I am aware that having a blog domain eg: www.myblog.com is preferable in terms of being taken seriously by readers and paid to post schemes alike, but having a free domain is central to my study of what can be earned via the web without investing a cent.I have sites that I have considered using, and if I get to the point where I thought it was really possible to earn a decent second income (or even a primary income) from this type of activity I would certainly use a domain. So far this is an experiment, if I find that I can achieve PR4 and that I could make let's say a regular $500 a month, I might switch from the 'hobby' approach. Right now, my hosting on blogspot is free so I don't have to justify any investment.
So, how do you blog on your own domain? One easy option would be to enter your URL into the blogspot dashboard (settings/publishing/custom domain). The better option would be to go for a wordpress blog. Why use wordpress? There are a whole host of very nice free wordpress templates available to you to use. These templates are instantly recognisable as being the sort of template that pro-bloggers use, and can give your blog a bit of extra 'kudos'.
The templates have a nice 'clean' look and have a whole host of plug-ins available to customise your blog just the way you want it.
Although you can host a wordpress blog for free on their own domain, if you are going to combine it with your new domain, it would make sense to find a hosting service which already offers wordpress on their servers. Many hosting services do this, check the specifications of the service to see what options are available.
How to choose a domain name? Many people just use their own name which is fine if you are going to use that as a kind of brand name, alternatively an SEO-friendly option would be to use a name which contains keywords that you would like to use to bring visitors to your site from search engines. It is worth noting that SEO for blogs is only really important if you are intending to drive visitors from search engines. Personally I think social bookmarking and social sites are probably a better way to gain traffic.
(more on this later...)
8 comments:
I think it is really up to the individual how they want to market themselves online. I have a *secret* blog that is on a hosted program (free), just so I can experiment with writing and new themes.
My main site is one that I pay for - and I think it is well worth the investment because I have a lot of personalized features that I couldn't get on a free site.
I am still trying to figure out SEO, so I'll be blogging more about that in the coming weeks.
:) Ellie
http://www.thepinkc.net
Hi Ellie
I have an SEO blog at livewyre.blogspot.com, but I also have a domain which I am still building which will aim to address SEO amongst other things.
I think being able to have dedicated pages such as you have for 'contact', 'about', 'FAQ' etc... is a good reason to use a proper hosted site (I should have included that in the article...)
Jay, I subscribe to livewyre.blogspot.com, too!
I will definitely take the time to read all of your posts and learn more about SEO.
When I used blogger, I made posts with that information - contact, about, faq, etc. - and linked to it in my sidebar. Not the prettiest hack, but it works!
Yeah I thought about doing that...
I no expert on in-depth SEO,(yet) but the surface stuff is enough to be going on with....
You can still blog for "free" on blogger with an URL.
Dot blogspot dot com is so 2006.
Spending the 9 bucks (do't know what that is in Pounds) out of your earnings wouldn't put anyone off if you explained yourself.
Hotdogman earnings:
Adsense: $265 and change
Pay to Posts (Blogsvertize, Review Me, Bloggerwave and PayPerPost: $378.10
Amazon: $4.20
Bidvertiser: 2.16
Helium: $13.56
Woo woo!
Watch for my own linky love scheme!
Blog on.
hey hotdogman
good to hear from you...you're right, even having your own hosting is peanuts compared with the potential earnings. Munny4Hunny will stay as it is for now... ie. earnings with NO cost whatsoever, but I would recommend a URL to anyone who is serious about blogging for cash...
My 'other' hosts charge about $2 per month entry level hosting, and I think you can even get a free UK domain with that.
I use blogspot for one of my blogs and wordpress for the other. I actually got a higher rank on my wordpress than what I have on blogspot and my wordpress blog has not been up that long. Ironic isn't it. I don't have a domain name on either of these and I kinda like wordpress better.
Thanks Rosa, it would be interesting to investigate why that was...
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