Many online professionals have warned against using free hosting to build your online presence. These warnings come for many reasons including the risk of losing your content.

In a recent sweep, a free WordPress blog hosting website called Blogetery.com that hosted around 73,000 blogs shut down July 9, 2010.

Blogetery was a free blog service hosted by BurstNet, Inc., a company that has been established in the web hosting arena for nearly 14 years.

Explaining the reason why it had to take down Blogetery’s server BurstNet told that it “was a critical matter brought to our [their] attention by law enforcement officials” and in that case they had very little choice but terminate the account. BurstNet further stated that Blogetery was terminated due to “history of abuse and ongoing abuse”.

When you’re looking at making money online, and you are using a free hosting service, in a way you are at the mercy of everyone else using that hosting service too. Don’t run that risk. Put your blog or website on a REAL hosting service that actually manages their business and protects their clients.

I’ve had a few people email me asking about my hosting preferences. So I thought I’d offer up the same answer here – as the one I’ve been offering in private email exchanges for those who may be questioning the difference.

I use both, and they are nearly identical honestly.

I actually started out using Bluehost with MomGadget.com and that site is still hosted there.

When I began looking at developing a few other blogs, I was introduced to Hostgator by a friend and went with them because of their reseller account which comes in real handy if you have multiple sites you wish to develop or that you may eventually sell. I’ve also used my reseller package to host blogs for friends and family members too – to let them explore their own level of interest in blogging.

Aside from the fact that you can host multiple sites, you’re not gaining one thing from the next, and the pricing itself is almost the same.

Disclosure: I do receive a small commission if you sign up through my links for both Hostgator and Bluehost.