Learn how to make money online!

Being the very first article, I think it should me of an introduction on why the Internet is so important and how everyone can profit from it.

As you probably know that billions of dollars worth of business is conducted online, it is done by selling products / services / advertising. This forms the core of how business takes place on the internet, however making money is not just limited to the above 3 categories.

These days not only companies but individuals also feel necessary to have a web presence, either they want to start their small company website, freelancers want a website for showcasing their service or people just want to express themselves online and interact with like minded people ( maintain an online journal or popularly called blog)

For our purpose we will focus on Blogs, why? Because they are the easiest to set up and anyone can start a blog for free on either Blogger or WordPress and for advance users who are looking for complete control of their blog, they go in for a premium self hosted blog.

Advantages of a using a free blog service such as Blogger or WordPress

1. Free of cost.
2. Setup takes 2 min, as easy as signing up for a free email.
3. Instant ready blog e.g. yourblogname.blogger.com or yourblogname.wordpress.com
4. Can change the look of your blog with a few clicks, no uploading required.
5. Best if you want to experiment or get the feel of how to go about posting articles

Disadvantages of using the free blog service.

1. You have no control of your blog, except the articles you have written.
2. Only limited advertising available, If you are looking to make money from them, then its best to go for a self hosted blog.
3. Limited themes available, you will not be able to experiment much if you are an advance user.
4. You have no control of the database hence if you want to move over to other blog services later, you may loose all your data.

Now let us discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of a self hosted blog. A self hosted blog is a software which is installed on a server so that it is unique for you. Mostly all the self hosted blogs have their own domain name e.g. yourname.com or yourname.com/blog or blog.yourname.com

Advantages of self hosted blogs.

1. Full control over the blog.
2. Complete control over advertising.
3. Looks more professional as you have a domain name.
4. Take automatic backups, so you never loose your data.

Disadvantage of self hosted blogs.

1. Its not free, you would need to pay for domain name and web hosting.
2. You may require someone to set up the blog software for you.
3. For changing themes you would need to ftp them to your server.

Conclusion: If you just want to get the feel of a blog, I would recommend you open a free account with wordpress or blogger but if you are in for the long run and are serious about making money, you would need to get a self hosted blog. If you need help, you can contact the good folks at SpeedHost.in to set up a premium WordPress blog for you.