Subdomain or self-hosted own domain? What to choose for your blog?

It seems to be a hard choice to make

Hi guys what’s happening? Do you know what is the title is about? (Domain what?), have you ever wonder why some bloggers’ blog are far more interactive, pretty, and different from others? Fear not, the answer lies within this post, I think it is time to getting into a topic regarding a little bit how blogging works and why you should care about this, I am sure this post is definitely benefits you from being a professional blogger, I will try my best to keep my explanation non-technical, so keep up with me guys.

First of all, what is domain and subdomain? Basically domain is a name for an IP address (Internet Protocol), an IP address consist a numerical label for device which are linking together, it can occur during the linking between two PCs or PC to the internet. I bet you are confuse at this point, just think of a domain name is a caller ID in phone and IP address is the person’s number, so when you are going to call a specific persons, you are looking for their names instead of their mobile numbers. Another example of domain name in a website URL:

google.com

Subdomain is just an extension of the domain, it is used to identify a particular service or department for an organization, just like google play store:

play.google.com

So you see the “google.com” is Google’s domain name and because they have a lot of services, so they had made several subdomain to separates it. Alright what is going to with blog? Now you may have known that you can either register yourself a free blogging website or paid to have one, the difference as below:

Free blogging service

Using the subdomain of the blogging platform, meaning your blog URL address will end up like this:

yourfancyname.blogservicename.com

The name you chose will have an extra name at the back before the “.com” the “blogservicename” represent the blogging platform available for example, wordpress.com, blogspot.com, and etc.

The benefits

Personal blog
Good for posting for a non-business purpose, people use to blog about their life, the movie they just watched, and the food they liked and cooked. If you are the type of person who likes to keep a digital journal, free blog is a go.

For beginners

For those who thinking of having blogging as your full time job but your direction is not yet solid, you may try free blog first to kind of get yourself used to the writing and publishing post, or even playing around the widgets first. If you already decided to go for your own domain name, you can upgrade it from free service to paid service (no worries okay?)

Paid domain

The paid domain name or self-hosted domain, this is where the magic happens, you will have a complete control not just limited to your website URL name but to other flexibilities such as custom widget, blog templates. You pay for the server space yearly and you have to manage everything on your own. “Sounds good, but where do get one?” You may ask, well you can get yourself in the blogging platform itself because they do provide this service, well most of them or you may get from other hosting services such as

• Hostgator
•  iPage
•  justhost.com
•  bluehost
• hub

Above are the top 5 web hosting service during 2013, each of them has their own awesome benefits, just choose the one you need mostly. So what if you decide to choose the hosting service from non-blogging platform? Well luckily they provide some extra steps in “mapping” your registered domain name with their blog site, with a little service fees of course.

The benefits

Your blog’s URL looks more professional!
Whether in business name card or anywhere, your blog URL is shorter and the name is nicer, people will know that you are serious in having blog as your full time once you have registered yourself a domain name, and it’s easier to remember.

Flexibilities
You have flexibility in moving to another blogging platform to other blog platform (given the fact that your domain name is registered other than blog platform).

Ads

You have the control whether to include ads or not, and you can choose what ads to put in your blog.

SEO the way you want

Since having control of the content of the blog, templates and stuffs, you can set the SEO the way you wanted such as meta tags, link structures and many more. For more infor, you can learn what is SEO and why SEO is important for your blog

So I hope this post will let you have some basic ideas in what type of service you wanted, the blog I am writing to publish this blog is a subdomain of blogspot.com, although it is a free service but it does not mean that I do not treat it seriously, so do not have the idea that free is not serious, it is the journey of being what you are going to become. Alright good luck to you all in that.

Market yourself like a PRO

It’s been a while, how are the blogs you guys had been working lately? I hope you all are doing it great, I decided to share some tips and tricks in increasing the chances of people or company that will hire you as a blogger for movie reviewer, a first-hand product tester and reviewer and much more, basically this post contain the possible ways to MARKET YOURSELF, not to mention to EXPOSE YOURSELF to the both potential target audience and clients who at first a stranger to you, but then becoming one of your followers or business partners in an instances.

Hire me please!

Have a place of you for viewers

First thing to do is to have a place for you to place your personal details, to enable people a platform or a place to view your basic details and to get a little background of you before they get into hiring you for the job they wanted. You could have an individual post titled “HIRE ME!” and begin writing your details starting with your nickname, your hobbies, your day job (if you have any), your interest in what type of books or movies may add in some points, let your viewers easily know what character you are.

Take your viewers for a tour

Next on the second part of the page, introduce your blogs by making a list by category (if possible) of what do you like or least to write about, State your interest in writing what kind of blog movie reviews, food reviews, gaming experience, or even places to go to or incidents such as political issues or activists activities. Besides that, also state how are you going to view certain products or event, which perspective are you going to approach. By doing so you are actually pinning down your target audience and the potential clients, I am sure you would not like to write a post that you know nothing and yet less interesting to you right? So to avoid wasting you and your clients’ time, be honest and state it out.

Social media is your friend!

I could not imagine having an internet business but does not own any of the popular social media, seriously? I hope you at least have a facebook account for a minimum requirement (even that is not enough), you have to register an account for twitter, youtube, facebook (for fan page), pinterest (if possible) or vimeo (for better and creative videos). Here’s why, for twitter, it allows you not just to follow those person who you like or who will inspire you in your business, but it also allows you to post your own blog post and set keywords (the hashtag system) and related links for your followers, your viewers will receive your updates instantly once you tweet. However twitter users are mostly for English but for those who has Chinese blog fear not, you still has weibo (微博) works more or less like twitter, developed by China.

Youtube and Vimeo is an optional choice as they are video base, suitable for vlog or vblog for a product but most people like to see and listen than to read, so if you can make your review via these channel it would be a big advantages.

Facebook fan page is most commonly used in Asia country, range from small business to self-posting photos, so you can create a new facebook account just for your blog and have a fan page to focus on your target audience, you may add in photos, videos, comment and replying the questions from users from time to time.

Statistics

You should make a list of statistics for your own references and your potential clients too, how many twitter followers or facebook fan page subscribers you have, you may choose to make this public or privately to send to client via email, this is the important part of your hard-earn audience who followed your blog post, your hard work pays off with the numbers of subscribers or followers you gain and to your potential client it is ‘gold’ to them as well for their marketing department, because depending on the statistics, the company or you can come up an online event such as prize giving contest of movie tickets or premium offers for those who can answer a few questions. So prepare as details as possible and easy to read and understand as well.

End with a reason

Finally a paragraph of why you should be hire by your potential client, give your best to make the ending short and sweet, leave your contact details (write it here again if you have stated at the top part, viewer will appreciate it because they do not need to scroll back up again).

Testimonials

This is optional, but for me I think that it is good to have your client’s testimonials about your service after a project, with the recognition from the other company, other potential clients will less likely to doubt your experience, it also shows that you are not an amateur blogger.

For the aggressive ones

If you hate to wait, you may approach clients yourself by directly email to them, present your blog, call to follow up or even have an appointment to meet them, ask them if they have an affiliate projects for you as a blogger or not.

So good luck in the process, see you guys in next post!