Friday, March 02, 2007

Custom domain for New Blogger (formerly Blogger Beta)

Custom domain is a fairly new feature available recently for bloggers using the New Blogger platform. Most bloggers using Google Blogger do not have their own domain. Instead, they have a sub-domain in the form of http://yourblog.blogspot.com.

Some people are not too happy to use a sub-domain for their blog, as the sub-domain does not belong to them, but to Blogger. Some also have the opinion that it is less prestigious to use a sub-domain, rather like using your home for a business office which then therefore command less respect. If you are of that opinion, this is where custom domain comes in. You can register a domain for your blog and Blogger can host it free for you. And not only is it free, you do not have to bother with the hassle of using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to publish your post. And you can use the new features available for New Blogger like Layout, drag and drop, Label list, etc.

Some bloggers are still not satisfied with just having their own domain, and want to host the blog on their own with a third party web host in addition to having their own domain. In this case, in addition to having pay for the annual renewal fee for the domain registration, you will have to pay monthly or yearly hosting fees. Depending on which web host you choose, you may also have to bother with limited bandwidth, etc. If your blog attracts high traffic, you may have to pay more for more bandwidth, etc.

If you are using your blog for business purposes, it is probably good to have your own domain for your blog. You will then have to register a suitable domain name. Now getting a suitable domain name may not be easy as many domain names have already be taken up and the one you want may not be available. This is where www.buydomains.com comes in. You can search for suitable and available domain name using their search box or their Advanced Search Tool.

If the searches don't turn up anything, you can use their new New Domain Alert to alert you of new available domain names.

Now you can also make a business of blogs that you start. You can register good domain names which you think may be of great value to someone, but who may happen to be late on the scene. You can then put up your domain name for sale at Sell Your Domains.

If rather than just parking the domain names, you start blogging and build up a good PageRank for the blogs. A domain name with a good PageRank> can probably fetch higher prices. A PageRank of 5 is not too difficult to get if you put some work into it. Your blog will then fetch a good price

In addition, if you join the Google AdSense and place contextual text and/or image ads., Google search boxes or Google referral text or buttons on your blogs and get it up to earning a decent income, your blog can fetch even higher prices as there are people looking for ready made revenue generating blogs and are willing to pay for them. If you want to go that route, I can help you. Just comment in any of my blogs or email me. And when you are ready, just put the blog/s up for sale at Sell Your Domains.

16 comments:

Deliberation du jour said...

Hi Peter, Your Blog had been a tremendous help to me.

I already have domain names matching my blogs, how do I do the change?

my email is :
mary@deliberationdujour.com

Thank you!

Unknown said...

Your articles are interesting. I have some blogs. I'm very new to it. One is on google. I like their easy format. But I would like to use my own domains. Can you purchase the domains from google?? Can you sell them with the adsense in place? I thought that was specific to your own account?
beachgirl

http://desertkitchenconnection.blogspot.com/

Manature said...

Hi Beachgirl,

Google don't sell domain. You can register with sites like godaddy.com which is very popular and reputed to be one of the cheapest. Then Google Blogger can host your blog with your own domain for free. Regarding blogs with AdSense with it, there are people who sell such sites, but I wouldn't buy them. They may contain just duplicate content which search engines ignore.

However, many people have approached me for help and have offered to pay, and I have done a couple of such jobs for people. If you want, you do the content and I can help you put AdSense products (ad units, link units, search box, referral link) for you.

If you don't have an AdSense account yet, but you already have a website, you can apply for one via the "Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense" text link at the top of the right sidebar of my blog.

Peter (Blog*Star 2006 and 2007)
Generating Revenue from your Website

Manature said...

Hi Beachgirl,

I read through you question again, and think I have to respond once more. You can purchase sites with adsense in it if you want, but you will have to edit the script for the ads and replace the old AdSense ID with your own AdSense ID, or redo the ads or other AdSense products all over again.

Peter (Blog*Star 2006 and 2007)
Earning Online

Unknown said...

Hi Peter,
I added the ad sense and Cj ads to my sites. I'm no programmer but am starting to get the hang of it. You can check it out at www.flyingdollar.com or www.cactuscowgirlgifts.com and www.wildrosechina.com and of course I added it to my blogs. I have to change all the ads on my western store because I used ads that are really too wide. Since I sell a lot of western gifts from that site I don't want my customer's put off by huge ads.
I love reading your blogs. Good information written so normal people can read it.
Now I'm considering another website to host an affiliate merchandise catalog. Have you any experience at that? If so send me the url to your site so I can look at it.
Thanks again.
Have a great day blogging.........
beachgirl

Manature said...

