Having A Domain Name For Your Blog | How to Start a Blog Series #6

Your Blog’s Domain Name Is Part Of Branding.

When it comes to branding, you should try to be consistent in all avenues of your blog including your blog’s domain name. Having the right domain name for your blog is like having the right TV commercial for your product. In other words, domain name matters. It carries the reputation of your
company, business or organization. Domain name is just as important as your blog’s contents. Domain name is just as important as a company logo. It carries your brand and eventually it will become a part of your overall branding and will carry your business reputation as well.

Generic Domain Name and/or Blogspot URL Address. 

There are cases that you can obtain a generic domain name for your blog therefore you don’t have to worry about registering a domain name and paying for the registration fee annually. A blog with a generic domain name usually indicates that you are currently using a free blogging platform like Blogger.com or WordPress.com and utilizing their server space to store all your blog data for free. In case of using Blogger blogging platform (Blogger.com), the generic domain name or URL address of your blog will be in this format, YourChosenBlogName.blogspot.com In case of using WordPress.com blogging platform, the generic domain name or URL address of your blog will be in this format, YourChosenBlogName.wordpress.com.
When you sign-up for a blog with Blogger.com you will be prompted in the beginning of the blog creation process to setup your generic domain name, YourChosenBlogName.blogspot.com. You can use this generic domain name to promote your blog but the problem with it is that you don’t really own the domain name. Later on, whenever you decide to switch blogging platforms (for example from Blogger to WordPress) then you cannot carry along with you your YourChosenBlogName.blogspot.com domain since this generic domain name only works with the Blogger blogging platform. I highly suggest not to keep using the generic domain name even if you are hosting your blog for free. For one, it looks very unprofessional. For two, it screams free. For three, you will be spending months, if not years, promoting your blog and if you are promoting a generic domain name then you will have no permanent ownership of it and sometime in the future when you decide to transfer from one blogging platform to another, the generic domain name will stay with the blogging platform that provided it for you. Therefore, all the years of hard work promoting your generic domain name will be for nothing.

Custom Domain Name. 

Having a custom domain name for your blog means that you registered a URL address for your blog via a domain name registrar which you can easily find one online. Whatever brand name (as discussed in previous chapter) you decided on for your blog, I highly suggest that you register the same brand name as your blog’s domain name or URL address in a format like this www.YourChosenBlogName.com Consider checking a domain registration website or a registrar to check the availability of your chosen brand name, www.YourChosenBlogName.com. And if you have the budget, you might want to register such domain name, if its available, while it’s available. If you are either serious about blogging or having a custom domain name is part of your future plan, then you might have to consider looking at domain name registration today in order to lock it in and you will have uniformity when it comes to your branding. In fact, your custom domain name will help build your credibility as a brand. But if you don’t have plans or the desire to maintain a custom domain name for your blog, then you can just ignore and not worry about registering a custom domain name, save the yearly fees, and just utilize the free generic domain name (discussed above). Although, I would not advise that you go this route, but this decision is entirely up to you.

Once registered, start using your blog’s custom domain name right away and use it to promote your blog so that any effort of marketing and advertising that you do with your blog using your custom domain name, www.YourChosenBlogName.com, will not be wasted because you own it, and you carry it with you from one platform to another whenever you need to switch blogging platforms sometime in the future. Another reason why you have to consider registering a custom domain name now rather than later is that changing your blog’s branding to accommodate a custom domain name later on will be a lot harder especially if you already built a huge following using your old branding.

Unpredictable scenarios do happen to some bloggers, who ended up growing bigger than they originally envisioned, and they have to face the reality of formalizing their online presence to keep up with the growth of their blog and turn it into a viable business entity. Having your own custom domain name is an important part of online business. It represents your online location, your virtual address.
For awareness sake, I am mentioning this custom domain name registration here so that you will have these possible scenarios laid out to you in advance, so that you won’t ended up being on a situation, sometime in the future, when proper branding with corresponding custom domain name for your blog is something that you wanted all along, and then sometime in the future you grow exponentially in your online presence more than you anticipated and when you finally decide to check the availability of the domain name at a future time rather than now, it might be too late for you to register a domain name if someone already registered it before you.

Having a custom domain name for your blog is not something that you need to have at all, nor is it required, nor is it necessary, but I’m just mentioning this now to give you an idea of what could possibly happen in the future that you might not even thought of.

One thing to note though is that there is a cost involve yearly to maintain a custom domain name. Depending on the registrar, it can cost you anywhere from $10 to $35 per year. Plus, there are additional fees associated with it like if you want to add privacy service in the registered custom domain name so that your personal information like name, address, contact information, will not be publicly viewable as the registered owner of the domain name.

Ultimately, registering a domain name are all up to you to decide, depending on your vision, your goal, and what you want to achieve with regards to your online presence both the present time and in the future.
In my case, personally, this is what I usually do, before I create a blog, I check the availability of the domain name first because I don’t like the idea of putting too much time, energy and effort promoting and growing a brand name when I don’t own the domain name on it.

Generic Domain Name Versus Custom Domain Name. 

So what are the advantages and disadvantages of having your own custom domain name instead of using the generic domain name? First and for most, I personally think that there is no major disadvantages of having your own custom domain name, except for the cost of maintaining or keeping the domain name registered in your name year after year.
But regardless of whether you own a custom domain name, or you are using a generic domain name or generic URL address, you are still going to take the time and effort to promote your blog, either way. And this is when the main advantage of having your own custom domain name comes in.
If you own your own custom domain name for your blog, then you are promoting your own brand.
Whenever you decide to change or switch from one blogging platform to another, your custom domain name will remain the same because you can continue to use your own custom domain name regardless of what blogging platform you are using. Therefore, all the time and effort you spent over the years promoting your custom domain name will not be wasted because you will always have the same domain name that will point to your blog, even if you change servers, hosting companies, or blogging platforms.
Unlike a generic domain name which will stay with the current blogging platform that owns the generic domain name. Therefore, the generic domain name (YourChosenBlogName.blogspot.com) that you obtained from Blogger.com is not- transferable to another platform. Any effort that you do/did promoting your generic domain name will be down the drain.
Back to custom domain name, the only time that your effort promoting it will be wasted completely is when you decide to overhaul your whole entire online presence including your brand name, so then you will need to change and register a new custom domain name to match your new brand name. If you do this, then you have to start from the ground up promoting your new brand which includes your new custom domain name.