Perhaps you are considering signing up for a free blog account. You have an idea for a new blog that could make money. You don't want to deal with the headache and technical aspects of running a website. You just want to be creative and post to your blog.

Stop right there!

Ask yourself, "Am I blogging purely as a hobby, or do I want to make some money blogging?"

If your career as a blogger is purely a hobby and you want to leave it at that, go ahead and sign up for a free blog account. There are a lot of conveniences if you do so. But, wait...

Maybe your hobby turns into an obsession. Everybody loves your blog and you realize that you could actually make some money blogging. Maybe you want more control over your blog.

I strongly advise against using free blogs and I am sure you will be convinced of the same after reading this. You need to know what you are forfeiting for the sake of convenience when you use a free blog service.

Domain Names are Assets

Your domain name itself has inherent value. Owning a domain name is like owning a house, where as using a free blog service is like renting a room. If you own a decent domain name it is already worth something. And, with every post you add to your blog, you increase the value of your domain name. With a free blogging platform, you are just borrowing the space to post your blogs. You need your own domain name and Godaddy is the best place to register a new domain name.

It Takes time to Build Traffic

You want to get started building traffic to your site as soon as possible. The sooner you can get your site online the better. It may take anywhere from one to six months before Google updates your PageRank. There is no formula for how long it will take, as Google seems to update website PageRanks whenever they feel like it. Have a good PageRank is important for several reasons, which will be discussed in a later post. If you start off on a free blog and later decide to move the blog to your own website, you are going to have to start over building PageRank.

Ad Optimization

With a free blog, you have limited control over what advertising you can use and where that advertising is placed on the site. There may be some high earning affiliate programs you'd like to add, but you won't be able to. Some affiliate programs will pay over $100 dollars for a single conversion. You want to be able to harness this earning power.

It is relatively simple to set up your own website and very cost-effective. Good shared hosting can be purchased for between $5.00 to $10.00 a month. Some hosting providers, such as Hostmonster, will even throw in free domain registration for life. I currently have two web hosting accounts with Hostmonster and regularly recommend them to clients as the best shared hosting to get started with. You can spend more on hosting, but you are just wasting money if you do because you won't need a high end web hosting solution until your traffic levels are high enough to warrant the upgrade. You don't want to spend more money that you need to while developing your blog.

Once you have your web hosting ready, it is also easy install the blog software and get going. There will be tutorials later on for installing blog software and also detailed optimization tips for configuring your blog software to maximize traffic.