Why get paid blog hosting ?
A question that so many bloggers ask themselves when they are using a free hosting service. A good question aswell and one that may not always point to getting paid hosting. Here I will look at all the areas you should cover before going to paid hosting for your blog.
Financially
Really before you look at any other reasoning for getting paid I think it is important to look at the financial implications. Can you afford to pay out the monthly fee ? If no then perhaps it is worth building up your visitors before you move over perhaps your ad revenue will pay for the hosting.
If you are looking to use ad revenue to pay for your hosting then are you guaranteed to get atleast enough for your hosting each month from your ads?
*** With some web hosts now putting contracts onto their hosting packages going "paid" will put you legally obliged to pay the fee for a certain term, this is a great thing to avoid.***
Do I exceed limits ?
If you know you can financially afford to go to paid hosting then you should look at the limits posted by your free host. Do you exceed your traffic alowance and regularly have messages stating this on your blog ? If you do then it could be a good idea to move, everytime you are inaccessable another visitor may choose not to return.
Do you need to use a free image host to hold your files ? This can slow your site down and could be another huge reason to move away from your free host.
However if you do not exceed limits then it may not be worth moving.
Does my blog load slowly?
Loading time is another major factor I think you should look at if you are considering moving to paid hosting. The time it takes to load a page is a major factor that effects people returning to your website.
A slow loading website will make people less happy to look at your site regularly, a daily visitor may only be a weekly visitor. So if your website takes more than 2 seconds and has very few images or large files to process it could be worth moving to paid hosting.
However I must warn that if you have lots of images and files on every page no matter where you put your website it will be slow. Mabey faster but still slower than a page with no pictures. So watch out to see if anything you could do will improve the loading time.
Part 2 On Sunday
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