In the first article in this series on Blog Consulting we discussed the importance of choosing a good domain name.  The other big question at the beginning of you blog is whether you will use one of the free blog options available or choose to use a paid service to host your blog.  There are positives and negatives for both options.

Setting up a Free Blog

There are a lot of options available for setting up a blog for free.  My personal favorites are Blogger (www.blogger.com) and WordPress (www.wordpress.com).  Both of these options have some real positives.  They are easy to set up and there is plenty of help available to get you started.  They are both offered absolutely free,  Many people have used these formats for successful blogging businesses.  I often recommend that people begin with a free blog to make sure that blogging is something they will be able to incorporate into their lives or businesses.  They are also a great training ground for learning the ins and outs of blogging.

Using a Web Host for Your Blog

If you are going to establish a blogging business (or at leat hope to), then you should probably consider using a web host.  You can usually get your blog hosted for between $50 and $100 a year.  With most web hosts you not only get your main site, you get the ability to set up 10, 25, or 50 other blogs as sub domains for no extra fee.  If you get serious about blogging you will begin to see the opportunities that having multiple blogs will present.  Another reason to use a web host is that it makes your blog a more valuable commodity if you decide to sell it sometime in the future.  Successful blogs are being sold for a lot of money these days.  I use Good News Domains (www.goodnewsdomains.com) for all my domain name and web hosting services.  They have always been very helpful when I have called them with any technical problems.  They actually have a live support staff that answers the phone within a couple of minutes when you call.  If you are using the free blogs you have to get your advice from the forums which often take a long time to respond.

I have written extensively on how to create a blog with web a web host or the free blog options on My Newbie Blog (www.mynewbieblog.com).  I would invite you to go to that site and read the articles if you are just getting started with your blog.  My Newbie Blog was designed with the new blogger (newbie) in mind.

The Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

I always recommend WordPress as a blogging platform.  It is an excellent software for blogging, it is free, and it is amazingly adaptable becasue of the variety of plugins that are available to tailor the site to your needs.  WordPress.com is the free blogging side of WordPress.  WordPress.org represents the side of WordPress that uses a web host.