Wordpress.org vs Wordpress.com

[allgirls]

What is the difference? Advantages and disadvantages, reasons to have one over the other...I have a dot.com wordpress blog and was told I should have had a .org one but I didn't quite grasp the reasoning.

Can someone explain please.

Allgirls

[lisarussell]

If you have a wordpress.com then you are likely http://yourblogname.wordpress.com

If you have a wordpress.org then you're http://yourdomainname.com

Wordpress.com doesn't allow ads, but they're easy to set up and free.

Wordpress.org is self-hosted (meaning you buy the domain and handle the wordpressinstall yourself)

That's all I know. Mine are all self-hosted now, because I believe in the power of top level domains for SERP and a lot of my income comes from ads, except on my personal blog, where I make zilch.

[allgirls]

Thanks Lisa..that actually makes perfect sense. So where I am now is perfect for now but I may move up to .org later when I have time to do the work myself and know more about that part of it.

Is there any easy way to incorporate a blog that was .com to a .org account later on?

[MyTwoAs]

You can export your .com blog's XML file an then import it to your .org. However, all of the old hyperlinks, Google Page Rank, etc won't be transferred over to your self-hosted domain. So although you'll have posts, from a search engine perspective you start from scratch. But, that shouldn't deter you from doing it. I have a friend who just switched from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress and it's only been a month and she's already got her subscribers and traffic back close to where they were.

The flexibility with self-hosted (wordpress.org) blogs is amazing, I love it.