Here are five fail-proof ways to totally turn off your blog readers -
1. Host your blog on Blogger.
2. Insist that readers use a Blogger ID to comment.
3. Enable word verification.
4. Offer partial feeds.
5. Do not display your e-mail ID anywhere in the blog.
There are 71 million blogs out there. You have to be a very good writer if people are still putting up with all that.
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.