The Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

TweetI hear it all the time.

“Why should I pay to have a blog when I can get one for free from WordPress.com?”

If you are not sure what the debate is about — here it is –when you start a blog for your business or personal life, you must decide whether you will choose the free version of the blog or pay for it.

Seems like a no-brainer… huh?   Um… i’ll take the free one.

Well… it’s not that simple (it rarely is, right?)  In fact, I hardly ever recommend using the free version of WordPress over paying for it.

Rent Or Own?

If you navigate over to WordPress.com you will find that you can start a blog for free.  When you sign up for an account you will name your blog and it will create a blog for you on a URL like this:

http://www.mybusinessblog.wordpress.com

In the above example, ‘mybusinessblog’ is a subdomain of wordpress.com.  Here is the problem… you don’t own WordPress.com and thus you don’t own mybusinessblog.wordpress.com.  You have to follow the rules of WordPress.com and you are subject to their restrictions, limitations, etc.

To make things worse, if you want to move the blog off of WordPress.com and into a new platform or onto a separate domain, you are in big trouble.  Remember – you don’t really own this blog.

If you build up a bunch of links pointing at your blog and then move, you will not be able to redirect those links to your new blog site.  If you are wondering why links are important — read more here.

So – for instance, if you decide later that it would be more professional to actually own the domain www.mybusinessblog.com, you will be throwing away a lot of work when you move to the paid version.

Reasons You Should Use The Free WordPress.com

There are only a few different reasons I ever recommend using the free version of WordPress:

1.  You are truly blogging as a hobby and have absolutely no business objectives for the blog.
2.  You want to try blogging out first before you invest any money in it.
3.  You plan to throw this free blog away and start a paid one if it seems to fit your business needs.

These are the only reasons I can see for using the free software versus paying the small amount of money required to start your own blog.

What Does It Cost To Start A Blog?

In order to use the paid version of WordPress you will need three things:

1.  A Domain Name- Cost – Approximately $10.00 per year.
2.  A Hosting Package – Approximately $10.00 per month
3.  The latest version of WordPress – Free

Check out these videos on setting up and designing a WordPress.org blog.  These videos cover everything you will need to set up your blog and get your first blog post online.