The Importance of Lead Validation in Internet Marketing

After building a lead generation campaign, one thing should be clear: how you are going to manage the many inquiries your site will generate. If you mismanage your leads, your site can turn into a wasteland, and that won’t be good for anyone. While many companies rely on Google Analytics for this task, there are a few holes in that type of tracking:

• There is no qualitative analysis; it only counts form submissions.
• Sixty percent of vital data is excluded because phone calls are not included.
• The Google Analytics goal doesn’t show the actual form submission.
• Most importantly, you cannot validate that the completed Google Analytics goal was a sales lead.

Those kinds of holes can cause you to miss out on valuable opportunities — so, what is the alternative? Lead validation, which is the process of separating sales leads from non-sales-related conversions, will give you the most accurate data from your lead generation campaigns.

“The Critical Importance of Lead Validation in Internet Marketing” study reveals that half of a company’s website inquiries are not sales leads. Other key findings from the lead validation study:

• The highest number of leads, with 19 percent for both days, converted on Mondays and Tuesdays, followed by 18 percent on Wednesdays and 17 percent on Thursdays.
• Most leads, 85 percent, converted on the first visit. After the first visit, the drop-off is significant, proving that site quality is a big deciding factor for website visitors.

Having this critical data will aid you in filling those holes in your lead generation campaign because you will discover:

• Which online marketing channel was responsible for each validated sales lead.
• The accurate number of sales inquiries versus other non-sales conversions (e.g., customer service communication, sales solicitations, job applications, phone misdials, spam form submissions, etc.).
• The cost per lead will be accurate as opposed to the cost per conversion, which the study proves can be misleading.
• How to optimize campaign performance based on sales leads instead of only inquiries, which can include a large amount of other types of conversions.

When marketers judge the success of their campaigns (SEO, PPC, email, etc.) on the number of inquiries they receive, there is a chance their results are largely overstated. A campaign that brings in a lot of inquiries may in reality be generating very few leads, whereas a campaign that generated few inquiries may be generating more solid leads.

Lead validation will ensure that marketers work off reliable data so that they can adjust campaigns accordingly to generate an abundance of quality leads.

This will improve the efforts of your sales team as well, and who doesn’t love great sales and marketing alignment? When the marketing team validates leads, the sales team spends less time sifting through a lot of non-leads and more time moving prospects further along the funnel.

This will get the best leads into their hands in the most effective way, improving follow-up response time and quality close rates.

Why Lead Validation Is a Necessary?

Based on our extensive data, an extremely high percentage of inquiries — roughly 50 percent — are something other than actual sales leads. Without a validation process, clients will easily fall into two serious traps:

First: they will overestimate the results of their campaigns, possibly by as much as 50 percent. This will lead them to invest in campaigns judged to be contributing ROI — campaigns that are in reality generating minimal returns or even losses.

Second: they will not be able to accurately determine which campaign elements are generating sales leads, as opposed to inquiries. This means campaigns will improve more slowly, or campaign changes judged to optimize lead generation will instead have a neutral or negative effect.

Article Source: SBWire

5 Ways to Build Emotionally Intelligent Leaders in Your Organization

Emotional intelligence has been identified as a strong indicator and even predictor of effective leadership. It has been studied and researched resulting in evidence that strongly suggests that organizations with emotionally intelligent leaders results in a higher return on investment. We have all read that EQ is defined as our ability to identify and manage our own emotions as well as recognize that of others and groups. It requires effective communication between the rational and emotive centers of our brain – it represents the path between feeling and reason.

The brain science surrounding EQ is quite powerful and compelling. As reported by Daniel Goleman in his book, "Primal Leadership, Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence", the four skills that together make up Emotional Intelligence include; self awareness and self management, which are about personal competence; and social awareness and relationship management, which are about social competence.

Goleman goes on to state that "Gifted leadership occurs where heart and head - feeling and thought - meet." Studies have found: EQ is a required competency for effective leaders; EQ is the #1 predictor of professional success & personal excellence; and EQ affects organizational profitability and performance.

