Choosing Your Blog Platform: WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

Posted on December 12, 2014 Updated on December 18, 2014

When you begin designing a site, you need to consider how much time you want to invest and how technical you’d like to get. Those who use a WordPress platform for personal blog, portfolio or professional site have probably heard that there are differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

Honestly, I kind of kicked myself for not first building lilpickmeup.com in WordPress.org. But if you move over a WordPress.com site you will likely lose your followers as well as links, and even more complications can arise. One of the things that I dislike about WordPress.com is that you don’t have that much control or flexibility over the template you choose. Similarly, WordPress.org lacks some flexibility. This is why if you truly want to build something totally your way, you should consider a web designer who can build it from scratch. However, for blogs some of us like to make things as easy on ourselves as possible. I am no expert at either, but WordPress.com makes it super easy for anyone to erect a quick blog. But, if you eventually want to start making money as a blogger, WordPress.com makes that virtually impossible. Well, at least extremely difficult.

In order to make your website searchable, Meta tags are vital as well as having the ability to upload your own Meta tag files. Yet with WordPress.com you’re not allowed to fuss with them. They claim they have their own automated Meta tag function, but I have found it to be ineffective on an SEO level. There are threads I’ve read that claim you can still attempt to create your own Meta tags with WordPress.com. But, you also need some sort of blogroll. I have yet to try this, and so I am not going to get into it. If you get decent traffic to your site, but not 25,000 per month then you’ll get random ads on your blog. You don’t profit from those random ads, WordPress does. And if you want these ads off your site then it’ll cost you $29.95 per year. This doesn’t even include the additional charge to have a video function on your .com site and a number of other charges that can add up fast. If you do want to make a profit, like I said it is rumored that you need at least 25,000 hits a month. I think that figure is actually higher, like a minimum of 50,000 consistent hits per month in order to sell ads on your site. But to make any sort of revenue the figure is actually somewhere around 100,000 consistent hits per month. And the only way you can sell ads is by getting approved via WordPress.com. You only get approved using a feature called Ad control. If you’re hitting consistently large traffic numbers per month and you are approved, then when you make money you actually have to split your revenue 50/50 with WordPress.com.

The Bottom Line

With WordPress.org there are many more benefits and increased flexibility to control which plugin you’d like to download, utilize Meta tags in order to make your site more searchable, make money using your own ads, and the fabulous capability to customize themes as well customizing analytics to track not only traffic but social media stats as well. I do believe that with WordPress.com, however, they suck you in because of their large blogger base that functions like a community. Once you acquire those followers, it’s hard to switch to WordPress.org because you’ll lose those followers. I am not sure if .org has a similar type of community that .com has. That’s what I am still trying to figure out. So rather than uprooting this site and all the work I put into it. I decided to start another blog/site.

This one is definitely not a Rated PG, happy, feel-good, self-help type of site. If you want to check out the raunchier side to my writing and want to get to know more of my film buff side, then check out tvshowjunky.com. I only have one post up so far, but I literally just completed designing the site a couple of days ago. I am constantly jotting down ideas for new posts for both sites. But, it can take up a lot of time writing and keeping up with populating two separate blog sites with totally different content. And remember, there are only so many hours in the day. Still, I am always up for a challenge.

I decided to do this because, if you haven’t already noticed, lilpickmeup.com is written more from my journalistic/news producer style. It’s less of a personal rant or opinion (well, sometimes). I felt that tvshowjunky.com will start serving a greater purpose and will allow myself to switch gears, targeting an audience that might prefer to read reviews and articles geared specifically to a mature audience. Which brings me back to my point on blogging and writing.

You have to know your audience and know yourself as well as your goal. Tvshowjunky.com is a wordpress.org platform and lilpickmeup.com is wordpress.com. I’ll update you later on which ends up being more successful.