This is a question that came in today from Daniel:
“Cask Kid, why do you not recommend free hosted blogging platforms like Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, and LiveJournal.com? Can’t they make money online as well?”

Well Daniel, first off, congrats for being my first official FAQ submission. It feels great that people are taking an interest in my little blog. To answer your question, the main reason I don’t support these types of hosted blog platforms is because they show a lack of authority. Now I am sure there are some bloggers who have a free hosted blog and will argue with me that they make loads of money each month but what it boils down to is that these platforms are very limited when it comes to layout, design, and customization.

If you are creating a niche site, it always looks more professional to have a site that is truly unique especially if one of your goals is to attract new readership. If your blog has the exact same template as hundreds of other blogs, you will have a harder time standing out even if you have some great content. What really gets me are the blogs that claim to teach you how to make money online and they have the domain www.mymoneysite.blogger.com. Seriously, if you know so much about making money online, couldn’t you fork over the dough to get a unique designed site and host it on your own domain? One reason may be that a particular blog may have just started out blogging and did not have a real idea of how to start a blog. They wrote hundreds of pages of content on their blogger account and started to get serious traffic. Problem is now their site is indexed in google and changing their domain will result in the loss of some great SERPS as well as losing backlinks.

So f you are going to take the steps to be a serious internet marketer, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND setting up your blog the right way with your own hosted domain as you will be more successful in the long run.