Visit the forums and you will find that the debate rages on. Is it better to use a free blog service, or pay for your own domain and hosting? In my opinion the answer is both!

The biggest advantage to having a self hosted blog is that you have the most control over your blog. You can post the ads you want and the content you want.And when you you use a provider such as Hostgator or GoDaddy you can rest assured you will have reliable hosting without too much downtime.

But there are advantages to using a free host. The number one advantage is that it is free! Free blogs are a great way to test the water of blogging. Try it out and get some experience before you actually pay money to blog. Free hosts are also a useful source of backlinks to your regular blogs.

There are some downsides to free hosts. Some will place ads on your sites. Some will not allow you to place your own ads on your site. Read the terms of service carefully and make sure that the host you choose will meet your needs.

Following is a list of free host sites. My favorite, just because it is small and I know the owner is Blogging4Life. My blog there is Katalina Online. Have fun creating your free blogs!

Blogging4life.com
Freeblogs.org
FreeBlogIt.com
Blog.com
MyBlogSite.com
informationjunkie.net
blogsome.com
weebly.com
wordpress.com
blogger.com
livejournal.com
theblogs.net
thoughts.com
webnode.com
blog.co.uk
freeblog.org.uk
bravenet.com
yola.com
webs.com
bloguni.com
sosblog.com
wix.com
doodlekit.com
vox.com
tumblr.com
blogskinny.com
blogeasy.com
blogr.com

Knowing that I really needed to get a post up that had nothing to do with my December giveaway, and actually had something to do with blogging, I went searching eZine Articles for something to put up here fast. When you are rushed for time it is an appealing idea, and I have to admit I have done it more than once. It is not hard to tell on my blogs, I follow the rules and leave all the links. Usually it is a simple task. Select an article, cut, paste, done.

It didn’t work that way today. First off, most of the articles on blogging were “How To Get Rich Blogging” articles. I don’t believe many of the authors have actually gotten rich from blogging, so I am not all that interested in whatever affiliate program they are pushing. The rest of the articles were just rehashes of the same old stuff. Anyone who has been blogging for more than a week probably knows to find a niche, write great content, and write often. If they have been blogging for a month they probably have guessed that SEO is important, (even if they don’t know what that is, or if like me, they would rather write for readers than search engines!), pictures make your posts pop (apparently pictures of scantily clad women are best, even if your post is about SEO). Then there is always the self hosted vs free hosting discussion. Go ahead and bash whatever you are not doing.

So, because I have no time, the best thing to do is waste time, I go blog hopping. Entrecard is good for this. I’ll just do a little widget surfing and maybe some blog out there will give me inspiration and help me to write the post that Diggers will Digg, Stumblers will Stumble, and the almighty Google will put in the #1 position of every search. In addition the readers of this remarkable post will click every sponsored link and buy every affiliate product, making me an overnight millionaire.

I know my standards were high and I was asking the impossible. But it is hard to be inspired by a post on “I’m sorry I haven’t been posting”. Or the, “I need original content so I will scrap this post and run it through Google translator a couple times and the resulting gibberish is sure to bring tons of readers and instant wealth” posts. And the inevitable “make money online” posts.

Of course, my favorite posts are the ones on mesotheliomia. Because when someone clicks on an ad for mesotheliomia it pays really well so even if my blog has nothing to do with mesotheliomia I will make sure that I use the word mesotheliomia lots, because using high paying keywords, like mesotheliomia, are the best way to instant riches. (Of course it might help if I knew how to spell mesotheliomia.)

So, my poor readers, still believing that any post is better than no post, I have subjected you to over 500 words of pretty useless ranting. But I know that I read somewhere that between 525 and 550 word posts are the best for SEO, keywords and instant riches, so I’ll just leave it at that!

In a previous article I mentioned some of the most popular niches among Entrecard users. However, this time I’d like to bring to your attention another aspect of the Entrecard community: something that all users have in common.

I know that trying to analyse thousands of people as a whole may be complicated. Anyone slightly familiar with Internet marketing concepts knows that we should preferably target niches. Still, I insist: despite the several divisions, niches and subniches that you can identify on the Entrecard directory, there is one way to address the entire community’s need at once.

All Entrecard users want traffic

Regardless of niche and personal preferences, what all Entrecarders want is traffic, above all else. It doesn’t matter what they want this traffic for. It may be for money making purposes, or for fame, or just to find more people to exchange views… Whatever they want, doesn’t change the fact that traffic is the way to achieve it.

Entrecard is such a successful site exactly because it meets its users’ expectations. Moreover, it’s reliable, unlike many other suspicious traffic generating offers that you may find all over the Internet.

What can you do about this simple lesson?

1. Use this as a model when you need to analyze large groups of consumers. See what needs they have in common. While smaller groups are easier to understand, it’s always possible to look at the big picture.

2. Leverage Entrecard’s userbase. One site that has been successfully doing it is BlogEngage. It would have taken me much longer to find this site if it wasn’t for all the Entrecard spots that it buys on several blogs. And note that BlogEngage is also another traffic generating site. It’s a perfect match for Entrecarders.

3. Create your own traffic generating service. There are thousands of webmasters and bloggers out there waiting for good promotional tools. Entrecard does have some competitors, but none of them has managed to become as popular. Can you take this challenge and create a better solution?

I have more Entrecard-related tips to share with you. Subscribe to The WebMaster Blog so you don’t miss any future post. And remember that by subscribing you’ll have the chance to win several prizes in our contest. Click here to learn more about it.