Developing emotionally intelligent leaders is a smart business strategy and can start with embracing the following 5 practices:

1) Develop Inner Strength

Leadership begins and ends with inner strength requiring the ability to understand ourselves while consistently learning, growing and pushing in new ways. In addition to enhancing self awareness, strong leaders are adaptable to their surroundings, transparent, exhibit positive energy and practice emotional self-control.

Effective leaders are empathetic, service-oriented and organizationally aware of their surroundings, reading people and cues well. Lastly, they are relationship builders, inspiring others, influencing effectively, coaches, people developers, team collaborators and able to manage conflict as well as change. All of these are dimensions of emotional intelligence. Ongoing self assessment and exploration is key to leverage strengths as well as create development plans for growth.

2) Create a Culture of Compassion

Employees need to feel valued, appreciated and acknowledged for their contributions. Showing vulnerability and compassion is a sign of strength and creates an environment of trust. Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, discussed his own transformation and appreciation for the power of compassion as a foundation of leadership in his organization. He shared the impact it will have when you create a culture of compassion that guides all decisions, even the difficult ones resulting in a higher level of transparency, credibility and outcomes that are mutually embraced.

3) Enhance Relationship Building Across Levels and Functions
Open communications and a focus on establishing, building and nurturing long lasting relationships is essential. Connecting with individuals cross functionally and within other locations, geographies should be expected and encouraged throughout an organization. Engaging across, up and down should be a common standard that is supported with resources and tools to do so effectively. When we provide a venue for this kind of deep and rich relationship building, it creates a platform and norm enabling social competence to be developed and mastered.

4) Encourage and Invest in Continuous Learning

Working with leaders to understand and build their level of emotional intelligence also develops their capacity to role model behaviors that will empower and enable others to unleash their own leadership skills resulting in a strong talent pool for the organization. Great leaders are life-long learners always looking to further develop their knowledge, competencies and skills. In fact, there are a number of assessments that help us to determine our level of emotional intelligence allowing us to identify elements of strength as well as areas for improvement including the highly regarded BAR-ON EQ-i self assessment and 360 tool. There are also several resources available on this topic including the book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves.

5) Reinforce Qualitative AND Quantitative Metrics to Measure Outcomes

Learning organizations appreciate the value of using data analytics to make the business case to support development initiatives. There are a number of compelling findings included in Goleman's book that support this point as well. According to the Center for Creative Leadership, the three most significant causes of career derailment for executives involve deficits in emotional competence:

1. Difficulty Handling Change.
2. Inability to Work Well in a Team and 
3. Poor Interpersonal Relations.

According to Tony Simons, Harvard Business Review, the more associates feel trust in their bosses, an emotional response, the higher the profits for the organization. In one study, a 1/8 point improvement on a survey of employees' perceptions of how much managers earned their confidence increased profitability by 2.5%. That increase in profitability meant a quarter million dollar profit increase per business unit per year. The business case is strong for building emotionally intelligent leaders for positive impact on profitability and performance.

Building emotional intelligence is not only a strong predictor of effective leadership but can contribute to greater productivity, performance and ultimately profitability for all. What level of EQ do you and your leaders possess? Invest in developing your staff and your leadership potential at all levels of your organization. Remember, individuals do not have to be in a leadership role to be a leader. Unleash leadership skills in all!

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/

Top Trends to Watch in 2017: The Freelance Economy

Freelancers now account for nearly 35% of the U.S. workforce and the trend is only picking up speed with more professionals opting to create their own jobs in lieu of more traditional full-time employment.

As we head into the new year, we want to shed a bit more light on this burgeoning sector of the workforce. What kind of location, industry and demographic trends are surfacing among the freelance professionals of 2016? You might not know, for example, that a whopping 40% of our freelancers are concentrated in just four states: California, Texas, Florida and New York. Or that more senior men are most likely to take the leap into freelancing.

