Who Owns Your Blog Content?
ByI’ve said it often: Having a blog is one of the best ways to get your message out.
However, it can’t be just any blog.
Someone contacted me this past weekend about doing a Virtual Book Tour. His book is about to be published, he has a blog and is doing a lot of things right.
However, his blog is hosted on Wordpress.com, rather than his own site. I learned from my blogging coach, Cathy Perkins a.k.a. the Wordpress Wizard, exactly why you don’t want your blog hosted on that site or blogger.com or any site that isn’t your own.
Simply:
You don’t own the content, and you can’t sell anything.
Read the Terms of Use carefully, if you have your blog hosted on wordpress.com or blogger.com.
In some cases, you can’t sell anything. They retain the right to shut you down, without warning, if you sell anything on the site. (Now, it may take them a while to find out. But if/when they do, they can shut you down.)
Also, you don’t necessarily own the content on your blog when you let them host it. If you’re an author or aspiring author, your content is what you have to sell. You MUST own it.
Do you want to be shut down and lose all your content? It’s worth the $5-10 or so a month to get hosted, and the $10 or so per year to get your own domain name.
Solution: Get your own domain name, host it at a good hosting company, install a Wordpress blog (it only takes a couple of minutes if you host here). If you have a blog now, you can import it, and you’re all set.
Your content is too valuable not to own it and protect it. And, of course you want the freedom to sell whatever you want on your site. A blog can help you “be well heard and well paid for what you know and love to do”–but only if you do it right.
To learn how to not only “do it right” but also ENJOY it and not get bogged down with technical roadblocks, I suggest you check out the WordPress Workshop that is coming up next week. Cathy is my blogging coach and I recommend her to you, too. You want complete control over your blog and your content, and this course will give you everything you need to know to do that.
8 Comments
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Excellent point, Diane! This is crucial and if bloggers are unfamiliar with anything about a blog, they can learn it all from The Wordpress Wizard like you and I do. She even offers FREE 30 minute TeleSeminars on blogging on Wednesdays!
September 23rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
thank you diane for all you do.
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:37 pm
A couple of people Tweeted me that you CAN sell from blogger. com.
Here’s what it actually says on the FAQ page about blogger.com and Wordpress.com. I am adding my comments in italic.
“One other aspect of Blogger that is a bonus is that the site can be used commercially, meaning that it can be monetized. You can use AdSense ads on Blogger or links to your product or affiliate products.” MY COMMENT: Note very carefully that you can monetize it ONLY through Adsense or LINKS to your product. See below.
“Blogger does have a couple of limitations. It does not provide static pages, like an ordinary website, that contain additional information about you or your product. However, there are ways to create virtual pages with links to that information. Also, it does not offer storage space, so you cannot upload a file for viewers to download.”
TRANSLATION: You can add a LINK to your site, but you can’t actually have a sales page on the actual blog.
And my original point stands: Who owns the rights? Read the user terms carefully.
On blogger.com, Google states that you do own the content, BUT it
adds: “By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.”
TRANSLATION: It may be your content, but Google can also do with it wants with it. AND they can refuse to accept, display etc. any of your content at its sole discretion.
Wordpress.com says nothing specific–which makes me nervous.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Hello Diane,
I’d like to add that WordPress and Blogger aren’t the only games in town. All of my websites are built on the TypePad blogging platform, and they definitely do allow you to sell things on your site. Here is their comparison of the three major blog services:
http://www.typepad.com/about/typepad-vs-wordpress-vs-blogger.html
I buy my domain names at GoDaddy.com and forward them to my websites, which are hosted on the Typepad site. Yes, there are some potential disadvantages to not hosting on my own, but there are also advantages, like being easier for non-techie people to set up and getting free tech support.
On Typepad I can create blogs, websites or combination sites. Here are a couple of examples:
My blog site at http://www.BookMarketingMaven.com has additional pages, so it functions as both a blog and a website.
My book site has only product pages, but no blog entries: http://www.SavvyBookMarketer.com
Thanks for bringing this up — I think it’s a good discussion on a topic many people find confusing. I agree it’s a good idea to read the terms of service for any platform that you’re considering.
Dana
September 25th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Hi Diane,
I agree it’s very important for bloggers to know what rights they give up.
On WordPress.com you retain complete ownership of your content and we specifically wrote the WordPress.com terms to get the most narrow possible license to allow us to display and promote your content and nothing more.
Similarly, you are free to promote products (your own or others) on WordPress.com. What we do not allow is AdSense and pyramid schemes. More info can be found at support.wordpress.com/advertising
September 26th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Toni – Here is what people read in the wordpress.com forum – 2nd sticky post.
“You do not control the software or the database; FTP and shell access are not included. WordPress.com is based on multi-user version of the software which does not permit uploading PHP themes or plugins. Javascript and CSS are also restricted for security reasons. What you can do on WordPress.com is blog for free.”
“For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, basic traffic stats, comment tracking, blog and post rankings and other features not available anywhere else.:
“With WordPress.org, you can install themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database and even modify the PHP source code.”
This forum post says nothing about advertising on wordpress.com. It does talk about advertising and editing the database, etc. with a self hosted wordpress blog.
So – who owns the data? Is my data in your database accessible by me? What if I need my data restored? You do say you do backups but can I get my data restored? What happens if you shut me down? Do I get my data so I can go elsewhere?
These are really important questions and I’d love to hear an answer! Perhaps there is mis-information afoot that needs to be cleared.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Hi there,im fairly new to all of this blogging stuff,and also writing a book.It is my first book and i dont want to mess anything up.I thank each and every one of you who have added your comments on this site.
I have found the feed back and information very helpful.And also a big thanks to diane for having the patients and sticking with me upon this announcement.
May 4th, 2011 at 9:35 am
I am interested in writing a blog and I am totally concerned with the copyright. This is a great site. I want to learn more, as well as about making money with ads. I will check out what is stated here but what to know my buyer beware info before I jump in. Any thoughts?
This is a good site that you have.
Wendy