Benefits of your own domain?

[Kalinae]

Well, it has been nearly two months of blogging and I am enjoying the whole blogging thing. I hear many people talking about how bloggers should get their own domain name/website and get off the .blogspot.com asap. I was just wondering if it was really worth investing the 5$ a month (I know its cheap, but I like to horde my money unless its for a good investment). What are the benefits of your own domain other than people taking you more seriously. Do you get more traffic? I don't understand why I should be getting off the whole .blogspot.com thing. Also, how soon do you think I should make the switch, if at all...like is there a turnaround point where I could get tired of blogging? Any and all help is much appreciated.

[Nadzmc]

Well, I'd advise you to move onto your domain name asap. You won't see any drastic increase of traffic. But,
• People will take you more seriously.
• When you move onto your own domain later, the old links you got for your blog won't be weighed in determining Google PR and you will go through a SEO disaster.
• You will not be able to secure your branding - i.e. someone will buy your domain name that has your unique specific branding. (Like, if I had my blog as rockfuse.blogspot.com, then I'd be lost if one of my competitors buy rockfuse.com
• Your blog address will be easier to remember
• It's not $5 a month - more like $6-$10 a year. (name.com is $5.99, godaddy is $6.95/$9.99 p year)

Hope that helps.

Cheers!

[sukosaki]

Excellent points and I think that it should be done now, or yesterday, before it's too late.

You will see the benefits yourself in short time, plus the cost almost makes it a no-brainer.

[Auctionman]

Its simply a case of control, would you be happy with someone else controlling your domain...if blogspot (et al) decided to change their rules then your site could simply be thrown away for T&C violation overnight and where would you be left.

[Kalinae]

appreciate the feedback. I would like to get my own domain as soon as I can. I just have one further question. I understand that the domains are 6.99-10$ a year and such, but do you not have to buy hosting? Or can you just buy the domain name and have blogger just place the website on that? I see an option where I can buy a domain for 10$ a year and blogger will put my stuff on that website...do I still need to buy hosting for that? This is really what I am ultimately confused about.

Oh, and should I just buy the one blogger suggests (google domain) or just go to name.com or godaddy or w/e?

[ffnstuff]

You can buy a domain and have google blogger host it or get your own hosting.

hosting generally is 5-6$ per month depending on the host.

I would recommend it 100% especially if you are looking to make $

[Kalinae]

Ok cool. If I had google blogger host it I wouldn't have to pay the 5-6$ a month? I would only have to pay for hosting if I didn't choose google blogger to host it correct? Or would I still have to pay for hosting no matter what? Sorry, I'm new to this.

[ffnstuff]

Google will host it for free like they are currently doing with your blogspot domain. They would just really redirect the blogspot to your domain etc. Then you would NOT need to pay a host as google will be doing this for you.

However, by not hosting it yourself you are lacking with several different things. Like the ability to customize, host your own images, etc etc.

Overall I would suggest using wordpress. There is so much more you can do.

[kirbybowl]

Originally Posted by Kalinae

Ok cool. If I had google blogger host it I wouldn't have to pay the 5-6$ a month? I would only have to pay for hosting if I didn't choose google blogger to host it correct? Or would I still have to pay for hosting no matter what? Sorry, I'm new to this.

I am currently using GoDaddy for domain name and using Blogger as the host. If you don't want to deal with the hassle of setting things up, it's an easy solution

You only have to pay GoDaddy's $9.99/yr fee, blogger still hosts your files for free and will be published under your new domain name. E.g. yourdomain/2008/06/postname

However, once you are publishing off your new domain name, you no longer get Blogspot's insane priority on Google searches and your PR is reset to 0. By insane priority, I mean you can make a new blogspot page and show up in the first page in a Google search within a few weeks (blogspot abuse!!!! and yes, I have done it before)

I switched from blogspot to my new domain after 6 months and it killed my search engine queries, so it's better to start soon!

I use photobucket pro for hosting images, which is $25/yr or you can use the 1GB blogger gives you to upload photos.

[The1337]

If you let google host it, would there be 2 sets of links to a certain post?