The time is ripe to be a freelancer in America so we’re revealing insider insights like these to help you learn more about this trending profession. Check out the report below - gleaned from a survey of more than 9,500 of our ProFinder professionals - to see what we discovered.

Methodology

The results of this analysis represent the world seen through the lens of data collected via a LinkedIn ProFinder survey. As such, it is influenced by how members chose to respond to survey questions, which can vary based on professional, social, and regional culture, as well as overall survey availability and accessibility. These variances were not accounted for in the analysis. The survey was distributed to ~53,000 active ProFinder professionals. This final analysis is comprised of data submitted from 9,589 of these LinkedIn ProFinder members.

Industry Favorites

 

Marketing, Business Consulting and Design topped the charts as the leading industries for freelance work in 2016. In fact, these three categories accounted for nearly 50% of our ProFinder survey respondents.

Who’s Doing What?

 

Younger freelancers lean on skills and technology, while older freelancers leverage experience and established personal networks. According to our data, skills-based fields like writing, photography and home improvement are the most popular amongst younger freelancers. On the other hand, more senior freelance professionals tend to take on roles as coaches, business consultants, real estate professionals and marketers.

Bright Lights, Big Cities!

 

According to our data, 40% of freelance professionals are concentrated in four states with major urban populations: California, Texas, Florida and New York.

Profile Patterns

 

The average freelancer is currently an older male. According to our data, the more senior a professional is in their career, the more likely they are to take on freelance work or transition into freelancing as an alternative to retirement. On top of that, nearly two-thirds of all professional freelancers surveyed were male.

Money, Money, Money

 

According to our data, just over half of all freelance professionals report earning 100% of their annual income from their freelance work. That leaves a massive number of freelancers who are taking projects on the side of their day jobs, hoping to grow their self-employed income distribution next year.

Paid Per Project

 

According to our data when it comes to hourly rates, there’s a broad spectrum of how much freelancers are charging for their time. Average hourly rates tend to be in the $50-$150/hr. range, with older freelancers typically charging more than their younger counterparts. When it comes to billing, more than two-thirds of freelancers charge either by the project, feature or on a retainer basis, which reduces the need to track hours for projects.

Top Earners

 

Certified pros are in high demand. According to our data, freelancers who practice law, offer certified coaching or financial services tend to charge significantly more than other types of freelancers. The freelance fields of work that command the lowest rates, such as writing, design and software development have lower barriers to entry and measurably more competition.

10 Powerful Habits for Building a Personal Brand

CREDIT: Getty Images

Building and promoting your own personal brand is as important for you as it is for any company. Maybe more.

We all know the power of brands. Who anywhere in the world isn't familiar with McDonald's fabled golden arches, Coca-Cola's distinctive red-and-white logo, or the green Starbucks mermaid?

But here's a secret--building and promoting your own personal brand is just as important for your success and happiness as it is for any business. In fact, since it's you we're talking about, it might be even more important.

In her book Personal Branding and Marketing Yourself, executive coach, trainer, and consultant Rita B. Allen explains that there are 10 habits you should adopt to market yourself while building a more powerful personal brand.

1. Identify specific target markets
When you're building your brand, it's better to first focus on a few, most-promising targets, than to try to reach out to the entire world all at once. You'll get the greatest payoff for your time and money by identifying the segments of your market where you are likely to achieve the greatest rewards, and then pursuing them relentlessly.

2. Know your marketplace
Your brand is only as good as you are. Stay up to date with your industry--the latest news, practices, companies, and other information. The moment you begin to fall behind is the moment your brand will begin to tarnish.

3. Be visible and "in play"
Building a brand means getting out of your office and becoming very visible to your target audience and potential customers and clients. Attend networking events and become active in your profession and community. The more visible you are, the stronger your brand.

4. Become a source of relevant information
You should be someone people contact when they want expert advice or information on a particular topic. When you build a following as a content expert, you put yourself in position to be viewed as a trusted authority, which will attract people to you.

