NoClue: Paid versus Not

I know, I said I’d work on figuring out Pinterest as a writing platform. And I am. I converted it to a business account (still figuring out the details on that one), and I’m making an effort to pin more regularly. But when I tried to incorporate some of the things that business accounts have as features, I ran into a little snag.

WordPress.com has a lot of great features for setting up a blog, not the least of which is that it’s free. There are lots of bells and whistles that can be added (like the domain name or a nicer blog theme, among other things). I am broke, so free is good.

But then I try to use “WordPress plugins”, which do not work on the free sites. That’s because they pretty much have all that stuff built in. It’s not customizable, but it usually works pretty well. Mostly.

Every site I have ever read on the topic agrees that for those who want a more professional blog that can make them money and reach more people, you need a WordPress.org blog. You pay for hosting, download the client, and then design the site. There’s a bunch of plugins that can be used for almost any purpose, like the Pinterest one I was looking at.

It’s a lot of information from a lot of different sources, and I’d summarize but there’s no point. Those interest should do their own research and come to their own conclusions. My conclusion is that yes, eventually I will convert this blog and really push it, but right now I’m still learning. I can’t afford the expense and I can’t put the time into this blog yet to make it worth it.

But I know it’s an option. I know it’s there, and while I definitely don’t know exactly how to do it, Google is my friend. There are dozens of blog posts out there that will help me figure out how to upgrade when it’s time.