Maximizing Blogging Brand : Self-hosting & your own domain

In today’s world, a person’s blog is an important indicator of his personal “brand”. I’m maybe too well aware of the fact that the things I do online reflect on how I’m perceived and judged by others. Those who want to know who I am look me up on search engines and social networks and end up finding this blog and my other online projects. Content aside, I believe your online presence makes a statement on how serious your are about what you do. This means making sure you have a somewhat unique brand which you have complete control over and is best optimized for maximum online exposure. In blogging, this means taking the extra step to run your own self hosted blogging platform on your own domain with a customized theme, optimized for SEO and social media.

Throughout the years, when there was a blog that I liked that was hosted on one of those free limiting blogging platforms on a subdomain (AKA Google’s blogger/blogspot, Wordpress.COM etc.), I would contact the blogger and offer my help in getting started in migrating to a self-hosted wordpress installation on their own domain. Occasionally, they didn’t only agree to that but were also devoted enough to follow that to the end.

Two such cases are Carrie of “My Several Worlds” and David of “David on Formosa”. David, previously on blogspot, was a natural. There was no doubt in my mind that once he’s freed from the constraints of those blogging services that he would do extremely well. And he has. Since his blog was migrated, David has really taken off, soon becoming one of Taiwan’s leading bloggers. Carrie, moving from Wordpress.COM has really extended her blogging into the travel writing niche that now goes far beyond the original Taiwan audience and she does a terrific job of leveraging social media and the network with other travel writers to make the most of her blog in travel writing and photography, building an impressive brand for herself.

I recently asked the two to write about their experiences and conclusions. David writes the following in “WordPress is a great blogging tool” :

It is almost three years since I migrated this blog from its original home on blogger.com to self-hosted WordPress account. Setting up a WordPress blog can seem a little intimidating at first. I was fortunate to have some good advice and help from Fili when I first switched over. […]

I think one of the best things for me about using WordPress is its good SEO. […] Good SEO ensures that people find quality and relevant content when they do searches. […]

Blogging is really about communicating and sharing information and it is important to use the best available tools to do this. I encourage other Taiwan bloggers to adopt WordPress.

Carrie follows up with “Wordpress.com vs. Self-Hosting on Wordpress.org”

[…] I am encouraging other bloggers to host their own domain. […] I started blogging in 2007 on a wordpress.com account and for about a year, I was pretty content with how things were going. I had built a substantial readership, but I was already starting to figure out that I was really limited with a wordpress.com account. For one, I couldn’t generate any kind of revenue with my wordpress.com site. For another, I’d already made a name for myself with my site, but my account was set up under a nickname. I wanted people to be able to come directly to My Several Worlds instead of having to remember my nickname attached to a wordpress.com account. Lastly, and most importantly, I wanted control over my site, and the only way I could have that was by moving to my own domain, where I could have access to an unlimited number of options involving site design, layout and plugins to add functionality, style and originality to my site. I knew I had to make a switch.

The problem was that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend money on my own domain when I didn’t know anything about installing or maintaining a website. I chatted with several blogger friends who all encouraged me to move to a self-hosted domain. In the end, I took their advice and made the leap after I received an email from my friend, Fili, who offered to help if I had any problems. […]

In less than 36 hours, Fili had helped me set up my new web site and imported all my posts and comments from my old URL. A few days after that, I was able to redirect all of my readers from my old URL to my new URL by using Wordpress’ domain mapping feature. Within a year, my old posts under wordpress.com had been redirected to My Several Worlds and I was also able to maintain my page ranking with Google.

Read her post for a more detailed summary of advantages and disadvantages of migrating.

To be completely honest, I’ve had some unsuccessful migrations, usually with the less technically proficient and more traditional bloggers that found the technical difficulties to be too much of a hassle. I completely understand that, but it still bothers me when I see their personal brands running on a really ugly theme under a domain name they don’t own and ranking well below less talented bloggers on search engine results.

If you’ve read this and you’re thinking that you don’t have a blog but that you’re thinking of writing one and wondering how this might be relevant to you, here’s another note from a former classmate of mine who I helped open his own blog on his own domain. Here’s from Philip McAndrew :

Recently, I discovered a desire deep within me to begin a blog about my life and interests. I had worked with the wordpress platform a little before, and decided that that was a decent way to. I signed up for one of the free accounts with wordpress.com and began messing around with themes and settings. I had a picture of what I wanted, but the functionality I desired just wasn’t there. I decided to contact my friend Fili to ask for some assistance with some basic questions. He pointed my in the helpful direction of registering a domain name and starting my own website. I was a little wary at first, but Fili said he would walk me through it.

I signed up for a domain and hosting package for around $7 USD per month, with unlimited space and other features I am still not completely familiar with. I then set up a meeting on Skype with Fili so he could tell me what some of the website jargon meant as well as teach me how to upload things to my new domain. We began with the wordpress installation. It was a breeze. The hosting service (midphase.com) has a built in installer that makes the wordpress installation complete within about 3 clicks. I was really surprised at how easy it was. Fili helped to take me through some of the user interface, point out how the plug-ins section worked, and give me a general sense of where I was headed. After he set me free, I was able to explore and play around with all the settings. I was able to try out different themes and find one that suited my style and needs. I did have to call him for a little support along the way, but overall it was a really easy process with a pretty steep learning curve. I was able to pick up and begin understanding what I was doing fairly soon.

For anyone looking to start their own website, I would recommend just getting started. Prepare to have your time sucked away though, because it is really addicting once you get started.

Good luck!!!

To sum things up, I strongly recommend migrating to a self-hosted your-own-domain blog. If you’re a regular reader on this blog or know me, feel free to contact me and ask for my help. If I’m not too busy with other things, I’d be more than happy to help.

If you’re looking for a reliable hosting service, I’d recommend Midphase. I believe both David, Carrie and Phil are quite happy with their services. Good luck.