How do serious bloggers who are ready to build their personal brand and promote themselves properly start paving that path? For starters, they should register their own exclusive domain.
Blogging has long since transcended its origins in the late 1990s as “online journaling”—it’s a revolution in the digital space with significant influence on trends and consumer behavior, as well as decent profit potential through ads, affiliate programs, and product sales.
For new kids on the blogging block, a free subdomain under a service like WordPress or GoDaddy is a great beginner’s starting point. For bloggers looking to get serious, a professional and dedicated online presence is crucial, starting with the most important element: a custom domain.
We form meaningful connections to spaces, even in the digital environment. First impressions can be a make or break moment for success.
A Dedicated Online Space For Your Blog
Owning Your Domain Name
The first element of your domain that visitors see is your domain name—and it’s more than just aesthetics. Owning a custom domain name signals more authority and legitimacy than using a free subdomain to host your blog and ending up with a URL that includes the name of that company, like “yourblogname.wordpress.com.” A personal domain name communicates the message that you’re serious enough to actually purchase a domain—because you’re in it for the long haul.
Branding and Customization
Your blog’s brand shapes the relationship between you and your readers. A unique domain name speaks to your readers about your dedication. Readers see a devoted blogger who’s in control of their blogging operation, which can create a flow-on effect for your blog’s strength of character. Visitors are seeking authentic blogspaces and narratives, and the ability to customize your space gives your blog autonomy, charm, and potential for a wider frame of reference to better express who you are.
Free subdomains aren’t outright customizable—which is a significant setback when you’re creating a unique blog persona to stand out and go the distance. An unoriginal or dull domain space shuts down interest.
Promoting Your Blog
If you promote a blog built on a free subdomain, you’ll deal with unique challenges and risks that can sabotage your shot at success.
If your plan is to start off using a free subdomain provider and then migrate to another domain in the future, you’ll lose all (or most of) your work in regards to ranking in the search engines. You won’t have a way to tell the search engines you’ve moved to keep the credit from all your existing links—free subdomains usually don’t allow you to create something called a “301 redirect,” which gives a new domain the same link credit that it gave the old one.
Essentially, promoting your blog on a free site that you won’t be able to move (without starting over from scratch) means putting a lot of trust into forever being happy with your subdomain provider.
On a similar note, other sites wanting to promote or link to your blog may be hesitant to link to a subdomain—and backlinks are a vital factor to improve ranking authority and visibility.
Another thing to keep in mind: subdomain providers may start charging fees in the future or shut down. If you remember the free website providers Netscape or Geocities from the days of yore, you know things can change pretty quickly.
Profit Potential
With domain ownership, you’re free to explore customized monetization strategies relevant to your brand, so you can have sponsored content, reviews, affiliate marketing, and product sales of your own choosing.
A good mix of monetization strategies can start you down a lucrative pathway to turning your blog into a bona fide online business. And by owning your own domain, you can evolve and adapt your content and monetization strategies to new trends in your industry and in the blogging world—things like design, videos, and podcasts—to keep things fresh and user-friendly.
Subdomain providers usually put random 3rd party ads on their free account pages, and have restrictions and compliance policies on things like sponsored posts and affiliates. This limited control (and credibility) and lack of autonomy kills brand identity, so it’s tougher to secure the advertisers and sponsored deals that you prefer.
Storage Space
Free blogging platforms usually offer around 1 GB of storage space, which is plenty for a small text-based site or personal blog. If you plan to add multimedia content like images, videos, or PDFs, you’ll need a lot more space—i.e., an upgraded tier. At that point, it’s wise to compare prices of buying your own domain instead.
Selling Your Blog Someday
If you plan to sell your blog in the future, there will always be people looking to purchase a successful business. But if you’re using a free subdomain that you didn’t build and you don’t own, the only thing you can charge for is your subdomain account details.
People buy and sell their sites based on 3 things:
- Traffic (overall volume of visitors and interactions that a website receives)
- Profit per month
- Potential profit per month (affiliate opportunities)
The downside: very few free subdomains get high volumes of traffic and have limitations on revenue streams, making the websites not worth very much. Couple that with the fact subdomains are difficult to convert to a different platform.
The bottom line
Serious bloggers establish credibility, authority, and a personal brand with a dedicated domain. Free subdomains simply can’t match the level of customization, control, and profit potential of a custom website address. Plus, owning your own domain positions you for future growth, whether you’re aiming for increased traffic, higher profits, or even selling your blog down the line.
At Epik, you can effortlessly search and secure your perfect custom domain. We’ll guide you every step of the way, and continuously support your domain needs. Sign up today!