There have been a lot of heated discussions comparing WordPress.com and Blogger.com on which is the better platform. I would say to all who’s planning to create a blog to earn from Adsense and affiliate sites, DO NOT USE WORDPRESS.COM!
Take my experience as an example. My intention for kulaypinay.com is to try out adsense and I debated between using wordpress and blogger/blogspot. I read a lot of positive reviews from wordpress users and so, I created an account at wordpress.com. Yes, I did like the layout and dashboard and stuff, but I wanted to customize the design of my blog and so, I tweaked the template, asked for a header from Rocky, customized the CSS and everything. THEN I found out I have to pay $15 to “activate” the custom template and this is valid for 1 year. So, I paid the fee. After that, I forwarded my DNS for kulaypinay.com towards my free wordpress blog account (mitchwah.wordpress.com) and then found out I have to pay $10 for “domain mapping”, I didn’t know what it really was and what’s it for, just the fact that I had to pay it. So I paid.
So, there I was happy that I had finally set up everything I needed for my adsense-generating blog. I have already applied for adsense, got accepted and I copied the adsense code that should be pasted on the site. And so I did just that. I created a text widget and pasted the adsense code. Nothing. I tried pasting the adsense code after my new post. Nothing. No adsense text links. I then found out in the FAQ that wordpress.com doesn’t allow adsense codes or any other scripting code. Owwkaaayyyy.
So I had 1 year of having a wordpress blog with my custom design but no adsense. Then, the CSS and domain mapping expired last April 13, 2008. Notice that I no longer have any header and the template is a bit “ordinary”. I refuse to pay another $25 a year for it. I could have kept that $25 if I’ve used blogspot from the beginning and could have earned some dollars from adsense from the one year this blog has been up. But it’s my fault anyway. At that time, it seemed a waste if I won’t continue with this blog. Hehe.
I know it’s still not too late. Well, as soon as I have time, inclination and extra budget, I will be getting myself a web space. I would be improving the content too, not just some crap I have been posting for the past year, hehe. But until then, this is where this blog stays. Hehe.
So, that’s my story. If you don’t have your own web space and want to earn from adsense, you’re better off with Blogspot.
Please take note that wordpress.com and wordpress.org are two different sites. The latter offers the free to download blogging platform to bloggers who wishes to host their own blog on their personal hosting providers.
I thought wordpress was free along with hosting. Obiovously if you want to host the blog on your own site and have your own domain, its gonna cost you.
Yes, wordpress.com is free but you have to pay extra fees to change your CSS template and for “domain mapping”, but still you can’t add the adsense code.
You have to host the free wordpress blogging software available at wordpress.org on your own to be able to do what you want with it. I should have done this in the first place. But I am a casual blogger and this blog has been neglected for the most part of the past year. Maintaining a web host wouldn’t have been cost effective for me. The next best option at that time was to just use Blogspot since we are free to do whatever we want with its template.
im using wordpress for my blog site it works fine for me.. i can add adsense code to it..
Really? How did you do it? I’d love to have adsense code on this blog.
Is it a free registered account at wordpress.com or did you download the installer at wordpress.org and hosted it in your webserver? If it’s the latter, you will have no problem adding adsense. But if you registered for a free account at wordpress.com (like me), no, you won’t be able to add the code.
http://faq.wordpress.com/2005/12/08/adsense/