Not too long ago, the question of whether you needed a website for your blog was moot. Of course, you did. If you did not run your own website, you had no blog. However, in today’s world of shared platforms, social media, and aggregators, you don’t technically need a website. You can use your Medium account to post consistently, sharing blogs on social media as easily as you would from anywhere else. You can post on LinkedIn, or write community posts on many popular websites, including Buzzfeed and HuffPost.
Ultimately, your posts are going to get a lot of engagement on social media, rather than on your site. So, a website is redundant, right?
Not quite. There are many reasons you should avoid the urge to go straight to Medium or other platforms to post. Here’s why you should subscribe to WordPress web hosting and create your own website.
Your Own Narrative
If the internet has shown us anything, it’s that we all process information differently. An article that makes some people happy will make others furious. A blog post that some find funny will make others really sad. Often, the difference in how a piece of content is taken comes down to who posted it.
Now, people absolutely should interpret things differently. We’re all entitled to different opinions about the same thing. However, when you are writing a blog, you probably want to put across a certain message. When you post something on a shared platform, however, your message will generally be shared out of context or in someone else’s context.
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People clicking on a Medium post are less likely to get an idea of how you think than if they went to a website designed and curated by you. It enhances your message, adding the nuance you hope for.
Monetization
Another major reason to create your website is that you’ll be better positioned to monetize it when you start getting regular traffic. Medium, LinkedIn, or other community sites either don’t allow monetization or they don’t make it easy. The best you’ll be able to do is writing sponsored posts or getting paid a pittance by writer programs.
With your own website, you can monetize in a number of ways. Affiliate marketing and targeted ads can make you a significant amount of money, and you can even generate consistent income if you put in the work.
Categories and More
When using platforms like Medium, you’re going to have difficulty organizing your posts in any useful way. Ultimately, you’re going to have one post after another, well-formatted but without rhyme or reason. On a website, you can create multiple pages.
This may not be your intention at first, but blogs have a tendency to get more complicated as time goes by. You realize that your topic of expertise can actually be split into much more niche subjects and that people coming to your website will want to find articles of interest more easily. Building a full website gives you the opportunity to make much more of your blog than a simple journal. Give it a go, rather than taking the slightly easier route.
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