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Do you own your own domain name? So many bloggers these days are opting to use free hosting companies such as Blogger to host their blogs. While it may be fast, easy and cheap to do so, you are also putting your blog and brand at risk. The recent Blogger outage highlights this fact.
First and foremost, you don’t really own your blog. As per Blogger’s Terms of Service, they own the domain and platform. You do however, own the content that you produce there. So if for some reason they feel that you have violated their policies, they can suspend your account and delete your blog. In fact, last year scores of music related blogs were deleted for violations of their policies. What would you do if this happened to you? What would happen to your PR and advertising relationships?
Secondly, I’m sure you’ve heard stories of webmasters whose blogs were snapped up by larger media companies for large amounts of cash. In fact, jut the other day Pat Flynn over at the Smart Passive Income Blog announced that he received a large offer for one of his niche blogs. If you’re using a free hosted account, that’s something you can only dream about, because you can’t sell what you don’t own.
Finally, you’re not really building a brand if you don’t own your own domain name. Let’s suppose that your domain name is something like this: Topbloggingexpert.blogspot.com. Now let’s say one day a top blogging expert says “Hmmm, I want to start a new blog and I want to call it Top blogging expert.com.” He then goes to one of the domain registrars and secures the domain name www.Topbloggingexpert.com, for around $10. Since he is an expert, and plans on really growing his brand, he has the name trademarked. When he goes to set up a twitter account, Facebook account, etc. he discovers that you are using the name topbloggingexpert. All he has to do is have his attorney issue a cease and desist letter and in a flash, you’ve lost all your hard work. I’ve seen this happen in the past and it can definitely happen to you. In order to really build a brand, you have to buy your own domain name.
Don’t have a domain name yet?
No worries, purchasing a domain name is not very expensive. You can purchase a domain name from Namecheap for about $10 and you’ll own it for one year. I’ve used them for a few years and couldn’t be happier with their service. Signing up is a simple process. All you have to do is go to NameCheap.com. Then, type in your desired domain name to see if it is available. If it is, the site will prompt you for payment information and once the payment has been made, voila you own your domain name. Easy peasy!
Don’t think that just because you purchase your own domain name, you also have to purchase hosting. It’s not necessary as you can use your own domain name with your blogger hosted blog.
Do you own your own domain name? If not, what’s holding you back from purchasing one? Let’s discuss…
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