I know a lot of my fellow moms love to use Google’s Blogger to start a blog. It’s free, it’s easy to set up and it’s easy to publish posts.
HOWEVER, what they may not think about in the beginning is that they have no control over their domain. Their domain (http://myblog.blogspot.com) is owned by Google, not them. If you’re blogging for profit, this can mean bad things.
It’s story time.
Three years ago when I was pregnant with my second baby, I had three blogs hosted with Blogger. Two of them were doing really well and made me a decent amount of spending money each month. In the last two months of my pregnancy, I got sick. I was hospitalized for two months until I had my baby. When I finally got to go home again, the first thing I did was log on to my computer only to find that all three of my blogs had been deleted.
I had only been blogging for a year so I didn’t know much about it. I still don’t know exactly what happened, but I suspect that they had been hacked and Google subsequently marked them as spam blogs and promptly deleted them. All my content, my hard work, my income streams – it all vanished and there was nothing I could do about it.
Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off!
I had to start everything again from scratch. Thank you Google.
After that, I vowed never to host with Blogger or any free hosting service again. I wanted control over my domains. I bit the bullet and whipped out $10 smackaroos and bought a domain name. Then I whipped out another $5 and paid my first month of hosting fees with ASmallOrange.com. I’ve never looked back.
(UPDATE: I have looked back. As the servers at ASmallOrange got older and more people were hosting websites on them (shared servers) they started having a lot of downtime. I shopped around and decided to choose MediaTemple for my new host. I’m extremely happy with them. Their customer service is excellent and I haven’t noticed any down time since hosting with them.)
So, there you have one mighty good reason NOT to leave your blog in the hands of a free hosting service.
Another mighty good reason is that people typically view self-hosted blogs with a lot more credibility than free domains. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I know a lot of great Blogspot blogs, but if your target audience is even a little bit web savvy, they can spot the difference between a free domain and a self-hosted one. If you’re blogging for more than just personal reasons then you should seriously consider buying your own domain.
Here’s another story about Blogger which I hope will solidify my point.
A client of mine recently wanted her blog transferred from a free domain at Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress blog. The transfer itself is fairly painless providing you know the code to have each post redirect to the new self-hosted post.
What is extremely poopy however is that Google doesn’t allow a 301 redirect. Therefor, when you have your old blog transferred to a new domain, you’re going to lose any PageRank you’ve built up. You’ll keep all your traffic, but you’ll be starting from scratch when it comes to rank. This can be a huge deal for someone who has spent a lot of time building backlinks to their blog.
If you REALLY wanted to, you could go around to each website that links to you and politely ask them if they’d pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top change their links to the new domain. But who the hell wants to do that? What if there are hundreds or thousands of links out there? It’s just not possible!
You can bypass all that trouble by starting out with your own domain right off the bat. If you’ve already established a good blog with lots of great content, it’s never too late to transfer. In fact, it’s better to do it sooner rather than later. You’ll just have to take a hit and lose a bit of PageRank.
Your search engine traffic may drop, but it’s great incentive to build those backlinks back up. Plus you’ll feel great knowing you have control over your domain and your content. There’s nothing better than that feeling of security when it comes to your blog.
One more story!
After my own blogspot blogs were deleted, I rushed to the forums to see if there was anything I could do to salvage them. That’s when I read all the horror stories of people losing their own blogs. If they didn’t lose their blog, a lot of times they would have entire posts disappear with no explanation. Other people were locked out and couldn’t even access their blog’s dashboard.
I have a friend who is having issues with Blogger almost daily. She’s desperate to have her blog transferred to a self-hosted WordPress blog.
It’s important to look as far down the road as you can and visualize where you want your blog to be in the future. If you want to continue to maintain it, improve it, expand it – then you need to look at buying your own domain for it. You’ll be kicking yourself later if you don’t.
It’s business time
I’m on a crusade to get free hosted blogs transferred to more reliable, secure, self-hosted domains. If you need help with this, I’m your chick. I offer services ranging from basic graphic design and customizing WordPress themes to setting up a WordPress install and transferring Blogger blogs to self-hosted WordPress domains. If you contact me with your needs, I’ll get back to you with a free quote.
9 comments ↓
Cassie,
Gee, could I possibly be the desperate friend you mentioned?
Man, I cannot wait to switch to WordPress! Things have gotten worse.
From disappearing sidebars to disappearing posts… from not being able to publish/save (I get this error shockingly often!) to not being able to insert photos most of the time now, it is completely ridiculous! I’m pulling my hair out.