5. Always give something back to your profession and community
When you give back to others, not only will you gain the personal satisfaction that comes from doing it, but you'll build your brand in ways that money can't buy. People will remember the good deeds you have done, and your personal brand will benefit as a result.

6. Practice networking etiquette
Networking is all about marketing yourself, but it's also about giving others the opportunity to market themselves to you. Make sure that your networking efforts are beneficial to both you and to the people with whom you are networking. It's a two-way street.

7. Maintain your shelf life and develop an effective social media presence
In the publishing world of which I am a part, you're only as good as your latest book. Don't rest of your laurels, as impressive as they may be. Continue to do great work and achieve great things. And in these days of social media, don't ignore your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other accounts.

8. Create a networking database
Keep an up-to-date computer listing or database of all your networking contacts and social media connections.

9. Have a clear, brief message to deliver
The founder of every startup has a well-honed elevator pitch--ready to break out at a moment's notice when the opportunity presents itself. You should have a similar pitch ready for your own personal brand. What is your value proposition? Why should someone work with you?

10. Don't ever stop!
Building and marketing a personal brand is all about generating momentum--and then sustaining it over a long period of time. Once you get the ball rolling, then keep it rolling. It's a lot easier to keep the momentum going than it is to start all over again from scratch.

Source: Inc.com

SEO Tips for Affiliate Website

Nowadays, search engine's organic ranking is much harder, especially for an affiliate marketing website. So how do you get higher organic ranking? The SEO Strategy can be different from site to site, but some of the standards remain the same regardless of the topic or niche.

Here’s How To Do SEO For An Affiliate Website That Gets Higher Search Ranking:

Branded Domain Names
Choosing a strategic domain name that represent your affiliate business is not just a task for those starting up their own businesses. For many, the decision to launch your own affiliate website comes many years after you’ve already built a profitable affiliate business. Use a keyword rich domain name, but avoid looking spammy.

Shopify Have a list of 10 free tools can help you choose a great domain name.

Keyword Strategy
Keyword Strategies are essential to develop a search engine optimized website. The best keyword strategies rely on highly relevant keywords & placement on important parts thought your affiliate website, which are keywords that relate closely to your affiliate business or are associated with the industry you are promoting.

Follow these my standard on-site optimization guidelines:

Make sure the title title tag of each page uses 1-2 keywords, is less than 65 characters in length, and doesn’t contain stop words like “and, of, is,” etc.

The meta description tag should be between 150 and 160 characters snippet used to summarize a web page's content. You should include at least 2-4 relevant keywords in the meta description.

The meta description tag won't help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your website search listing. Search engines sometimes use these snippets in search results to let visitors know what a page is about before they click on it.

Use HTML header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6), short paragraphs, and lists (UL or OL) to make your written content easy for readers to scan, and be sure to use keywords in these elements (just don’t stuff keywords where they don’t really belong).

In content links are the most powerful links on a page – footer and sidebar links have fairly low value. Therefore, some of your most powerful on-site links are from in-text links in your website’s articles or blogs.

Use keywords in every page’s file name or URL, every image file name, etc.

When you add an image to a page, be sure to use an alt tag that contains appropriate keyword(s) relevant to the surrounding content.

Link images to pages – the “anchor text” of an image link is the text you place in the alt tag.

Don’t place important content in IFRAMEs, Javascript tags, or as text inside an image.

Don’t use javascript or CSS tricks to try and “hide” text from the user for the purposes of fooling the search engines – this is a great way to get your site penalized by Google or Bing.

When you name files, avoid using underscores, capital letters, or spaces – these characters can lead to broken links and/or crawling issues. Instead, use a dash to separate keywords in file names (just-like-this.html).

Truly Unique Content
By Truly Unique Content, I means content should be original and not duplicated from anywhere else. Unique content plays a crucial role in search rankings organic ranking because search algorithms rate unique content highly and penalize websites for posting duplicate content.

Invest in quality, unique content & add new content to your site on a regular basis. Focus your SEO efforts on creating great content, and then promote that content one link at a time.

