Why not make the switch from Blogger to WordPress:
Have you been thinking about WordPress and considering making the switch from Blogger to WordPress but not sure it’s worth the hype? Well, I’m going to share with you why you shouldn’t make the switch from Blogger to WordPress (or am I?). WordPress is a powerful platform that’s not for everyone.
Why should you NOT switch from Blogger to WordPress:
1. If you don’t want to own your own content.
This is the primary reason I switched from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve been thinking about doing the switch for months now and my gut kept telling me I needed to make the switch—but my wallet was telling me NO! I kept hearing more and more horror stories about Blogger blogs being shut down for no reason and people losing EVERYTHING I started getting worried about what I would do in that situation.
WordPress itself is free but you have to pay for self hosting—I had no clue how much hosting was going to cost me. Well GoDaddy has a fantastic deal going on right now—you can get 50% off of hosting AND you’ll get a free domain name when you purchase a full year—a basic plan is just $35.88 ($2.99 a month) or a deluxe plan would be $53.88 ($4.49 a month)….the basic plan is what I have and it’s working out great! You’ll also get $200 worth of advertising credits for Facebook, Google Adwords, and Bing….plus peace of mind that your content is YOURS!
2. If you don’t care about making money.
More and more brands are looking at what platform bloggers are utilizing and they prefer blogs on WordPress.org. This is because they know that your content will stay up. You’re not bound to terms and conditions supplied by Blogger—oh, and in case you didn’t know– you’re not even allowed to write sponsored posts or run ads on WordPress.com ONLY WordPress.org.
Brands are looking for blogs that reflect a certain image and WordPress is the platform to do that. Brands know that WordPress has plug-ins to optimize SEO therefore you’re able to get the content you write out to more people. Bottom line—if it costs me $35 to set up my blog so I own it and I’ll make $50 out of a sponsored post then it’s worth it to me!
3. You don’t want plug-ins that make life easier!
Yes, WordPress has TONS of plug-ins that make life so much easier—and most of the time they’re FREE! I’m going to share my FAVORITE plug-ins with you soon…but just to let you know….
There are plug-ins that will automatically tweet out old posts (SAVES so much time scheduling posts or being on Twitter). There are plug-ins that tell you what EXACTLY you need to do to optimize SEO (it’s like SEO for Dummies but sooooo much more!). There are plug-ins that not only format your recipes all nice and pretty but it makes your recipes easily printable and searchable! There are plug-ins that filter spam comments a billion times better than blogger! (I used to get 10-15 spam comments a day that made it past Blogger’s filter—now I get 1 or 2) There are plug-ins that makes replying to comments super simple and your reply shows up in the comment thread AND an email is sent to the original commenter. Anyway- there are plug-ins galore that make WordPress so much more user friendly than Blogger!
4. You blog for yourself and don’t want/need a professional looking site without paying a ton of money.
I thought I had a streamlined professional looking site on blogger—well, until I got to WordPress and realized how much better my site looks now. There are hundreds of free themes on WordPress which will give your site a unique look once you customize the theme a little. I’m using the Calotropis Theme—which I LOVE! I will admit I wish there were more widget areas but I’m just building on a text widget for most of my stuff anyways. Most of the free themes are plug and play—which is PERFECT for those of us that don’t really understand much HTML or CSS. I was able to easily change the background, add a custom header, and set up an easy to navigate menu bar. I really love the fact that I don’t have to make image galleries for my posts—I just set a Featured Image and it automatically makes a beautiful image gallery of my posts—check out my chicken recipes page (hint: it’s not a page I had to build—it automatically makes it and updates it based on the categories I designate for each post—another thing I don’t have to do and saves me time!).
5. You’re scared of trying new things.
I won’t lie—WordPress can be a bit daunting and scary to begin with. There’s so much stuff that can get messed up in the process of switching over and customizing. I will admit, I thought I could do it on my own (and I did) but there were MANY MANY MANY tears shed along the way. There were a couple of times that I thought I lost everything. Poor Hubs was happy to get his happy wife back once the switch from Blogger to WordPress was over! BUT, if I could go back in time when I was deciding whether or not to make the switch I wouldn’t change a thing! Well, I’d pay someone to handle the transfer—but I wouldn’t change my mind!! WordPress will blow your mind at everything it has to offer and if you’re even contemplating making the switch from Blogger to WordPress DO IT NOW! Do it before you grow your blog any bigger—the bigger it is the harder and more time consuming making the switch will be—and more expensive.
When I was making the switch I considered using Blogelina’s Blogger to WordPress Transfer Service…and I should have. What could go wrong did go wrong…I could have avoided all of that if I had just invested the money and hired someone. Blogelina’s service is the most affordable that I’ve found at just $99 and that INCLUDES your webhosting for a year! All you have to do is purchase a domain name- which GoDaddy has specials right now where you can get a .COM for just $4 the first year. I use GoDaddy and have never had and issues; they respond quickly to my emails (I sent a TON of Support inquiries during my switch from Blogger to WordPress and they were fantastic) and the site is quite informative.
Make sure you check out my other Tips for Bloggers.
