I would like to develop a wordpress site for my business. My business is blogging, photography, recipes, and selling a few items, so the focus is not on ecommerce, but more on the blogging. All the self-help guides I’m using are for a wordpress.org site - do I need to develop a wordpress.org site?
Wordpress.org is the software, you can run it on your own server or use GoDaddy, Bluehost, or many others including Wordpress.com. Wordpress.org does not actually offer hosting. Org vs com has nothing to do with e-commerce.
My public site is currently on Bluehost, but we’re not happy with the performance and are looking to move it to a self hosted server in Azure.
So I can do everything I want to do with my site on Wordpress.com, and I don’t need Wordpress.org hosted on some host site?
…perhaps have a read of this:
(Disclaimer, second site I found on google, may contain self-promotion, but I have scrutinized the link though and generally looks okay. I’m have no connection with the site)
It summarizes the differences quite well, and when its better to use one or the other. If you have more questions after going through that let us know 
Thanks - that’s a great link. It looks like I do indeed need a Wordpress.org site if I’m going to go anywhere with my website.
Technically, you just get the Wordpress software from Wordpress.org (or a distributor like Softaculous).
Your site, and its installation of the Wordpress software, would be hosted on whatever domain you set up. You would work with your hosting provider to install the software.
For example, I got an account from EthicalHost in Toronto to host my business site. I also got a domain name from them. Once all that was set up, I used EthicalHost’s software-installer utility to install Wordpress. It got Wordpress from Wordpress.org. (I could have got it myself, but the utility made things smother and easier.)
That will be my next thread - how do I choose a host? Looking into it, it seems like there are about a billion choices, with all kinds of features I know nothing about. But hey, they all cost more money! 
You could put it on Amazon Lightsail for $3.50/month [eta I see it’s a free trial for 750 hours]. Or some other major provider. In any case, do not pay extra for features you do not use, is the idea.
I have no idea what I would or wouldn’t use at this point. 
That was my point: the Amazon “web services” model is that you pay as you go for the services you use, so you are never paying for features you do not use.
Disclaimer: I am not endorsing Amazon specifically, I have used their service in the past but it was just an example
Ah, I understand now. Thank you.