Two-thirds of readers of this blog use WordPress as a blogging platform, according to results of the poll set up 6 days ago. If you haven’t voted yet, please do so here.
Typepad users make up 14.5% of my blog readers, and the other platforms are in the single digits. Of WordPress users, 25.3% use a platform hosted by WordPress.com, 44% use a self-hosted WordPress blog.
Because of the overwhelming majority who use WordPress, my next teleseminar will be designed for WP users. Specifically, I’m going to interview an expert about how to create a sales page using WordPress. Stay tuned for a date, and… of course, a WP sales page where you can sign up for the free class and learn more WordPress tips.
As you probably know, I switched from a Typepad hosted blog a couple of months ago to self-hosted WordPress, with a Headway theme. So far, I’m very pleased with both the ease of posting, the design and widget features, and the SEO results.
I admit, I wasn’t disappointed in any way with Typepad. It was fine and I might have continued with it except I had a major problem with the domain name and SEO. The name CoachEzines.com was established when I was doing newsletters for coaches, before I formed The Blog Squad. It no longer made sense. In order to get full benefits of my domain name, WritingontheWeb.com, I needed a new site.
That said, now that I’m using WordPress daily, I’m loving it more and more, and wonder why I didn’t switch earlier. I just feel more in control of being able to do what I want. There are also some easy to use plugins which make my blogging easier.
For example, I use a plugin that automatically inserts a list of relevant posts at the end of each post. On Typepad, I had to go hunt for relevant posts and add them manually which can take up time. (Note, there’s probably a plugin for that on Typepad by now too…)
Oh, did I mention this reason to switch to WordPress? More people are finding me, more people are contacting me about projects and my traffic stats are way up…
Did I mention my traffic to this blog is up 48.5%? Oh yeah, that’s always nice, isn’t it?
Here’s what I’ve found about WordPress statistics on the Web: There are over 22 million WordPress publishers as of February 2010: 10.6 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com plus 11.4 million active installations of the WordPress.org software (self-hosted WordPress versions).
To put that into perspective, in 2006 there were 1 million WordPress blogs.
Somewhere on the ‘Net, I picked up this comment, although I wasn’t able to trace it to a valid source:
Two weeks ago in WordCamp Malaysia, a representative from Automattic said that WordPress websites make up 8.5% of the entire internet.
Many professionals are now setting up entire business websites on a WordPress platform so they can easily update themselves, add new content, and benefit from the opportunity to publish content that markets their business without having to go through a webmaster. I’ve been doing that for two years now, with ContentforCoachesandConsultants.com.
So it’s not really a question of “blogging” any more, is it? It’s content marketing, content publishing, and online visibility for your business. It’s the way you get found, get known, and get clients. It’s the way you do business on the Web.
It doesn’t matter what platform you use, where you host it. It only matters that what you write is useful and relevant to your readers, and that people can find you. Comments?
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