SEARCH

 

Sponsors


Write For Us

JUST POSTED

Categories

Blogging Web 2.0 Archives

Blogging on a Hosted Domain

December 19th, 2007 by Terry

Blogging can be done successfully on either a free blogging host or your own professional hosting of course, but if you truly want to have full control over what you do with your blog, then self hosting is the way to go for more than one reason.

The main reason I want to cover here about the benefits of self hosting is choice of domain name. With free blogging hosts you can probably find something close to what you are looking for, but there is one big, big advantage to having your own domain name over a free blog’s domain name when you want to start a new blog.

That is keeping it out of the Google sandbox.

Google has this place, a bit like a dark cupboard that it puts any new sites or blogs that it thinks might be misbehaving. By misbehaving, I mean primarily engaging in tactics that could be interpreted as spamming. So if the big G thinks your new blog is one of those, in you will go and you may not see any more daylight for several months. That will put the dampeners on your ability to attract traffic and will delay any chance you have of making money from it.

So how do you avoid the dreaded sandbox?

Don’t create a new domain. Instead, search out an old one that has expired that you can pick up for a few dollars and put your new blog on that instead. You’ll bypass the sandbox purely thanks to the age of the domain name - preferably get one that is two years or more old.

Where do you get an expired or second-hand domain name?

There are lots of places that sell them - mainly the same places you go to register new ones, like GoDaddy. The process is simple and  you can even pick them up with existing PR so you’ll have a ready made off the shelf domain that is ready to make money from!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

Technorati Tags:

Hello, if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Filed under: Blogging

5 Responses to “Blogging on a Hosted Domain”

  1. Fred Chan (1 comments.) Says:
    December 20th, 2007 at 9:00 pm

    Hi Terry,

    How I wished you have posted this article earlier. I just started my blog with new domain name http://www.fredchanblog.com.

    How can I check whether my domain name has been sandbox? Any idea?

    Fred

  2. moneytalks (8 comments.) Says:
    December 20th, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    Agree! we need to have host our own domain for long term benefit. anyhow IMO if we don’t have enough knowledge on blogging or getting traffic that could make our blog alive i believe free hosting blogging platform should be consider first unless we don’t mind throwing money all over the place.

  3. Terry (82 comments.) Says:
    December 21st, 2007 at 11:55 am

    @Fred, there’s no way to know for certain, but by entering link:http://yourdomainname.com in the google searchbox if it comes up with some info on your domain then chances are you’re not.

    They only put you in there if your site appears to be growing unnaturally or obtaining backlinks too fast, that sort of thing. If you do things at a normal, human pace, then you should be ok.

    @moneytalks, You’re quite right in that starting with free blogs is the best way to get your feet wet and make your mistakes. Another downside I just thought of is if you have your own domain and you build up a really profitable site, you can sell it down the road for many thousands of dollars.

    Whereas if you spend all your time and efforts building up a free blog, you can’t sell it - and worse, the host can simply delete it if they don’t like what you’re doing, so all that work is for nothing in the end.

    A sobering thought!

    Terry

  4. Terry (1 comments.) Says:
    December 21st, 2007 at 11:58 am

    PS: Fred, you’re not limited to one domain you know - you can always buy more and put up sites on them as well.

    If you have hosting with a company that allows you to host multiple sites for the single account fee like HostGator then the sky’s the limit.

    I have all my sites on HostGator and it only costs me $9.95 a month for unlimited domains. Well worth the money.

    Terry

  5. Get Kick Ass Traffic with Blogger Says:
    December 21st, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    [...] « Blogging on a Hosted Domain [...]

Leave a Reply