Yes, my word-loving friends, you need a blog, and yes it should be professionally hosted with its own domain name.
Right now, a blog is the single best way to connect you with the people who are interested in what you have to say (AKA fans). Chances are you already have a blog, but if you’re like a lot of writers whose websites I’ve visited in the past couple weeks, you may have it up at Wordpress or Blogger.
That’s fine for a personal journal or a place where you just want to kick it with some like-minded folks, but if you’re serious about building a blog that will either make money on its own or bring in visitors who will buy your books, digital products, etc. then it’s important to make sure you control everything about it. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons you need to have your own domain name and you need to squeeze out a few bucks a month for web hosting.
Why you should have your own domain name and web hosting
- Professionalism – Someday you may want a business card with your site name, or you may want to list it in the back of your first book. Not only does yourfamousbrand.blogspot.com not look as good as yourfamousbrand.com but it’s longer and less memorable. You want a site address people can remember even if it’s not written in front of them (how else are they going to tell their friends to visit?).
- Control – As laid back as most of the freebie blog sites are, they still have terms of services, and there are still rules. Also, there are limits to what you can do functionality-wise. When your blog becomes popular, you may decide you want to add a forum. Or if you write a few books, or create a few products, you may want to add a virtual shop. With your own hosting, these can be added onto your existing domain, but if you’re on a freebie site, you’ll have to link to an external site (one that won’t have the authority you’ve built up for your site and therefore won’t rank as well in the search engine results).
- Transferability – As much as you love your blog and what you’re writing about, the day may come when you tire of it or–even better–it becomes extremely popular and people start tossing offers your way to buy it. On a personal site, this may not happen, but if you create a popular blog on the advertising model, and it starts getting good traffic, you can almost expect offers. One of them may tempt you. With your own site, you’re free to transfer ownership, but many freebie hosts even state in their ToS that sites may not be sold. Even if that’s not a faux pas, most buyers will steer clear of sites hosted on freebie servers because of the control issues mentioned above.
- Uncertainty — Though it’s unlikely Wordpress or Google (owner of Blogger) are going anywhere any time soon, we don’t know what the future holds. They could sell their blogging services or decide to discontinue them at any time. There are also stories out there on the web about people who have had their blogs wiped without warning. I don’t know about you, but I’d be devastated if I lost all my work, even if it wasn’t bringing in money. When your blog is installed on a server you’re paying for, backups are easy to do, and you know that you’ll always have a place for your content to live.
Okay, so you’re convinced (if you’re not, at least nod your head and pretend you’re convinced so I feel I’ve accomplished my mission). Let’s move on…
How much will it cost and how do you get set up?
Fortunately, it does not cost a lot of money to get a domain name or a basic web hosting package. I was completely broke when I got started (selling beef jerky on ebay isn’t as lucrative as you might think), and I still managed to cough up enough for $10 for a domain name and $5 a month for hosting.
Put it on a credit card if you have to. Or better, go write a handful of articles for someone on Rentacoder or the Digitalpoint Forums (we are writers after all, right?). That’ll get you started, and then… knowing you have to make that $5 a month in order to break even might just motivate you to work a little harder and stick with it a little longer than if you had no money invested.
Be comforted by the fact that starting an internet business is a whole heck of a lot cheaper than starting an offline business. You can pay for a year’s worth of hosting for less than most people spend on their first pack of business cards.
Also, if you’re a serial blog creator, you can look into a reseller hosting account. For as little as $15 a month, you can host a ton of domains and different sites on one hosting account. That’s what I do; I’ve got at least 15 on mine, including this one and a couple for friends.
So, what companies do I recommend?
Whichever company is having a special when you’re looking. 
I’ve had a few different hosts over the years, and they’ve all given roughly the same level of service, and they’ve all been pretty consistently decent as far as uptime goes. (Feel free to chime in with your favorite host/domain registrar in the comments section.)
