I started blogging at gauravonomics.blogspot.com and found my voice at gauravonomics.wordpress.com. However, when I moved to my own domain at gauravonomics.com, I realized that I had stayed at gauravonomics.wordpress.com for too long.
But, first, why should you move to your own yourblog.com domain anyway?
– Because you can do much more with your blog in terms of aesthetic, functionality and monetization.
– Because your blog is perceived as more professional and authoritative by both readers and search engines.
– Because it costs little in terms of time and money, so why not?
What happens when you move your Blogger or WordPress blog to your own domain?
– You lose your pagerank and have to build it all over again. Even after three months, gauravonomics.com is still to get a pagerank while gauravonomics.wordpress.com has a pagerank of 5. Even Amit Varma – widely accepted as India’s best known non-techie blogger – made the same mistake and indiauncut.com has a pagerank of 3 while indiauncut.blogspot.com has a pagerank of 6.
– You lose your feed subscribers, who may or may not transition to your new feed. One way to avoid this is to route your feed via Feedburner, which ensures that you retain your feed subscribers even if you change the source feed. While I did use Feedburner on my old blog, I hadn’t replaced my default feed with it. As a result, I had less than ten feed subscribers when I moved to my own domain. I have more than hundred feed subscribers now, but it hasn’t been easy. After you have moved to your own domain, you can use your Feedburner feed as your default feed by using the Feedburder Feed Replacement or Antileech (lets you use multiple Feedburner feeds, by category, for instance) plug-ins, but I’m not sure if it’s possible to do it on a Blogger or WordPress blog.
– You may lose a part of your content. When I moved to my own domain, I realized that my pages had become posts, my internal trackback links were pointing to gauravonomics.wordpress.com, and my images were still referencing their gauravonomics.wordpress.com URLs. I did not delete my posts on my old blog for three months because of this, further adding to my pagerank woes because of duplicate content. I have finally fixed the internal trackback issues (using the Search and Replace and Permalink Migration plug-ins), and deleted the posts on my old blog but I’ll probably have to fix the images manually. One way to avoid this issue is to upload all your images on Flickr and always reference your images to Flickr.
So, if you are still blogging at a Blogger or WordPress blog, go to GoDaddy and register your own domain now.
If you are a new blogger, I suggest that you start with a Blogger or WordPress blog, because of the ease of use, but register your domain anyway. Give yourself three months to familiarize yourself with blogging and then move to your own domain.
If you prefer Blogger, I suggest that you consider their custom domain name service that lets you combine the perks of your own domain name with the ease of a blog hosted by them.
If you prefer WordPress (which I strongly recommend), you’ll have to find a hosting service, but your transition will be easier because WordPress is now the default platform for building a blog on your own domain name.
To summarize:
– Start with www.yourblog.wordpress.com to familiarize yourself with blogging, but move to www.yourblog.com within three months, to avoid building your pagerank all over again.
– Use Feedburner to avoid losing subscribers once you move.
– Upload your images to Flickr, to avoid losing them when you move.
