SBLC Moving to WordPress

I almost feel I would rather move to a different home than move to WordPress.  I am a wee bit scared.  Mainly because I am not a fan of change, and… oh yeah, I have no idea what I am doing.  So, I have that going for me.  Yikes.

Why am I moving from Blogger to WordPress?  I am delighted that you asked.  The short answer is that a very successful blog mentor of mine told me to.  I have learned that if you want what someone else has, you have the best chance of getting it if you do what they did.  Brilliant, I know.  Considering her advice (after I got past the “No way, not ever” phase), I dug in and educated myself on the advantages of packing up and moving.  I have read several posts on this topic, and I attended a twitter chat last evening by Blogelina. While I have not experience with WP as of yet, here are the factors that convinced me:

• Better SEO – this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, seeing as how Blogger is Google, but it is a fact.  Bloggers switching to WP will get higher search engine traffic (assuming the transfer is done such that no backlinks, posts, etc are lost in the process)
• Plugins that give you amazing capabilities. such as automatically switching out your ads, sending a customized email to every first time visitor, enabling your page to load significantly faster, impressive post organization/editing capabilities, etc.
• There are actually businesses that will not work with blogger sites.  Having your site on WordPress says you are invested in your site.
• You arrange your own host when you use WordPress.org (which is what I am referring to in this post – not WordPress.com), so you are in complete control of your page.  This is in contrast to Blogger and WordPress.com, which provides the host service.

Many of the above perks I listed are also going to contribute to a big learning curve, but I am told by those who have gone before me that the benefits far outweigh the hassel of becoming familiar with a new platform.  I am paying a small monthly fee to Godaddy, since I had to arrange a hosting site.  I chose Blogelina to handle my transfer.  I found her fee to be reasonable.  At $85, it includes a year of hosting.  I am not being compensated for mentioning Blogelina.  I have just started the process, so I can’t really review the service yet, but I will once I am all settled in my new home.  Why does this feel like I am transferring to a new junior high school?!

I must give a shout out to Crafterminds as a splendid resource for crafty bloggers.  A group of wildly creative bloggers have teamed up to bring a wealth of useful information from saying no,  to best ways to promote other blogs,  to finding your niche.  Everything is aimed at growing your crafty blog, and their combined experience is invaluable.  There is a tweet chat every Monday, and I have learned a ton by reading through the transcripts of past tweet chats, which they post on their site.  I plan to be there live this Monday.  If you have never tweet chatted before, don’t worry, it is easy.  Here is Craftermind’s all inclusive explanation.

That is about all for now.  If you have trouble accessing me in the near future, don’t give up.  I will resurface on my new platform, with the same web address.  Here goes!