Free or Paid Blog, Which is Better?

The table on the next page outlines some of the more important similarities and differences/pros and cons of both types. The free domain used here refers to Blogger (.blogspot.com) and may be different from other free hosts.

Free  (.blogspot.com)	Paid  (.com)
It’s Free. Can be converted to paid .com	Yearly renewal fees for the name
Free hosting for ever	Yearly renewal fees for the hosting
Can be used for online business	Can be used for online business
The name is sometimes too long	The name is shorter and easier
Less professional	More prestigious and professional
Visitors to the website will know that it’s a free website	Visitors to the website will not know whether it’s a free website or not
Does not affect traffic or reduce how much money the site will make	Does not affect traffic or reduce how much money the site will make
You have 100% access to all your data	You have 100% access to all your data

 Depending on your preferences, you may choose to first start with the free name and hosting from Blogspot and later convert it to the paid type. On the other hand, you may choose not to wait till later and just go ahead and convert it to the paid type immediately after you have finished creating the blog.

Mind you, this does not mean that you cannot run a successful blog with the free .blogspot name and free hosting. You can have a successful website using a free name. In fact there are a lot of big popular websites today who are still using the free domain name with .blogspot and they are still making thousands every month from using it through online business. So converting to a paid domain is not a must for success. 

However, if you want a website address that is easy to pronounce and more professional, you should consider upgrading to the paid domain after you have built your website. 

This blog does not cover how to obtain and configure a paid domain because our focus is on how you can get everything set up for free without spending money.