Personally, for registering domains, I use Godaddy. They’re obnoxious with all the extras they try to sign you up for, but if you just click “no thanks” and check out, they’ll give up. I’ve never had any trouble with them. For hosting, my sites are at Site5, and again I’ve had no troubles with them.
If you watch for specials, you can often get unlimited bandwidth deals (though for us writers with our primarily text sites, bandwidth is rarely a problem).
All right, now that we’ve covered this basic essential, we’ll get back to the motivational “let’s turn our words into wealth” posts next week!
20 responses so far ↓
1 Aaron Wakling // Aug 1, 2008 at 12:15 am
Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
2 Tom Humes // Aug 1, 2008 at 12:41 am
Nice Site layout for your blog. I am looking forward to reading more from you.
Tom Humes
3 Linda // Aug 2, 2008 at 2:04 pm
But then comes the problem: What should I write about? What is the best way for me to market myself? See this is something I really struggle with. It took me months to get my own hosting and when I finally did it, about 2-3 months ago, I only opened a normal family blog because I hadn’t decided what to to write about for my freelance blog.
And I still haven’t decided. This is bugging me so much and I have no idea where to start. I feel this pressure that it needs to be top notch and I need to be the expert, I am probably just stressing myself.
I’d love to discuss this further, thanks for a great blog!
4 Joel Falconer // Aug 2, 2008 at 11:10 pm
GoDaddy is good, at least for domains—I’ve never had a problem and as you say, the obnoxious sales techniques are easy to ignore.
I’ve found the coupon code OYH3 will get you $6.95 domains—has been that way for a while and doesn’t look like it’ll change any time soon.
Thank you for advocating domains names as the only real, professional option. I recently read a book on blogging that said it didn’t really matter—bollocks! I then had to deal with a client who’d read this book and thought she could get away with the cost (yeah, huge expense!).
Excellent work as always, Lindsay.
5 Lindsay // Aug 2, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Thanks for the comments, folks!
Aaron, at the time of this posting, I’m using the Cutline theme by Chris Pearson, which you can download for free (just Google for it). I’m planning on getting something custom done in the next month or two though.
Linda, you might start out with a couple of the advertising model blogs (I have a post on the two main blog-for-profit models that explains in more depth) and just see what excites you. With that, it’s based more on picking a consumer niche and making money from advertising than necessarily establishing yourself as an expert (though you certainly could). As long as you like to research and write, you can make money blogging that way.
Also, you might start two or three blogs and see which one excites you the most and seems to have good profit potential. Along the way, you might find a subject you want to become an expert in. That’s kind of how it’s worked for me. I do a lot of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Joel, thanks for the compliment, and yes coupons codes are a great way to save money. I’ve used those Godaddy ones, and they’re especially handy when ordering multiple domains at a time. I won’t clip coupons out of a newspaper (okay, I don’t even get a newspaper), but it takes just a few seconds to Google for coupon codes and save some cash.
6 Michele // Aug 3, 2008 at 12:17 am
Ok, maybe it’s too late and my brain isn’t working properly (smile), but are you saying you do or don’t use WordPress.org? I understand not using WordPress.com, but org?
7 Lindsay // Aug 3, 2008 at 12:30 am
Michele, I love Wordpress as a blogging platform and use it for this site. What I wouldn’t recommend is hosting on their free blogging service (where you’d have a web address like blahblahsite.wordpress.com), not a for real “gonna make money with this sucker” blog anyway.
8 Michele // Aug 3, 2008 at 12:34 am
Great, that’s what I thought you meant but then I got confused – could be ’cause I should be sleeping instead of commenting right now.
9 Rebecca Laffar-Smith // Aug 3, 2008 at 2:28 am
I’ve suggested to my clients, (and my friends) that it’s a fantastic idea to move on to self-hosted blog platforms. These days the cost of domains and hosting is exceptionally cheap. I pay less than $100 per year and have several domain names and a huge space and bandwidth allowance with all the trimmings.
These days, it just makes sense to start as you mean to go on and a domain name site is the best way to represent yourself as a professional.
