Moving Your Blog: How to transfer your blog to your own personal domain name and server from Blogger/Blogspot or Wordpress.com

Moving Your Blog: How to transfer your blog to your own personal domain name and server from Blogger/Blogspot or Wordpress.com

Inside, you'll find detailed instructions on how to go from a blog hosted on a sub-domain on someone else's service, to owning your own domain name and having complete control of your own server.

For those who are happy with their existing service, but just want a domain name of their own, I explain how you can keep using your existing blog, but point at it with a domain name.

Finally, I include information on such common questions as how to publicize and monetize your blog. Specific product recommendations are included, as well as how to find out more.

There are many reasons why you might want your own domain name:

Branding: if you’re trying to build a “personal brand”, having your blog hosted by someone else can dilute it and lessen its power.
Control: self-hosted blogs let you have total control over layout, content and functionality, unlike blogs hosted by third parties.
Credibility: it seems more professional. People take you more seriously when you have your own domain. A Blogspot or WordPress.com address advertises someone else’s services and can make you seem amateurish
Find-ability: domain name and domain suffix can affect your ranking in Search Engines
Familiarity: some users tend to get confused by "unusual" names like “TheNameOfTheSite.wordpress.com” or “TheNameOfTheSite.blogspot.com” because it doesn’t follow the convention of having “www” in front of it. You may think they're idiots, but they're you're audience and it makes sense to stay in their comfort zone as much as possible.