Backlinks
The Importance of Backlinks. If you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important.

When a website links to any other site, it's called a backlink. In the past, backlinks were the major metric for the ranking of a webpage. A page with a lot of backlinks tended to rank higher on all major search engines, including Google.

Due to link spamming, search engine like google don't pay much attention to all links. All Links are Not Equal & and some are worth a lot more than others.

Get a link from the manufacturer: Get a link from the manufacturer who’s products you promoting. Often it’s very easy & just sending them an email and asking them for a link that will do the trick. You may have to convince them you are legit, so if you have a ho-hum website with crappy content, they won’t buy it and will probably think you are a spammer.

Business Directory Listing
When you list your business in high traffic business directory sites, you are putting your company in front of people searching for services and products just your like yours.

Search Engine Submission
Search engine submission should be one of the first steps to take for SEO. I don't have this as number one because this list is not a top ranking guide. The purpose of SEO is to rank on search engines, so your first initiative will be to get your website indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are other search engines you can submit to, checkout this list out.

Video Submission
You can use videos for brand interaction and engagement. After running a couple of text videos, I found out - you can get more interactions and engage with videos than you would with an image or text.

Article Submission
You have written a very informative article, how will you share it? The best way is through article submission sites. Content submission techniques work best because you are bringing instant value to the table.

Web 2.0 submission sites
These sites can have you post content with a do-follow link back to your website. As the internet grows, you start to take control of what you can post and how you want it viewed online.

Guest Posting
When you are an expert, you can find platforms that accept guest posts. When you guest post, you can include a backlink to your website from your content.

Classified Posting
Remember when you ad to post in a classified ad magazine? Well now, you can find classified sites that where you can post your advertisement online and build traffic.

Blog Posting & Submission
Unless you have thousands of dollars to spend on bring relevant or targeted traffic to your site, you will need a blog that is connected to your website. With your blog, you can post news, updates and other informative content that can nurture your visitors.

Press Release Submission
When you submit a press release, your release is hosted on different high authoritative sites that help with more visibility online. This is not necessarily a link building technique, but it's very important as to how you get your website news to the media.

Nich Blog Commenting
Make sure to read the blog post and keep your comments simple. You don't want to talk about anything else than the post. As for your backlink, make sure to include your name, domain and email in the signature section of the comment form.

Blog comment links is NOT a sustainable or effective way to get links. In fact, they can actually hurt your site in the following instances:

The blog where you posted the comment link is not related to your site.
The blog has been blasted with other spam comments.
If the site where you posted the comment link is penalized.
You use your keyword as the anchor text instead of your name.
If all the links pointing to your site are only from blog comments

Social Profile Creation
When you create a social media account, make sure to include you url in your account details and also fill-out the description box appropriately. Most quality social sites are indexed frequently, so it's good to be a part of them as to grow your brand and increase exposure.

Social Bookmarking Submission
You want your site indexed by search engines faster? Then look for quality social bookmarking sites. With these sites, you can save pages of your website that can be shared on the web.

Photo Sharing
How time has changed, with technology comes different visual ways of interaction. Photo sharing sites are one of the most authoritative sites on the web today. This will include your website in search engine images and rank your website for related keywords. For best results make sure all inbound links are do-follow.

Infographic Submission
Thinking about it - 10 years ago, no one really knew how effective infographics where at the time. today you need them for presentations and visual interactive content. Infographs can help you build quality authoritative links from expert sources online. See a list of sites.

Memes Submission
Photo to snippet videos is becoming a trend. Most post on social media are memes today, so use them to your advantage. Create your own memes, include them in your content and link back to your post on meme sites.

Niche Directory Submission
Submitting your site to niche directories can help you build a brand recognition. When people get to see your site on different directories they frequently visit, the end result will be them trying out your service or product. The are hundreds of niche directories online, just focus on the ones that are directly related to your site and content.

Question & Answers Sites
With the landscape for learning increasing, you can find question and answer site that can allow you to flex your knowledge and skills to help others looking for answers. With question and answer sites you can be sure to include links to valuable content within your site or on your site blog.

