If you’ve ever spoken to me, or read my blog, you probably have realized by now that I’m a strong advocate for building websites on wordpress.org. A lot of people ask me, “Cory, why should I switch to wordpress.org?” This article is ment to address that question:
Why should your website be built on WordPress.org?!
1. The pluggins
Wow, Wow, Wow. When I first saw the concept of wordpress pluggins I was blown away. There are currently over 10,000 free pluggins avaiable for wordpress, and even more when you include premium paid pluggins (which are not required)
This entire site is built on Free wordpress pluggins:
2. SEO Benifits
The fact of the matter is “Google LOVES WordPress” Don’t believe me? Check out this keynote by Google’s SEO master Matt Cutts – (Does Google Like WordPress blogs for SEO?)
3. You can change the design / layout in a heartbeat.
Free Themes -Wordpress currently offers over 17,000 Free themes. Check it out.
Premium Themes – I recommend Themeforest, you can get a premium theme, just like this one there for $15-$35. View Themes.
4. Personal Branding –
Your blog, is your hub. You should be going out to other social media sites to find people who will, know (twitter), like (facebook), and trust (youtube) you and sending them to your wordpress blog. Then from the wordpress blog, they can actually be connected to the rest of your sites.
5. You get to keep all the money your website generates.
Okay, guess what! This right here is my FAVORITE reason for wordpress. WordPress.org sites, let you generate your own income. Seriously, you own the site, so you keep the profits. If you’re only marketing on facebook, you’re just giving them more traffic, and your customers are probably clicking the facebook ads. They could be clicking YOUR website’s ads instead.
Ads like this one, provide me with the income to be a full time Internet Entrepreneur.
6. Simplicity: No coding is required.
Not an html junkie? No worries. With WordPress you don’t have to be.
7. Control: But if you want to code; you can.
Unlike some other user friendly editors, wordpress lets you edit the complicated stuff too!
Want to super-customize your site?! You can! Don’t know how to do it? You can find someone who does the complicated on facebook, skype or elance.com
8. Wordpress keeps you up to date.
A couple of months ago when facebook added the “like” feature, us wordpress bloggers were the first ones to have it. People were coming to mysite, and talking to me just to simply ask how they can use it too. Basically, my site got new traffic, just for having the latest features on it.
As an added bonus, wordpress keeps your current plugins and features up to date via a notification system.
9. It works for major sites, myself, and it will work for you too.
You may not have realized this yet, but wordpress is not just for blogs, businesses use it too.
Arthur Tubman, says it best – “A website is 1999, a WordPress Blog is 2010; thats the major difference”
Want to see more sites built on wordpress, so that you can see whats possible? WordPress.org showcases some of their featured sites. (Which gives me an idea… time to get listed!)
10. Its the most inexpensive way to own a complete, premium website.
Lets be honest here. How many of you have spent $1,000 or more having a website designed for you? I’ve heard of people even paying as high $5,000 for a site recently, and they still looked like they were stuck in 1999.
WordPress makes it easy. WordPress is FREE.
Here’s the 3 Steps you must follow to get a wordpress site created.
First, you MUST own your own domain name (www.YOURNAME.com) This is another way you will be self branded. Would you rather send clients to facebook.com/yourname OR to www.YourName.com?
Which one brands you better? The answer is obvious; the self branded url.
A personal domain name costs less then $8 / a year: Domain Sale! $7.49 .com at GoDaddy
Secondly, you must own hosting. I use Host Gator because they’re only $10/ monthly, have the best customer service out of any hosting company I’ve ever used (try their live chat) and they offer their first month of service for a penny. You can’t avoid paying hosting, its like your water or electric bill for your house, it MUST be paid, in order for you to brand yourself online correctly. $10/ month to earn 100% of your revenue… I like that system.
Third, and most difficultly, you must invest some time to install your blog to your host, find your best theme, install 15-20 plugins, set up your widgets (your sidebar) and create and design a header for the top of your blog. This can be a 2-10 hour process, depending on your experience level, or would cost at least $500 for you to hire someone else to do it for you.
However, there is a solution to step 3.
My friends at the http://thefreeblogfactory.com, who you can see advertised throughout this site, will create your blog and customize it to your preferences for FREE, when you set up your hosting through their system. The Free Blog Factory uses Host Gator too, so I know the system is good. In fact, http://thefreeblogfactory.com set up THIS BLOG for me back in December 2009.
The Free Blog Factory will Build your Blog.
Bonus: Reason #11 – Check out my widgets.
Thank you Marcelle Allen from Secret Blog Tips, for this reason to switch to WordPress that I nearly left out; widgets. Widgets make your blog run like magic. They are what you use to actually create your sidebar and make it function. They’re kinda like plugins but different. Let me show you how they work:
So there you have it our Top 11 Reasons to go WordPress.
Did I leave out any WordPress benefits?
What is your favorite reason for using WordPress?
Comment below:
