Suggestions on route for personal blog - free hosting or pay hosting?

[kewld00d]

Buy cheap hosting. Self hosted scripts are always the best. You don't want to be at the mercy of Google for Blogger or whatever. Hosting is cheap. Many mainstream hosts are NSFW-friendly (Hostgator and Dreamhost, for starters).

[goodboy5569]

I would suggest first try with free hosting if you get good amount of traffic you should definitely move on to paid hosting.

[kewld00d]

Don't do that! Crappy free hosting providers will screw you out of your site. Don't do it! Paid hosting is cheap enough that you don't have to screw around with free hosting. Free hosters impair your ability to promote your website and kill your credibility.

The only exception is if you work out a deal with somebody here on the forums to host your site in exchange for a button or something. But don't go to a free hoster (or a free blog site). You'll be a more credible site.

[futureawesome]

Thanks for the advice. But I've started just populating my blogger blog first with content (its private atm). I'm going to purchase a .com domain but have it still link to the blogger hosting. Then make the blog public under the .com domain and start trying some of the stuff here to build traffic.

When I get more traffic (enough to cover hosting) I'll switch to WP and hostgator or dreamhost. Also are there any ads that are non-invasive that I can put on my blog? I'm pretty sure adsense isn't for NSFW stuff. or is it?

[kewld00d]

Adsense won't take anything with even a hint of NSFW.

BidVertiser is pretty non-invasive, they'll probably be ok with it.