eXtra For Every Publisher

Overview

WordPress.com was added to provide a service to those without the technical knowledge and understanding needed to run PHP software. It provided WordPress functionality to those that were stuck on other hosted blog platforms.

WordPress.com also allowed the Automattic team to test new features while controlling the environment of those tests. This has lead to some great features coming out in the self-hosted WordPress.org software.

Advantages

One of the biggest advantages is that you don’t have to find hosting, deal with server specifications, or even upgrade your WordPress.com blog. It is all dealt with by Automattic. They pre-install many great themes, as well as give you some great statistic software to track what is going on with your blog.

WordPress.com is also the test bed for new features for WordPress, meaning WordPress.com users get cool features that the self-hosted WordPress.org users have to wait a few versions for.

They also have a community feel which is separate from the WordPress.org community, making it feel smaller, though with more than one million WordPress.com blogs, it is still amazingly diverse and interesting.

Limitations

Unfortunately, WordPress.com is not without its issues, but many bloggers just starting out, won’t see the problem here, and honestly, neither will some higher level bloggers.

You can’t edit themes directly. You can change the cascading style sheets for a yearly fee. Cascading style sheets are a way to control things like what color your headlines are and how your content is displayed. Having this ability is great, but it can still leave you somewhat limited in how your blog can look, and function.

You also can’t have any form of advertising on your WordPress.com blog, meaning no way to monetize the hard work you put into it.

Lastly, if you need more than 100 megabytes of hosting space, a real domain, rather than being hosted on a WordPress.com sub-domain, custom cascading style sheets, for a custom design, or more than thirty-five private users, you will have to pay a fee. If you want all of these things, that fee can be a fair bit higher than you’d pay for hosting and a domain from a third party.

Conclusion

It really comes down to what you need, what your expertise is, and what you are willing to pay. For the starting blogger, a free WordPress.com blog has more than enough features. Never needing to go through the upgrade process, while fairly simple on WordPress.org blogs, is also provides some great peace of mind.

I can’t say that power users won’t like WordPress.com, as I have seen many happy with the service, but I think that most power users that know how to FTP, and want more flexibility with their blog will want to stick with the hugely expandable WordPress.org software.

Check out some of my favorite WordPress related books on my Books page.

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I found out about The Huffington Post allowing some of their top commenters to switch and become bloggers for the publication thanks to Problogger.net.

Reading through the comments on our site, we realized that our commenters are a tremendous — and underutilized — resource. So we’ve created a process whereby we will choose one commenter a month to become part of our group blog.

Our decision will be based on how many fans a commenter has, how often their comment is selected as a Favorite, and our moderators’ preferences. Every comment now has an “I’m A Fan Of” link and a “Favorite” link, so start voting for the comments and commenters you like best. We will announce the first commenter-turned-HuffPost-blogger in the next few weeks.

My first reaction to this news was “wow, that is a great idea!” Quality commenters have some strong opinions, and rather than having them leave, and talk about what you have written on their own blog, or having their opinions be buried deep within a comments system, harnessing their power and having them work for you might just get your blog to that next level.

I don’t think that The Huffington Post needs more great writers as they are pretty much one of the top ten single blogs right now in the blogosphere, but what do I know?

If you have commenters that are absolutely amazing, maybe now is the time to extend a writing offer to them.

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Ryan Imel has put up a post on Copyblogger that I wholeheartedly agree with called “How to Become an Authority Blogger”. In it, Ryan talks about how talking with authority is half the battle.

Here is a snippet:

Speak with authority. One of my favorite uncles retired from a high level management position to start his own business offering leadership training to companies and organizations. His main reason for going down this path? He started speaking with authority and people just ate it up. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s not saying anything particularly earth shattering. But he’s the one saying it, and sometimes that’s all that makes the difference between the authority and the audience.

Many of the great voices online are only known because they think of themselves in that way, and I suggest if you want to be an expert in your niche, you should start writing as an expert.

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One thing that I have been noticing lately is that bloggers are adding every widget under the sun to their blog. There is content, and there is advertising, other than that, you shouldn’t be mucking up your blog.

Some Things To Avoid

Stat Trackers that Require an Image. There are so many web statistic trackers now that you can avoid the ones that require an image back to their service. Things like ExtremeTracking aren’t as featured as some of their competitors anyways. I like Google Analytics, as well as AWStats to watch over how my blogs are doing.

Bonus: Of course there is Feedburner to track how my RSS feed is doing, which I highly recommend for all bloggers.

Separate Links For Each RSS Service. I don’t mind people putting a single RSS badge on their blogs, but when you add a small graphic for every RSS reader service. That gets to be a little ridiculous, and it can push other more important things from their deserved spot on your blog.

Hundreds of Categories. Not only does having more than a dozen or two categories listed on your front page look cluttered, but it also makes sure new readers won’t be able to find or focus on your best content. If you are going to make a crazy number of categories, find a way to only display the top dozen in your sidebar, and create a categories or tags page for the rest.

More than Three Advertising Programs. Do you really need to have every piece of screen above the fold be advertisements? It seems this has only gotten worse since Google AdSense allowed competing ads to be put on the same page.

I know you want to monetize your content, but I will never come back to your blog, no matter how great the content is, and I know many others would agree with me on this.

Conclusion

Every couple of months, take a look at your blog, and decide if there is anything you can remove. Simplifying things will keep your site focused and your readers will keep coming back.

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John Chow is an online idol of mine. While I don’t agree with how heavily he monetizes his blog, you have to respect someone that can do so well from their blog. Sidenote: he is a fellow Canadian He recently released a post talking about valuing advertising space on your blog and makes some good points.

Here is a snippet from the article:

The bottom line is Google AdSense can only get you so far. If your prime ad spot isn’t pulling in the kind of money you like then ask yourself what you can replace it with. Can you sell the spot to a direct sponsor? Can you replace it with an affiliate deal? Would the spot do better promoting your own site(s)? Would it be better just to get rid of the spot? The key is to experiment and mix things up. It is a lot easier to double blog income by tweaking than it is to double income by doubling blog traffic.

There are very few websites though that have maximized their potential with Google’s AdSense program, but working on various high level blogs, I have seen situations where this has occurred, and like John, private sales seem to be the best way to attain the maximum amount of money from an advertising spot.

The last thing I would like to say about all this is that bloggers should try hard to balance their need to monetize their traffic with the user experience of the site. I find certain types of advertising really put me off using a site.

Read John’s full article for some insightful details on how you can get the most money for your advertising space.

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