Does Your Blog Really Needs A Custom Domain?

I have been keeping busy over the last couple of days with setting up my new domain. Setting up a domain, even without the hosting, is not a piece of cake and I felt I should share these myriad issues with you which I faced while setting up my new domain. This is the first installment of the same where I would be dealing with the question whether you really need a domain or not, so that you can still make up your mind while that money is still in your pocket.

Now if you are blogging to showcase you work only for your family and friend, and don’t want your readership to touch a broader base, or you post 2-3 times a week then the answer to the question above is NO, you don’t need to buy a domain and you can skip the rest of this post as well if you want to. However, if you want to start blogging seriously, whether for personal or commercial purposes, then you should definitely consider buying a domain. Although there are many successful bloggers who have done well without buying a custom domain, yet I would say it helps.

Secondly, if you already have a blog then the question comes whether you would want to buy hosting too? If you have a blog which is being hosted on Blogspot, then you can do away with hosting. Because you can simply redirect your existing blog to your new domain and continue to host your blog on Blogspot. But if you have your existing blog on Wordpress then you would have to buy a hosting solution along with your custom domain name. I am not pretty sure about Typepad users but if you need the information you can leave a comment and I’ll try to find it out for you.

Next comes the bad news for bloggers with existing blogs. Consider this before buying a custom domain. One you switch on to the new domain you can say bye-bye to all your PR, your backlinks, your readership, your Technorati and Alexa rankings that your existing blog had. And also keep in mind that Google would start crawling your site as if it’s a brand new site.

I learned all this the hard way cause no one, I repeat NO ONE seems to have a fair knowledge about the basics of migrating to a custom domain. But inspite of all these issues I am happy with my new domain, because I firmly believe that a custom domain goes a long way to make a blog successful.

Now in the next installment of this article I would discuss how to setup and configure a custom domain with your service provider and what do you need to do after that. So if you want to keep tuned, consider subscribing to The Chronicles of R.