you can migrate your website and all the links to your new host and everything will continue to work. As more and more people visit your website, you will be able to scale with the demand so your site will not crash.

You may not need this in the beginning, but it is essential to be able to grow.

3) Using Plugins

What are plugins you ask? Plugins are little programs that you can put on to your website that add functionality. They work kind of like the way apps work for your smart phone. There are plugins for just about everything, from design elements to security.

Plugins are an important part of customizing the look and function of your website. You will understand more about their importance as you build out your blog.

Free platforms do not allow plugins.

You can learn more about plugins here.

4) The Flexibility of Themes

Themes provide the ability to choose or even change the look and feel of your blog. A theme is kind of like a template. Although you can make changes and customize it, a theme provides a style from which to start.

The theme you choose is important for creating the look and feel of your blog. Moreover, you can freshen up your blog at some point in future by changing your theme for a more current look and feel.

You cannot choose from the vast array of themes if you are on a free host. Self-hosting provides you the opportunity to make your own choices to produce a blog that looks the way you want it to look.

5) Monetization!

Do you think this is important? Hello! If you are not familiar with the term, it’s time to get acquainted. I now introduce you to monetization. Monetization means to make money from your blog. Yes, this is very important.

Even if you are not monetizing from the onset, you can choose to monetize your blog at any time. When you build trust with your audience, they will want you to share products and services with them that they can use. If you do not help them in that manner, you will be doing them a disservice. I can teach you how to monetize a website by recommending valuable product to your followers. Products they need, and for which they seek your advice. By monetizing, you can earn a commission if they make a purchase. The best part is, there is no additional cost to the buyer.

An example of monetizing would be talking about and explaining, say, ConvertKit as your email list provider. ConvertKit pays me a commission when you sign up through my link. It’s fun to recommend and talk about products I use and know are valuable for your needs.

Whatever your niche, there are products and services that you audience needs, and they will be looking to your for help.

Monetizing your blog is fun and rewarding, and a self-hosted blog facilitates monetization. Just to be clear, you can monetize a blog on a free platform, but there are limitations that can hinder your income. When you consider that proper hosting is just a couple of bucks a month, you can see that it just makes sense to self-host if you plan to monetize your blog.

6) WordPress

WordPress is the software that manages your blog. Without going into detail, WordPress is the mostly widely used and trusted website management tool in the world. I will write another blog post on the significance of WordPress.

All you need to know right now is that those plugins and themes that you will be choosing are written for WordPress. By using WordPress, you have security, lots of choices, and if you need help, there are tons of techie people who can help.

WordPress does not run on Blogger, Blogspot, or Tumblr. The best way to run WordPress is on your self-hosted site. I should mention that WordPress offers free hosting on their own servers, BUT you still cannot migrate or scale because you will not own your links. You do not want to start your blog on the free WordPress platform, instead you want to control it on your own hosting account such as provided by Bluehost.

7) Professionalism

Ok. So lets say you take the time to start a blog. You put your heart and soul into it, writing posts, helping your audience, and adding a ton of value. Do you think you could get there if your blog does not look professional? Probably not.

Sure, you can help people and begin to build a following on a free host, but there will be people who do not take it seriously because of the way it looks, feels and works. I’m not saying it’s not possible; it’s just not a good idea.

Free hosts add unwanted clutter to your website, such as attribution and advertisem*nts. Those ads don’t generate money for you, then make money for your “free” host. They have to make money somehow, and that’s how they do it. They then offer you “options” to remove the ads, and those fees can be higher than the cost of a proper host.

Additionally, when your blog becomes super popular, you can attract advertisers, advertisers that you choose that are related to your niche (this time, YOU keep the revenue). Many advertisers refuse to advertise on a free-hosted blog.

BONUS: Personalized Email

As if the above 7 reasons are not enough, here’s a bonus reason for you to choose self-hosting:Personalized email

Personalizing your email with your own domain presents you as a professional. For example, let’s say your self-hosted website domain is: www.RecipesByKaren.com

Wouldn’t it be nice if your email address was:karen@RecipesByKaren.com

If you don’t have email on your own domain, you would need to have an email address with Yahoo or Gmail, and that’s not very professional. It would look something like this:recipesbykaren@gmail.com

Which one looks more professional to you?

In conclusion

The above 7 reasons + the bonus are strong and compelling grounds for choosing a paid host. It’s important to get it right from the beginning.

Resources

• Best blogging education
• How to find your writing style
• The truth about starting a blog
• How to write a great blog post

Pro Blogger Resources

• Pro Blogger Training (all-inclusive)
• Self-hosted blog platform for bloggers (with Bluehost)
• Bloggers best email list management (with ConvertKit)

If you found this article helpful, may I ask if you can help out by sharing it? It would mean the world to me. Thank you.

Still not sure? You have questions? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below and I will help.