Free Wordpress blogs (Do they rank?)

Buy a domain and they will make money for lifetime. Never put eggs under someone basket. Wordpress is a great free blog service provider, but they can suspend at any stage, and we have to beg them for unsuspend..

They can rank yes. But just like above poster said, take control of your content buy getting your own domain. In the end it will be up to you to put in the required work and consistent effort to get to where you want to go.

Why take chances with a FREE Blog?

If someone wanted to 'try' IM out, then a FREE Blog is a way to 'try'.

But trying anything is deciding to fail right from the start.

For you to get real substantial results that will reward you for the long term, you will have to put in the equal amount of energy.

If I wanted to create multiple sites, what is the cheapest way to do so? I currently have my own site through jimdo.com (costing around $90/year for hosting and domain) but it's for my own personal use.

And is it easy to connect adsense to it?

A free wordpress will rank with the right amount of effort put into offsite seo etc. But it will be more difficult to do so and can be closed down at any time. You are probably better off at least buying a domain an looking for a free webhosting service but ensure you backup your site locally.

But ideally your own domain and hosting is the best thing to do.

How much does it cost for people to maintain their sites? I have my own site paying $90 a year and I was interested in making multiple sites, but don't want to pay hundreds a year.

If you are just starting and learning out you can look around for a cheaper shared hosting service that will still host several sites on one account and try using a CDN to help your sites to load quicker.

Never use a free wordpress or blogspot blog, that's not viewed as an authority site by people and it will bring you bad karma for not inviting in a real domain and web hosting.

This business can be started for less than $100 but doesn't mean is free.

Thanks for all of the information. How much are you guys paying for domain and hosting? Is there a way to pay for unlimited hosting for multiple domains? So you'd pay around $90 a year for hosting and then additional $8/ a year or so for each domain? If so where?

I guess I need to look for a new hosting provider...this is the pricing for jimdo! -> Pricing - Jimdo

WordPress.com is optimized for SEO and getting your site in front of searchers on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others. Free one can also rank..

Thanks everyone!

If you're looking to create long term income then invest in a real blog. The problem with having a free blog is because it's free, then everything is limited and out of your control. Content can be taken down without you knowing anytime. Features are limited. At the same time, owning a free blog for your business is leaving a subconscious message telling yourself that you're not taking this seriously.

Having your very own personal blog is like having your own brand.. If you take it seriously and invest in the necessities, then it will grow. It you want all out blogging where it's your world, your rules. Then I suggest you invest in a blogging platform. I personally use the Kalatu blogging platform. It's ran by Wordpress except it's created by experts for you for a very low price. Features are amazing and they freakin' rank like beasts on search engines!

Sure they'll rank, but Amazon affiliate sites aren't allowed on WordPress.com.

"Sites whose primary purpose is to drive traffic to affiliate storefronts, rather than creating original content, will be banned as spam." - WordPress.com.

If you can't create an affiliate site that you know will end up covering the cost of its own hosting and domain name anyway, than you have bigger problems to worry about.

Probably. But they're lame.

Just get a badass domain name and push that.

A few years back getting a blog on wordpress.com was a good idea because it ranked easily and was good for building backlinks - ditto blogspot.com, hubpages etc.. Sadly, those days are gone and (as others have said) having WordPress on your own domain is the best way to go.

$90 per year for domain and hosting a single website is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much IMHO. You can get reseller hosting that enables you to host multiple sites for a lot less than that. Just do a search in Google for "cheap reseller hosting" or have a look on eBay (yes, really).

BTW, I strongly recommend you get hosting and domain reg. from different companies as that will give you more flexibility. Use somewhere like Namecheap or look for a $1 domain coupon with GoDaddy.

You know...I had 3 "free" wordpress blogs that were ranking fine on their own. BUT, when I changed them to forward to their own personal do com domains, the rankings for each of the 3 blogs jumped up Google each time.

From what I gather, Wordpress.com has a fairly powerful page rank and can do ok on their own. But there are things you can do to make them better

I think that free blogs are awesome, maybe they're not great if we think about long term, and there're some negative things as well.

Some negative aspects about it is that you can't customize it as much as you want, maybe you can't even add plugins, but to start with it's great. While you learn everything you are not spending any money at all, when you feel better with your website you can buy a domain and a hosting service to move your blog there.

They control your content, but even if the service go down, you have your own backups so there is no chance to lose anything, just go for it.

Free blogs rank the same as any other blog, content is king and promotion is queen, no matter the blog or platform.

Now, I will say it again, they are great to start with but as soon as you can, move it to your own control so you can do whatever you want, add tons of plugins, change anything you want and have full control of your business.

On WealthyAffiliate you can build a free blog, the all in one SEO plugin is included, you can also create widgets with banners to promote things.

You can use wordpress blog with a domain. But don't use wordpress free blog or blogspot . You can hire a developer and make a website using wordpress and start your business.