First things first — yes, you really do have to have your own site on your own domain in order to get the most out of content marketing.
Read this article for more details about why: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Online Marketing Efforts
Essentially, it boils down to creating assets for your business. If your site lives on someone else’s domain (like wordpress.com, blogspot.com, or typepad.com), you’re at the mercy of the policies and stability of those organizations.
They might decide your site is “too commercial” and tell you what you can and can’t do to make money. They might decide to get out of the blogging business altogether … and take down or sell the domain name your site lives on. These things can and do happen.
And if you’ve built a successful business on a site that’s not on your own domain, you don’t own your future … someone else does.
So why doesn’t everyone have their own self-hosted WordPress site?
The truth is, until you’ve done it, it can seem complicated, difficult, and expensive.
Copyblogger’s popular guest writer, Pamela Wilson, saw that there were a lot of folks out there having trouble getting their self-hosted WordPress sites up and running, So she’s put something together for you.
Together with WordPress expert Wendy Cholbi, Pamela created a free course that walks you through:
- How to choose and register a domain name
- How to pick a web host: 9 must-have features to look for, and what to avoid
- Pamela and Wendy’s Love Your Website on-demand class, which lays out the process of setting up a WordPress site
- How to get your domain name and your web host to talk to one another
- Installing self-hosted WordPress software on a variety of hosts
- Five essential WordPress settings every site should use
- Six design tips to make your site look professional
Wendy and Pamela have included a ton of resources with these, including special reports, video content, and more.
Click this link to snag the free class
By the way, that’s an affiliate link. That means, if you eventually buy one of Wendy & Pamela’s excellent paid products, Copyblogger gets a small commission. But whether you do or don’t isn’t relevant right now — the main thing is that you get started with your own WordPress site, self-hosted on your own domain.
You may have noticed that we make very few affiliate promotions — 99% of the time, we prefer to focus on our own products and services. But we’ve heard so many raves about Pamela and Wendy’s program that we knew we wanted to get it in front of the Copyblogger audience.
It’s easy to follow, it’s clear, it’s comprehensive, and it will get you up and running.
Once you have your cornerstone site in place, you can start to take advantage of everything else that content marketing has to offer.