I used blogger for a long time. I’ve been blogging for about 7 years but didn’t get into it seriously until about 4 years ago. I started with blogger because it was free and easy to use. Even on blogger though I couldn’t figure out how to add a picture to my post at first. I didn’t know how to add hyperlinked text. Forget about what analytics was and why it was important. But I learned as I went. I learned everything from doing searches, reading how-to’s, etc. I felt like I could pretty much do anything I needed to with my blog, except own it.
I sat on the idea of self-hosting for a long time. Weighed the pros and cons. I attended The Blog Workshop which was a 3 day online blog conference. LOTS of helpful info. It all seemed the same though. Anything I read was saying, go self-hosting. The thing that scared me was that 4 years worth of serious work and learning could be gone in the blink of an eye if google decided they didn’t like something on my blog. I didn’t really think it could happen. I heard a few stories here and there. The wake up call was when Google decided to freeze my adsense account (my main source of income from my blog at the time). Sent me an email that I had adult content on my site. What did they consider adult content? Well I had been working with a well known online adult novelty site. (I won’t name names) and even though I tried to do post that were safer like about the make up on their site, the costumes, etc. Well that didn’t work. They also referred to a post I did for a book review. The title did sound “adult” but it was actually a serial killer novel. Anyway, I fought with google for over a year. It was only within the last few months that I”ve been able to get it back and it’s like starting from scratch with the text ads and such. Anywho, I thought, if they can take that away on a whim, why couldn’t they just take my blog away? Another motivator, running into a couple potential clients who only wanted self-hosted bloggers. Not a lot yet, but a few.
Still the idea of paying for something I was currently doing for free just didn’t seem to fit with me. I eventually decided to bite the bullet and do it. Yes it did cost some money especially since I paid someone to do the transfer for me. At first I thought I made the wrong choice. Wordpress.org was so….different. Not as smooth to use as blogger was. I almost cried the first day or 2. I thought I made the wrong decision. I spent hours (off and on cause kids and work, you know) trying to get my blog back to what it was. I watched LOTS of how-to videos, read lots of helpful posts, took some tips from others. I still feel like I have so much to learn. I’m waiting for the first request from a client to ask me to do something I don’t know how to do yet and stress about it and wonder if I can take the offer.
It’s been about a week now since the transfer. I’m starting to figure things out and wordpress is just now starting to feel like home. Bare with me as I figure things out, but I appreciate you stopping by.
I just made the switch in August! It’s intimidating at first, but well worth it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!