Wordpress blog VS Wordpress site?

The ability to customize, monetize, make additions, add plugins, and choose the nature of the content.

These are restricted with free blog hosts.

You have complete control over your site (Wordpress or otherwise) if you host it yourself. You are not limited by which themes or plugins you can use.

On one occasion, I also had a WP blog suspended because they deemed it as blatant advertising! No chance of that happening if you host it yourself.

I agree with both posters. First, you have the flexibility of installing whatever plug-ins you want. Second, and even more importantly, you can monetize your blog with your own products, AdSense, CPA, etc. which is against the TOS of other sites. Finally, you won't be subject to some grouchy editor who suspends your blog because they don't like it or agree with your content. Finally, finally, your blog won't be hosted by a company that might get acquired or switch to a paid subscription model. Hope this helps.

TomG.

You can do anything you want if you are hosting your own wordpress script blog.

Yes, you should, and build wordpress site on it. Like everyone said, you will always have full control to your site. You can have automatic plugin that will easier your life in managing content, especially if you want to do with articles.

And it's really not that hard or time consuming. Not very much work involved at all - especially if you use a host that is Fantastico enabled. You can run through a wizard to set up WP on your domain.

Go for it!

ok, great, you have convinced me to use my own site, and I did not know it was that easy to install a wordpress theme, I will check it out in cpanel

/Karl

Karl,
You would do better hosting your own blog and there are many benefits.. Some have already mentioned some of these benefits but you also have the ability to..

Add-On to your blog by creating sub-domain for individual products, affiliate products, and etc.. Linking these sub-domains to and from your blog using the same domain name has benefits in itself...

Simple WordPress Starters Guide
(Assuming your blog is installed at your main domain)

* Create a sub-domain myproduct.myblog.com and create a page with that product. Make sure that you link to the blog from this created page. Link can be in the footer if you wish, just as long as there is a link.

* After creating the page with the product on the sub-domain name, then login to your blog and create a post about said product and link to the created page for that product.

What you are doing is cross-linking your product and your blog. Do this with 5 or 10 or more products, each time cross-linking and blogging about the product.

* Going a step further you can also create a category specific for each product so when you make a blog post about that product then it is well organized and more user friendly.

* By having your own category for each product make sure to make 1 - 2 post each week for each of the products in that products category. This will give your blog fresh content and help keep your product promoted.

Increasing your blog exposure

* Make sure you get the All-In-One-SEO plugin as this will help with promotion of your blog.

* Make sure you get XML Sitemap plugin as each time you make a post it will update your sitemap and notify google, yahoo, msn, and ask.com

* Make sure to setup your permalinks for more seo friendly url's.

Doing the above will help you have a better chance of creating a blog that will generate money and traffic.

James