What do I really need to be professional?

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to teach myself the best way to grow my business and to grow my blog. I decided that in order for me to stay consistent with my blog that this is the first thing that I needed to work on, and make it into something that would be sustainable. Since January I have been writing here about photography, shoots that I have done, what I have learned and some things that I have experimented with
. There are a number of other topics as well, but I will let you take a look at those at your own pace. I have put my own personal touch on each post and hoped that someone out there was finding my information useful. I didn't want to type entry after entry if no one was going to read it and over all if it was not going to help my business.

So first I started looking at the numbers, and I can tell that there are some people that read my blog, and as I have been consistent the numbers of page views have slowly grown. Now that I am being a bit more consistent I felt like there was more. So I started reading articles on growing your business and your blog. The first thing that I read is that I am doing everything all wrong with my business and my blog.

So what am I doing wrong? According to almost every article that I have read, I am not professional because I am not using a self hosted site for my blog or my website. My website is driven by smugmug (who has been amazing to me!) and the blog is driven by Google's Blogger platform. Seems to me that I am more the professional in my eyes. I have a website that I can sell my prints to my clients and is a clean set up that is easy to use and I have a blog where I can talk about the things that I am learning as I grow and hopefully I can help others. But in the eyes of others this is just not the case. All because you can see that I am using a free platform for a blog and I am using smugmug for my website.

I struggle with this thought process that I am not professional because my website has smugmug.com or that my blog has blogger.com in the address. Even if I had a self hosted site it would be the same, as it is now. I would have a blog and I would have a website to sell my prints and other products. So I ask what is the difference?

When it comes to my blog is the difference that you can see up front that I am using a free platform to put my thoughts and ideas out there? If that is an issue, I want to know why this is an issue. I am using what my business can afford at this point in time. I am still small and I am growing. So a free site makes me look unprofessional?

My website has smugmug.com in the address. I pay for this platform and the services that it provides. So since I pay for it that means I should be a professional right? I have learned sadly from the various articles that I have read that this is just not the case. Here again it is because it is not self hosted. Which I just do not understand.

So as I sit here in from of my computer and I type this out I really wonder what do I need to be professional?  Do I need to pay for a high end self hosting site? If I do buy a site am I going to be more "professional"? Is this going to drive my business because I will have gone from amateur to professional with just one purchase?

For some reason I just do not think that this is something that is going to change my business or my blog revenue over night. Or even in a week. Do I want to have my own web domain and self hosted site? Of course I do, eventually. However at this stage in my business I just do not think that this is something that is feasible.

What are your thoughts? What do you think makes a blogger or photographer a professiona? Please leave your comments below, I really need to see what others opinions are, I want to know if I am looking at this from the wrong perspective or if there is a solid answer as to what shows that someone is professional or not.