Review & Rating Sites
Review and rating sites are becoming more popular due to the fact that today, most people prefer to buy products with recommendations from others who have used it before. Get involved on review submission sites to create high quality do-follow links and increase web targeted traffic to your website.

Micro-blogging Submission
When you create a lot of short content pieces, how do you get your articles or message out there? Micro-blogging sites can help get you there. These sites allow you to publish your own content and curate it. Within your content and profile account, you can post your url and build referral traffic to your website.

PDF Submission Sites
Create white label content like; e-books, guides and checklist manuals to share on these sites. PDF submission sites can be a tremendous way for building quality inbound links because they are easy to link to and share on other channels. See a list of PDF submission sites.

Backlins By Interviews
Backlins By Interviews is an awesome way to build links(or at least get tweets or shares) for your affiliate site. Just find an influencer in your niche and interview them. People can never get enough publicity, so a little bit of flattery goes a long, long way!

You can find influencer on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook

Broken Link Building
Broken Link Building is a link building tactic, broken link building is an effective, white-hat, scalable, content-focused link building strategy that builds links through finding broken links, recreating that broken content, and helping webmasters replace broken links with your corrected link.

Using Check My Links, a handy and free Chrome extension(find it in the Toolkit), you can get see which links are broken. Next step? Email the webmaster informing them of the broken links, and casually ask for a link back to your site.

If the website doesn’t have a contact page or social profiles, you can search the domain name on Whois and if the domain info is public, you can find the site owner’s email address. Send them an email, and see what happens. Success rates will vary from niche to niche, but expect one or two replies for every fifty to one hundred messages you send(Yes, it’s that much work!)

Competitive Link Building
Competitive link building is the art of identifying and acquiring links to your competitors' websites. Going after these types of links is a great way to rank higher on search engine.

Think about it, you search on google & find "abcdotcom" top of google search. Then you find out all incoming links to "abcdotcom" & acquired links to your site from each of the website links to "abcdotcom".

Guess What?

your affiliate website is on the top of "abcdotcom".

Link Prospecting
Link Prospecting is the another art of identifying and acquiring links to your websites. But it often time-consuming and challenging parts of link building. In order to build and maintain a natural link profile for your affiliate website, your prospecting activity needs to cover a wide range of opportunities and generate the right targets and leads for your project/campaign. So prospecting is usually pretty easy to start off with - run a few Google searches and you've got yourself a set of content-rich websites within your target industry.

Ran A Contests or Giveaways
There’s absolutely tons of freebie websites out there or websites that share sweepstakes or contests. This one is a no-brainer, yet so many people don’t do it. It’s a great method to get links AND e-mail addresses.

Maybe not the best option if you sell expensive things like 24 karat gold cufflinks, but if you sell something within a $100-$150 price range, a contest is something worth looking into. With a contest, you approach a blog(or blogs), and ask them to sponsor the contest for you. Usually they will require you to buy ad space or send them a product sample. They review the product and host the contest on their blog, and the way people can enter is that they have to like/follow you for an entry. If your host blog is big, the contest will be picked up by other smaller blogs that will link to that blog and maybe your site as well. For one or two samples of your product, you end up getting a few hundred likes/followers and a nice link or two.

Beware of Paid links, automated link building tools, cheap link building services, and other link building schemes.

Site speed matters.

Self-Hosted WordPress VS Free WordPress

Self Hosted WordPress.org vs. Free WordPress.com

Today I had to answer on an ever-ending debate "Self-Hosted WordPress VS Free WordPress" which is better for personal blogging. The actual question was Is it recommended to buy a domain for blogging over the free one on WordPress?

Here're all the opinions expressed on https://www.quora.com/

Ferdinand Brueggemann
Runs a Wordpress blog since 2004

It depends. If you new to blogging, start with the free version. Thus you can start blogging immediately and don’t have to care about anything else, except selecting a nice theme. 