10 Sharon Hurley Hall // Aug 3, 2008 at 3:57 am
Great, clear advice. I tell people the same thing. You can’t beat hosting a blog on your own domain for total control.
11 Melissa Donovan // Aug 3, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I never did use one of the free blogging sites – went straight to self-hosted WordPress. However, I think if someone’s interested in blogging but not 100% sure about their commitment to it or the topic they want to blog about, then going with a free blogging platform for a few months might be a good way to get their feet wet and learn the ropes.
However, I’d suggest using WordPress.com instead of Blogger or any other platform.
My very first blog in 2006 turned out to be a topic I couldn’t stick with and so it died after about six months. Now, on one hand, I did learn a lot about blogging and customizing WordPress. On the other hand, I put a lot of time and effort, plus a little money, into something that had no longevity. It’s kind of a toss up.
12 Nathan Egelhof // Aug 3, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Lindsay,
Great topic! Lately, I’ve been struggling with this issue, so I’m glad you posted this. I’ve begun a blog at Wordpress, the freebie .com, for now until I find a topic suitable for a paying site. The problem has, of course, been finding the topic. But I’ve searched through some of your other posts, and have found the material very helpful. Terrific blog!
13 Monika Mundell // Aug 4, 2008 at 3:40 am
Hi Lindsay,
Yeah, a fellow advocate of self hosted blogs. It’s good to see how you broke the post up into the why’s and how’s. I’ve long been recommending people to switch to self hosted, especially if they are in business. It just ads more credibility.
I’ve used GoDaddy domains for years now and owned over 150 domains with them. Never had an issue. But don’t go with their hosting though. That clearly sucks.
Jow mentioned a code in his comment. I tried that one today and it didn’t work. Here is what I usually do before I pay for the domain.
Go to Google and type in the following as you see it here: GoDaddy+coupons+July 2008 (substitute the correct month and year though)
I never fail to find a coupon for at least 20% if not more. Hope this helps someone.
14 Halina // Aug 15, 2008 at 10:01 am
The question I have on all this is, OK, so I buy a domain name from GoDaddy.com….but then, what about making the actual Web page? Do you have a preferred Web software? I do not know HTML code at all.
Thanks!
Halina
15 Lindsay // Aug 16, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Halina,
I used Wordpress, which is a free blogging platform. Some web hosts have one-click set-ups so you can install it without having to know anything about coding or creating databases.
Here is a podcast that goes more in depth on the how-to:
http://www.webhostingshow.com/2007/05/21/setup-a-blog-with-wordpress-guide-episode-108/
And don’t forget my favorite option: pay someone $20 to set it all up for you.
16 Nana Diaries // Aug 17, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Your site is a wealth of great information. Thanks so much for visiting mine and “inviting” me back here. I will return often, I’m sure.
I’m pretty excited about the topics I’ve chosen to blog about, as they come pretty instinctually. I do want to make money from my blogs, and had I know at the outset that Wordpress wouldn’t allow me to do that, I wouldn’t have chosen them to debut blogging. And so goes the learning process.
KJ
http://nanadiaries.wordpress.com
http://interminablewriter.wordpress.com
17 Halina // Aug 18, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Hi Lindsay! Thanks for that link on using WordPress! I’m still kind of stuck on where to get at my SQL…..but I now have a web site at least!
18 Halina // Aug 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm
As a side note, I’m not sure I understand Nana’s note that WordPress won’t let you make money on your blogs….how is that so?
19 Lindsay // Aug 19, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Halina, when you install the Wordpress platform on your own domain/web hosting package, you can do whatever you want with it. If you sign up for a free blog at Wordpress.com (and have an address such as yourblog.wordpress.com), you’re bound by their terms of service, and I believe they have some limits on placing ads and what not.
For more on installing Wordpress on your server, you can read the instructions on http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
I also noticed that they have a free installation service now, so that might make things easier.
Good luck all!
20 jwielland // Feb 11, 2009 at 1:12 pm
If my web site is already hosted by Godaddy, do I set up a seperate account with them for my blog and do I need another name?
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