Is it better to buy custom domain from Blogger?

Recently one of my friend who has just started blogging, asked me this classic question – “Is it better to buy custom domain from Blogger“. I have faced the same question few times before.

Here is my explanations.

I’ve been trying to maintain blogs on different niches for last 4 years. As I can’t display any advertisement on my blog under WordPress.com blog (unless I share 50% of my revenue with WordPress), I had no choice left than buying my own hosting. At the moment I’ve 3-4 different hosting accounts in different hosting providers. Self-hosted WordPress (downloaded from WordPress.org) gives you the freedom to do everything you can imagine in a blog.

However, when I started blogging, I started with Blogger. Blogger is Google’s own blogging platform. In a free Blogger blog, you will have a subdmain that looks like http://xxxx.blogspot.com and by default you will have a choice of 10-12 different theme designs. However, nowadays you can copy any blogspot design template and decorate your own blog. And also if you don’t want to show Blogger subdomain, you can register domain from any domain registrars and connect your domain to your Blogspot blog.

Now, it is obvious that if you are installing Wordpress in your own hosting, you will need a domain name. But is it worth buying a domain name for Blogger?

My Answer is YES. Personal bloggers are like your own portfolio on the net. To me, someone using a subdomain for the own portfolio, are not serious about themselves as domains are very cheap nowadays.

Here is a list of pros, why should buy a domain name for Blogger blog.

• If you are just starting a blog, but you want to keep it professional, you should use your own domain to hide blogspot subdomain.
• Using blogspot free blog, you can save the yearly fee for hosting and can invest that money to design a customized blogspot template on your own taste hiring a designer.
• Blogspot hosting is a very fast, secure and stable hosting facility. You won’t have to worry much about server downtime, hacking, run-time error, updates etc.
• You can easily connect your blogspot blog with Google other services.

Ok, here is the list of cons why you should buy your own hosting and install WordPress.

• WordPress is undoubtedly the best blogging platform; all the major bloggers and blogging societies are using it. Tons of Themes, templates, plugins, widgets, tutorials, designers have taken it beyond comparison.
• I use Thesis theme for WordPress that allows me to change and design my WordPress blog easily. But from my own experiences, Blogspot themes are a bit hard to customize and one trying to change the theme may require knowledge depth in HTML, CSS, XML etc.
• Placing Adsense or other advertisements on Blogspot theme is also hard.
• I have came across few reports that Google has removed few blogspot without prior warning. In that case, you will lose all the content unless you keep regular backup.
• 
  

What is my opinion?

If you do not have enough budget, I would suggest that you should buy a domain and start blogging under free Blogspot platform. Once you are making money or have some spare money to spend after hosting, then you can buy a hosting and install Wordpress. After you install the Wordpress blog, you can import all the content very easily from your blogspot blog to Wordpress blog.

Hope this post help you in taking the decision.

Take care, bye.

by jinnat ul hasan

source: http://www.hasan-online.com/2010/05/14/custom-domain-from-blogger/