On the long run I would move to a self hosted blog. This is the only way to control (and own) everything and to create a blog 100% to your liking by adding plugins and implementing design changes.

Ryan Biddulph
I can help you create content and connect with leaders to build a pro blog.

Hi Ben, 

Oh hell yeah :) 

But….make sure to buy your domain *and* hosting for these reasons:

• Own your online real estate
• brand yourself effectively
• build a professional looking blog
• tap into the amazing functionality of Wordpress
• avoid getting kicked off free blogging platforms, like a squatter is kicked out of a home after somebody buys the property

Adame Dahmani
11 years freelance { WordPress; Web design & development; Web marketing; }

Using a domain will cost you at least a personal plan ($2.99 a month at WordPress.com). The free one doesn’t allow using custom domains. 

One of the new component of SEO in 2017 is building personal brands, and having a domain is one step to achieve that. 

Get a domain name if you want to do things properly. If you want to blog for the sake of sharing, you can do that without using a domain :)

Manasa Jain
I do a little blogging too :)

If your intension is to just to convey information over the web, then you can stick to the free version, however there are lot of limitations when it comes to customising your website. 

If you are willing to make some money through online advertising then you should definitely get your own domain. Here is my answer for why: Manasa Jain's answer to What are the advantages of owning your own domain for blogging and earning money?

Adeel Sami
Blogger

You’re not build to call a rented place your home. So the same applies to the free domain. You need to build yourself around the premium domain, the domain you have control of. The domain you’re given the full access of. So, must buy the domain for blogging!

Exabee Sg
3 years of experience as internet marketing executive

Well, the answers is YES. 

Free wordpress has limited theme support which limit you to modify the CSS or other codes within the theme. Also, most of the free wordpress also does not allow users to upload any free, pad or custom plugins. 

So of you wish to have full control on your website and keep 100% of the revenue you make, it is better to opt for paid wordpress. There are much more low rate and affordable web hosting service available to host your wordpress.

Hope this helps:)

Brian McIntomney
Been buying and selling domains for awhile now

My recommendation would be to start off with a free blog. Post unique content regularly. Promote your blog on social media, sites like Twitter, Facebook and others. Keep an eye on the traffic (visits) that you blog receives. 

If your blog starts receiving a fair amount of visits (depends on topic, in some “niches” 25 visits per day is fantastic while in others, not so impressive), then I would get a domain name and hosting. 

Basically, a lot of blogs fail because of commitment. A successful blog doesn’t happen overnight.

Sohel Parvez
Online Marketing Consultant Specializing in Local SEO (It's Me Folk)

If you’re looking to build your own WordPress website, the most important difference between Self-Hosted WordPress and Free WordPress is the ability to customize almost anything. Self-Hosted WordPress lets you do it, Free WordPress does not. That’s it. 

Both Self-Hosted WordPress and Free WordPress are Great Options and It All Depends on Few Factors:

• The Nature of Your Website
• Your Technical Expertise.
• The Amount of Time You can Invest in it.
• Your Budget.

For instance, if you want to operate a simple blog and don’t need powerful functionality like eCommerse? In such cases, it’s best to go with free WordPress Version. You’ll have your site up and running within minutes, won’t have to worry about maintenance, and you’ll be able to share your content with the world – all without having to reach for your wallet.

But what if you’re thinking about operating an Membership or eCommerse Website then it’s best to go with Self-Hosted WordPress simply because free WordPress doesn’t offer these advanced functionality.

Alwin Reyes
Life Lover!

For me, have your own domain name is better, but not a must if you’re just starting out. I said it’s better mainly because of the control you have with your website in terms of customization of theme and plugins you’re allowed to use. 

In a paid version, you can select any theme you like (free or paid), as long as it is WordPress compatible. Plus, you can use any plugins you need. For a free version, you can’t do these things, which I think is very important in blogging.

Santo Singh
Web Developer & Content Writer

Recommend to buy one personal domain name if you want to be listed in google

Zara Balika

No not at all you can go for Freebies..