Another reason for blogging under your own domain
October 10th, 2006 | by mbhunter |In my post on talking about whether savings tips are unhelpful for people who are truly in need, I brought up blogging as a business that can be started on a shoestring.
You can do this for free on blogspot.com, wordpress.com, or others. For that, you would get a name like mightybargainhunter.blogspot.com or mightybargainhunter.wordpress.com. These are subdomains of blogspot.com and wordpress.com, respectively. You may get control (or at least adhere only to loose rules) of the webspace for free, but it is the companies that control blogspot.com (Google) and wordpress.com (Automattic) that really control the traffic to the site at a basic content level.
If instead you pay for your own web space and your own second-level domain (like http://www.mightybargainhunter.com) you control the traffic and content to a more basic extent, needing only to adhere to governing laws and the rules of your web hosting service.
The main reason is that free to you comes with a price to everyone else, which means that you’re forced to deliver content to your readers that’s of value to the service you use and not necessarily of value to your readers. It could start out unobtrusively, like a small text link attached to the bottom of the templates, growing to a navigation bar (like blogger has), or even to full-screen commercials that your readers see. Now, I’m not 100% sure that this is a “blogspot thing” or not or just a function of an agreement with the blog author and blogspot, but I went to a blog hosted on blogspot, and was interrupted by a full screen advertisement before going to the blog. (Update: It probably wasn’t Blogspot but another service that bloggers get paid for. Thanks Sharon!)
This was the first time I had encountered a full-screen commercial before reading a blog. Was this in place before? I don’t know. (Maybe someone reading has seen this before and could tell me?) If it is indeed new (update: which is probably not the case for Blogspot at the moment), then this illustrates a point about “free” hosting services: They can raise revenue from your content simply by inserting more ads, and you don’t really have any say in it except to leave or stick around until enough people agree with you, threaten to leave, and the hosting guys cave in. They control how your content is delivered at a much more serious level than if you had your own second-level domain.
I was fortunate that I never needed to make much of a switch to a second-level domain from a subdomain. It certainly would have been tougher to maintain traffic in doing so. I’m sure that folks like All Financial Matters and No Credit Needed (see, there’s a mention, NCN — hope you’re keeping track! 
) could tell you about their experience in cutting loose from Blogspot if you asked. (Side note: A fantastic place to do this is the Money Blog Network Forums.)
Long and short: getting your own hosting and domain is more expensive in the short term, but not that much more expensive, and the payoff is great.
3 Responses to “Another reason for blogging under your own domain”
By Single Ma on Oct 10, 2006 | Reply
Hi mbhunter,
I’ve been blogging on blogspot.com for 10 months and have never experienced what you described in this post. I can change the html in my template to display whatever I want it to display. There are no hidden or obtrusive advertising that I didn’t authorize. Everything that’s on my blog, I put there myself. I write what I want and blogspot does not control how my content is delivered. Trust me because I’ve written some controversial (and sometimes vulgar) things. LOL The only problems I’ve had with blogspot are the occassional outages (same thing can happen with your own hosting service), and every now and then, it’s a pain uploading pictures, but that’s it.
If I were truly in a financial bind, spending money for my own hosting site would be the last thing on my mind. If I were married and my husband suggested it, I’d look at him like he had 4 heads. The time spent writing useful material to drive enough traffic to your blog resulting in earnings of $100+ per month, then paying for a hosting service is a unrealistic solution for someone who is “truly in need.”
Think: can barely pay my rent. Start a blog!
Think: no food to eat. Pay for a hosting service!
I don’t think so.
By Frugal Duchess on Oct 10, 2006 | Reply
You may have been hit by an adbrite ad. It’s a full screen ad that bloggers get paid for (sort of)
By mbhunter on Oct 10, 2006 | Reply
Thanks both for your comments!
Didn’t know about the Adbrite ads, Frugal Duchess. I think you’re right.
Single Ma, thank you for your thoughts. I agree that the blogging idea was suggested at my own peril. I’m sure you’re not the only one who saw that and thought “Yeah right, whatever!”
But if blogging isn’t part of the answer of making up the difference, what should be?