Control Your Destiny: Own your domain name

One thing that any blogger who may at any point wish to monetize their blog should do when first starting out is to buy a domain name. One of the biggest mistakes in blogging that I’ve ever made was hosting my blog on a free service with a subdomain of the free service’s URL. There are several issues associated around free services especially when it comes to moving off of the free host.

The first problem that I had was when I outgrew the service and was ready to move to my own domain. It wasn’t as simple as just exporting my blog from the free host and importing it into my new paid host. I had over 18 months worth of posts, some with a page rank as high as 6 and dozens of backlinks. I have been off the free host for over a year and to this day, many of the posts on the free hosts rank higher in the search engines and get more visitors than those on the blogs new domain.

Another issue is that the terms of service of a free host can change over time. This could definitely have an adverse affect on your blog and you may be forced to adhere to the new TOS as compared to moving the blog and losing all your search engine rankings.

Lastly professional blogs on free host’s with a subdomain name aren’t taken as seriously as blogs on their own domain. First impression is everything when it comes to blog especially one that you are trying to monetize. Domain names can be bought for as little as $8 or $9 dollars. Trust me, they are definitely worth the expense.