Hi beachgirl,

Thanks for the kind words. I have not done much affiliate marketting except add one sinle button/link (probably button) on one site and then eventually remove it. You gave me the idea to try something like this and when I get time off my busy schedule, I will do it and inform you (If I remember. Anyway I will label the email for your comment moderation "for attention" but the trouble is, this site was started with a Google (gmail) account that was used to test Blogger Beta and I don't open that gmail as often as my regular ones).

Peter (Blog*Star 2006 and 2007)
Blogger Tips and Tips got listed in DMOZ, the most important directory and the most difficult to get listed in, plus link to site with tips on how to get listed in DMOZ

bookworM said...

Peter, you cannot imagine how useful your blog/s have been to me. After one year of free blogging at Blogger.com, I have finally decided to have my own domain name for a new blog so I can enter the PayPerPost review market. Since you say this can be hosted for free by Blogger.com, what is the procedure? Shall I get first a new Blogspot blog then shift to my domain name? What are the other small details that I should know?

Manature said...

Hi Bookworm,

First, don't know if you already know this, but all blogs withe "Pay per post" PageRank have been downgraded to 0. However, if PageRank is not important to you, you can ignore this warning.

Second, I have registered a few domains for custom and have started converting one blog to custom domain. I am proceeding cautiously because of this problem with
myblog.blogspot.com
and
www.myblog.blogspot.com

Currently faced with the problem - error message

"Another blog is already hosted at this address"

and trying to solve this. As soon as that is solved, I will record what I have done in the post in one of my Blogger related blogs. I hope I remember to save this message plus URL of this post and update you when the post is published. However, I am a forgetful person plus there is a long list of "to do" stuff I need to clear.

Suggest you bookmark my blogs and/or subscribe to feed.

Peter Blog*Star
Blogger Tips and Tricks

bookworM said...

Thanks for the quick response. I have bookmarked your blogs and subscribed to this feed :-)

Rock Kapak said...

hi
i have http://rockkapakchords.blogspot.com/ and thinking about buying custom domain that can be found in blogger setting to http://www.rockkapakchords.com/
if i do that, what happen to all my 400 post which is link to one another by http://rockkapakchords.blogspot.com/blah blah
do i have to change all of it to http://www.rockkapakchords.com/blah blah?
and what happened to users that bookmark me with my previous domain?
and can i still using blogger platform in posting?
please show me the way.
thanks.

Manature said...

If I remembered correctly, I did a test with Online Pharmacy.com. I vaguely remembered saving the permalink before conversion to custom domain, and after conversion to custom domain, I found that the old permalink prior to conversion is redirected to the new permalink after conversion.

bookworM said...

Mayon,

1. If you shift to Blogger's custom domain, you need not worry about all of your 400 posts which are linked to each other via your old Blogpost sub-domain, FOR AS LONG AS YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS CORRECTLY. The only thing I noticed though when I shifted was that I lost (as in zero) the Google PageRank of my Blogspot blog. Apparently, PR is highly URL-specific. In due time, however, my new URL had its own PR.

2. All your users which bookmarked your old Blogpost address will be automatically redirected. Having said that, may I suggest that you make a one-time post (short only) announcing to your readers or subscribers that you now have a new URL so they may want to update their own bookmarks on your blog. Reassure them, however, that if they are too busy (or too lazy, as the case maybe) to update their bookmarks, they don't need to worry.

3. After shifting to a custom domain, you will still use the same Blogger Dashboard. It's that simple.

Hope that helps.

Sossity Corby said...

Right now I have a few blogs that are all linked to each other, one is the main blog ( of which I would have my domain name for ) & this will link out to my other separate blogs, these separate blogs link back to my main blog. If I got a domain name with my main blog 1, would my also own the other blogs, ( 2, 3, 4, & 5 & later linked blogs I make ) that link back to blog 1? or would the domain only cover or own just blog 1?

Peter @ Enviroman said...

Sorry don't quite understand your question

GK said...

You are my life saver..thanks bro!!

adrin said...

Thanks for this much information. I will definitely register the custom domain name for my new blog.

Domain registration india