Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lynn Barrera on November 26, 2012 at 10:14pm

Hi Karina,

It depends on how you see your blog writing's future.  Is your blog a hobby or is it part of your social media presence in growing your business? To grow your business, I would highly encourage owning your domain and paying a service to host your blog's website because you own your own content, whereas a free blog you can post your content, but the blog owners can shut down your blog site for whatever reason.  Whether you own your site or not, I would always write your content in a word document first and save it, and then copy and paste to publish it on your blog.  I would suggest waiting for a sale on godaddy.com to purchase your domain name or ask for a discount ;)   Hostgator.com is a web hosting service...where I pay $89.70 every 6 months. FYI: Wordpress has a free and paid blog set up which I use.  Any other questions, please let me know.

All the best,

Lynn

http://www.lynnbarrera.com/

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Permalink Reply by Karina - Mom in the USA on November 27, 2012 at 2:52pm

Hi Lynn,

Thank you for the information.  You make several good points: 1) I own my own content with my own domain, 2) my site getting shut down for whatever reason if I do not own the site and 3) writing posts in a word document, then copying and pasting.  I have backordered the [.com] for my site.

I do appreciate the points you made and for taking the time to give me this information.

 

Karina

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Permalink Reply by Vanita on November 27, 2012 at 4:29am

Hi Karina,

Whether you buy your domain name or buy self hosting is up to your goals for your blog.

I took a look at your blog and can see you put a lot of work into it.

there are advantages and disadvantages to buying your own domain and to going self hosted but your goals are the decision maker.

I notice you're a share a sale affiliate. have you checked Blogger's guidelines lately to see if this is allowed? Blogger and free wordpress.com has policies in place against affiliate links and sponsored ads the last time i looked, but that was a year ago. at that time, bloggers who didn't read the fine print would lose their blog without notice. this is why many moved to self hosting. also, knowing that you have affiliate links in place, i'm going to say you are interested in generating an income, and i can tell you that those bloggers who have moved to self hosting and really commit to working their blogs, have an advantage over bloggers on free platforms because we're able to seo our posts and have the freedom to promote whatever we like, not having to worry about policies implemented by Google or Free WordPress.

If you're worried about the cost of such an investment, google allows you to buy your domain for $10 for a year and hostgator offers hosting at $3.95 a month. I was once on hostgator and really happy but moved to bluehost when i became a bluehost reseller so i can offer even less expensive hosting to fellow mom bloggers. Bluehost is also a great platform, and they have a cyber monday sale still going at $3.95/month but they are usually $6.95 a month.

Again, if you'd like more specific guidance feel free to share your goals here, inbox me, or find me at http://afterbedtimeblog.com

vanita

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Permalink Reply by Karina - Mom in the USA on November 27, 2012 at 2:17pm

Hi Vanita,

I appreciate you mentioning the work I put into the blog because I do.  I also appreciate the information you have shared.  That gives me a lot of insight.  I also checked and Google does allow affiliate links on Blogger.  They actually have a tip about it in their Help section.  Here's the link if anyone reading this is interested:

http://support.google.com/affiliatenetwork/publisher/bin/answer.py?...

Google also has their own affiliate network.  Here's that link: http://support.google.com/affiliatenetwork/publisher/bin/answer.py?...

There are also Amazon links that can be set up throught Blogger.com.

I appreciate the point of SEO and promoting whatever you like.  That's gives me something to think about.  Thank you very much for taking the time and sharing this information.

 

Karina

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