As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of Posterous. I think it’s a great blogging platform.  And for photo sharing it’s top notch.  So, you might be wondering why I’m not using Posterous for my new photography blog, since I’m such a big fan.

Here’s why.  I’m certified by Google in Google Analytics, because a big part of my marketing work involves analyzing website behavior and marketing campaigns.  I need to be able to use Google Analytics in order to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising, social media, and other campaigns that generate website traffic.  This helps me better advise someone on whether they should put more money/time into different marketing channels.  And, long story short, Posterous doesn’t allow me to customize the JavaScript snippets in Google Analytics the way I need to.

Basically, with Posterous, you can install Google Analytics (which is a big step up from some other blogging platforms), but you can’t get fancy with it.  I need to be able to do e-commerce tracking, event tracking, and other fun things that aren’t possible with Posterous.  To be sure, 90% of bloggers don’t need to get fancy with Google Analytics.  But I do, because I enjoy it, and also because my clients need it from me, which means I should be using Google Analytics as much as possible on my own.  Google Analytics is a constantly evolving product, so it helps me to use my own websites as sandboxes to test new ideas, and to refine my strategies.

It is also a tradeoff between speed and flexibility.  At one time in my life, speed was the priority.  (For new bloggers, speed should almost always be the priority.)  When it comes to speed, Posterous wins hands down.  You can launch and maintain a beautiful website/blog in a fraction of the time that WordPress consumes.  But now, I need flexibility, because I am going deep on Google Analytics, as well as on some other things, and that means I need a self-hosted WordPress website.

Here’s a virtual tour I released this week:

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