Originally posted on: Social Media Ottawa

If you’re in the market for setting up a new website, and you’re in a pickle about whether to go with a Wordpress installation or not here are some tips to keep in mind as to why hosting your site independent of wordpress.com will help you in the long-run.

1 – Credibility for Your Brand

By purchasing and using a domain name specific to your brand customers and viewers of the site recognize credibility to the brand; as there is a financial input to its maintenance. Using a personal website domain instead of ‘www.wordpress.com/companynamehere’ also maintains consistency for your brand, thereby minimizing the effort needed to to recognize and remember you.

2 – Full Integration

With the standard, free Wordpress installation integration with custom themes and plugins are limited. These are the very features that set your site apart from the rest, so why would you not want it?

3 – Additional Flexibility

There is also potential to create a ‘second layer’ of functionality with unique domain and web hosting purchases. For example your own company emails ie: dave@oakcomputing.com rather than dave_oakcomputing@gmail.com. This is another simple way to establish and create brand credibility.

Also, let’s pose the idea that your wordpress website ‘takes off’ and becomes one of the internet’s hottest websites. If your site is hosted with Wordpress and you want to later transition to a custom domain name and hosting, wordpress will charge you per megabyte of information transferred over 2MBs. The charges associated with this transition will cost well over the mere $70/year it would have cost you to use a custom domain name with independent web hosting.

4 – Revenue Possibilities

Even with all of these incentives to independently host your new Wordpress site, there is more motivation: a chance to create monetary revenue. The world of internet marketing and banner ads is a simple and easy way to have a steady cash flow with minimal work. Plentyoffish.com itself makes over $100 000 a month by giving space on its site to web banner advertising companies. Well-known companies like Pepperjam and Chitika are established in the ‘web banner business’ and partnering with them is a good way to make easy money.

5 – Minimal Cost for Bountiful Benefits

Yes hosting and domain name purchase cost money, compared to the $0 you need for a basic Wordpress install. But with as little as $70 a year, you can establish credibility, brand consistency, while having all the latest website ‘bells and whistles’, with full site flexibility and even create additional revenue. So is $70 really a large enough barrier to set you back from all of this potential?