Does your blog need its own domain?

"Question ?" by Ninja M under
a Creative Commons Licence.

This is a tricky question.

Does everyone need to have a blog on a unique domain?

It depends. If you got a blog address like www.YourNameOrBusines.blogspot.com, would it be better if it were www.YourNameOrBusines.com?

Think about it. A name is only part of the equation, what is really important is the value that you give. Remember content is king. It must be from you and its unique. Its how you generate traffic. You could have a www.BestEverWebsite.com name and if you can't generate the traffic, it will still be useless.

I won’t recommend everyone to set up their blog on a unique domain. There are sound reasons for it. Let's do a pros and cons on a free blog or one at your own domain. So you can decide what's best for you.

Ownership.
First we look at ownership. A free blog is like a ‘rented house’ while own domain is a ‘real estate’, simply because of ownership rights. On well established sites like Blogger and Wordpress, this may not be an issue, Smaller sites, on the other hand, if the sites get shut down you’ll a lose your blog and probably everything in it.

I've been with Blogger since October 2007, didn't do anything, until only recently on February 2010. Never did I receive a warning email of blog account being deleted for inaction.

Cost.

Cost could be a major factor. The cost is not only on the monetary investment, it also includes time factor. You’ll need to maintain the back-end of your blog for your own domain. Unlike Wordpress and Blogger it is maintained by their respective site admins.

Then again the cost of getting a domain name registered is cheap and some are even free. It is less than USD$15 a year. Some even offer domain hosting with domain name at little or no cost. Though some domain names do fetch millions.

In terms of maintaining the back end, Wordpress.org gives you a full pledge web hosting platform and most webhosting companies have a simple installation feature. And its cost as little as US$3.49 per month only. If you want to try Wordpress for free, you can try http://blogetery.com/.

Blogger have an even simpler set-up. It has a free domain name mapping, though you still need to register register your domain first.

Maintenance

Photo: "MV Doulos" by chooyutshing
under a Creative Commons License.

It used to be a blog on third party platform is theoretically maintenance-free; while on the other hand you need to spend extra time in maintaining a blog with its own hosting. Now most hosting support hassle-free installation of Wordpress; and for Blogger, with the domain name mapping, the site is maintained by its own admins.

Monetization

Better monetization and branding the biggest advantage of having a blog on its own domain. Since you can customize it in any way, you can monetize it in many different and better ways: from affiliate sales to banner advertising and even to selling the whole website.

On the other hand the monetization options on free sites are either not present or are very limited – especially when your URL looks long and ugly. A blog URL like myblog.blogspot.com may give the image of an amateur.

Though in Blogger, you can easily monetize your blog, even if its free and for Worpress it has become easier provided you have a paid hosting.

Now we are spoilt for choices. We can have free domain name with free hosting on Blogger to paid account as in Wordpress.

It is actually up to you. You can actually practice first and keep it to a minimum and later when you are comfortable, start to post more.

You can use Posterous as your first post. Its real easy and uses your email for posting articles. It can even update your Facebook account and social sites as well.

So should you need to have a blog on a unique domain? Actually unique domain names are so affordable nowadays, that the question ceased to become relevant.

What is far more important is why do you want to blog in the first place? And if you are running your own business, than its an obvious answer.



*Note: Finally blogger have "caption" ability for pics. Long overdue, nonetheless, a very welcome feature.