First Things First: Get Yourself a Real Domain Name

Think about it. Nearly every serious blog you look at has one. Why don't you?

Ok, there's one reason why you might not. No matter how you choose to do it, a domain name that doesn't have ".blogger" or ".wordpress" in it is going to cost you a little bit of money. The name itself will cost you anywhere from six to 12 dollars per year, and it might cost you 10 bucks to get Wordpress to map it to your blog (I think Blogger does this for free).  If you want to self-host, which I think is the best option, that'll run you another seven dollars per month at a site like BlueHost (affiliate link!).

So if you truly have no hopes of making your blog anything more than personal, and you couldn't care less if it ever makes money, then maybe a custom domain name isn't for you. Everyone else, read on.

Perhaps the most important thing that a custom domain name offers is that it's easy to remember. If a non-blogger who doesn't use bookmarks (yes, these people exist) stumbles across your blog, chances are they'll never be back if they have to remember where to put the ".wordpress" or ".blogger." And what happens when they want to tell their friend about it over lunch? Think they won't screw it up?

Maybe you're thinking "I'll get my own domain name once my blog starts getting more traffic and I see that it has the potential to make some money." Fine, but know this. First, someone might grab up the name before you do, either with honest intentions or just to make you pay more for it. Next, any links you get from other bloggers and any search engine love Google gives you all belong to Wordpress or Blogger (which is of course owned by Google). When you do eventually get your own name, people are going to keep being led to your old site. Some will follow your links to the new site, some won't. And all your links between posts will take people back to the old site unless you change them.  Don't wait.

Another reason to get your own domain name, if you use Wordpress, is that self-hosting affords you a lot more options. Hundreds, if not thousands, of themes to choose from. Access to countless plugins, which are little snippets of code like the widgets you're used to that make it easy to customize your blog. The ability to edit your code or have someone else do it. (If this sounds scary, trust me; 95% of it is copying and pasting.)  You're technically not even supposed to have advertising on Wordpress blogs that aren't self-hosted.

A final reason to get your own domain name is search engine optimization (SEO).  Those extra words in your URL's dilute the keywords that Google looks for when it determines how to rank your blog.  For example, "EatAndRunForFun.com" is much more keyword-rich than "EatAndRunForFun.wordpress.com."  And there are some killer Wordpress SEO plugins that, if you're not using them yet, will give you such great results that you'll curse yourself for waiting around so long.

As for the money thing, I say just do it. Making 10 bucks with your blog to cover the domain name is easy.  Even 100 bucks a year, if you choose to get your own hosting, is not hard; my guess is that most blogs can get the necessary level of traffic just from family and friends. Finding an advertiser is another issue, but if you're a food blogger, Foodbuzz makes it easy.  And if not, you can use affiliate programs like Amazon's to generate a little bit of revenue.

So how do you do it?  I'll write some more detailed instructions in a later post, but for now, here's what you can do.  If you're at Blogger, you can check out this page from Google about how to map a domain name to your blog.  For Wordpress, you can do the same thing here.  But to really set your blog up for the long term, with all the customization options, I strongly recommend getting your own hosting at a site like BlueHost that offers one-click Wordpress installs, and includes a free domain name when you pay for hosting.  The one-click Wordpress install will save you a TON of headache. (I just set this blog up with a one-click install; I didn't know about it when I set up No Meat Athlete.  There is a world of difference in ease of use.)

For an example of a newly self-hosted blog, check out the Healthy Everythingtarian, which Holly just moved from thehealthyeverythingtarian.wordpress.com.  She's still playing around with the layout, but it's so much nicer already!