If anyone out there is on Blogger and having mysterious problems like those above (or silly little things like the “follow” function buttons rarely working…) you may want to think about switching before your blog gets bigger than it already is.
Whether there is a connection between the issues I have encountered and the size of my blog, I really don’t know. All I know is my Blogger headaches keep getting WORSE AND WORSE over time!!
I didn’t used to have as many of these “bugs” (for lack of a better word). I’ve had strange things happen on Blogger from day one and I’ve Googled them only to find it wasn’t just me, true. However, I have been having worse and worse problems lately.
It’s beyond frustrating. It steals away one of the most precious things in my life:
TIME
Time is one thing I don’t have to spare. This is how Blogger is hurting me most.
Cassie has great ideas and I’m happy to say that I will soon be on my way to WordPress land with her help.
It can’t happen soon enough!
Jeanne
Jeanne’s last blog post.."Jeanne Endo Blog" Honors Donna Jackson Nakazawa, Author Of The "Ill In A Day’s Work" Article In The Feb 2009 Issue Of More Magazine!
Hmm, I thought I could sneak that one by you.
We’ll get you a shiny new WordPress blog soon!
Cassie,
I’m totally psyched!! You do amazing work! We may be early on in the process as of yet but things are moving along smoothly and you seem to have an intuitive knack for knowing what I’m looking for!
Jeanne
Jeanne’s last blog post.."Jeanne Endo Blog" Honors Donna Jackson Nakazawa, Author Of The "Ill In A Day’s Work" Article In The Feb 2009 Issue Of More Magazine!
Thanks Jeanne
I’m glad you liked the header. It won’t take long to get everything else done up. Can’t wait to get it all finished so you can kick Blogger to the curb and start rocking out with WordPress!
Cassie,
Amen sister! I’ll be your biggest cheerleader! We’re off to a great start!
From day one when I started blogging months ago, you have always been so helpful!!!
Jeanne
Jeanne’s last blog post.."Jeanne Endo Blog" Honors Donna Jackson Nakazawa, Author Of The "Ill In A Day’s Work" Article In The Feb 2009 Issue Of More Magazine!
I have to agree. Although a lot of people I know use Blogger, I stopped using it not because of what happened here, it was a totally different situation. I stopped being friends with a very arrogant and annoying person so I was afraid she was still reading my blog, therefore I deleted it.
I am actually ok with Blogger but I’m appalled at what they did too you. It is true that people say Google is becoming controlling (just like the iGoogle “Classic Theme” change which angered thousand and thousands of people yet Google just deleted their reviews and ratings and ignored it) Although I loved Google from the start, I’m hesitant on using anything by them anymore (Used Google Chrome once and dropped it), I am actually sort of ashamed to have Gmail while I’m mad at them for a few things they’ve done (including what they did too you)
It’s odd how they had so much time to fix up and add new “features” to their box, yet Gmail has been in BETA for like 7 years or something, and their free Blogger is “user friendly” yet I find it very hard to customize and change the colors and backgrounds.
WordPress is ok, the only thing that really don’t like about it is that you have to pay just to edit HTML.. if you have your own domain, even better. I highly recommend it because you can control what you want.
@Jimilia – Thanks for your comment! Google is definitely very dominating, but hey, I would be too if I were them. It’s just too bad that they don’t have their users’ interests in mind in a lot of cases. You don’t actually have to pay to edit HTML with WordPress. WordPress is completely free, whether you’re using WordPress.com or a self-hosted domain with WordPress installed on your server. What you’re paying for is the domain and hosting fees so you can have more control over your blog which in my opinion is extremely worth it! And you would pay that with any content managing system if you want a self-hosted domain – it’s just nice that WordPress offers their platform for free! I heart WordPress
Cassie,
I’m so glad we’re switching my blog over to WordPress and I’m so thankful to you for your expertise. While there may be plenty of people who could have helped me make the switch, no one out there could surpass you for ethics and integrity!
Your honesty is exactly what I need to make my blog better without breaking the bank. If I have my way, you’ll have to start a waiting list because I’m going to send everyone I can your way.
Jeanne
Jeanne’s last blog post..‘Jeanne’s Endo Blog’: Sandy From Fighting Fatigue Has The Endometriosis Awareness Month Spirit!!
[...] I am writing the following post in support of my friend, Cassie Germsheid. [...]
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