Which is better, blog on my website or on Blogspot

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   Shadesbreathposted 13 years ago

   So, I'm building my own webpage and all that other stuff for my book (like everyone else on the planet is too). And I've been blogging about the project, but my website is up now, or nearly so. So... would I be better off moving my Blogspot blog to my new website or would I lose the benefit of having it already going on a site that has the "next blog" feature and that kind of thing?
   
   I know I can direct people to my site from it, so I imagine that keeping existing readers won't be too hard, and new traffic will be generated by marketing efforts and word of mouth (assuming it doesn't suck). But that works on either platform. So, which, and why?

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      CollBposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Personally I like blogspot as it's free whereas with a personal website template (as I don't have the time to build one from scratch), it's difficult to create one which has the features you get on blogspot.
      
      The features provided are really user friendly.  If you prefer another design, it's easily available plus new features that attracts more visitors to your website than would otherwise.

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         Shadesbreathposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for that reply. The thing is, though, I'm not so worried about design. I've got people who will help me make it. I'm just wondering if there are signficant benefits being attached to the "machine" of Blogger/Blogspot over being a stand alone. Every entry of mine adds to their "content" rather than mine. But, if they are pushing readers to me through that "next blog" and other mechanisms I may not know about, then, that might change things. I'm hoping someone will have done all the work or already spent the time to figure out the stuff I don't want to have research on (i'm already learning how to make a website from scratch... lol).

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            tritrainposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            You are much better off with your own site.  You can use any advertisers you want with your own site.  You will probably not as much credibility  Blogger, whereas with your own site you would be seen as 'taking the plunge' and making the commitment. 
            
            Wordpress has so many themes, plugins, and ways to tailor it that it is worth it just in those respects.
            
            Besides, there are many reports of people's blogs on Blogger suddenly "disappearing" or being shut down.  With your own site, you completely own the content, can back it up regularly, and can move it to another host.
            
            Use Blogger as a link back to your true blog.

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               Shadesbreathposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Hmmm, I hadn't heard about that dissapearing thing. That's a pretty strong case right there.

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               CollBposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Hi Shadesbreath and Tritain, thank you for the post and responses!  Since I've had my blogger for 4 yrs now I never thought it could disappear or shut down!  Once I can see the viability of using my website's hosting company's own design template (even), I'll do that!!  I've got too much work on blogger!!

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               iQwestposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               I've setup some recent blogger blogs.  They're free and easy to setup.  Three out of the four blogs were setup for affiliate marketing and were actually performing surprisingly well for being new sites (keep reading!).
               
               It has been about a month since my first post on each of these three blogs and I've written roughly 20 posts (about 250-500 words in length) each.  After roughly two weeks of bookmarking efforts (roughly 20 bookmark sites - Delicious, FolkD, FriendFeed, Twitter, etc.), some pages started to rank quite well.  Each site started receiving anywhere from 50 - 130 unique organic page views a day.
               
               Now, to your point about the blogs disappearing.  My blogs haven't disappeared from being indexed.  All of the pages are indexed and each new blog post is being picked up by Google almost instantly upon being posted.  However, the organic traffic that I was receiving (again, almost none for the first two weeks than roughly 50 - 130 unique organic Google views per blog, per day, over the next two weeks, completely disappeared.
               
               Now, about one month in, I'm lucky if I get two unique organic Google views per day.  It's unreal.  Again, my pages are all indexed, but I can't find hardly any of them after searching many pages deep.
               
               My bookmarks on the other hand, they're placing wonderfully.  Sometimes I have two or three bookmarks on page 1 of Google (for keywords I'm optimized for), but can't find my actual blogspot post URL anywhere.
               
               Upon researching, it seems like this may go away after time, but I'm not sure what to make of it or how to remedy it.
               
               Anyhow, as you've noted, I wouldn't hang my hat on this strategy either since we, the blog originators, don't own the content and it can be yanked out from underneath us at a moments notice.  Blogger, like many sites, is just another method to get something going quickly with nearly zero financial resources needed, but should probably (as many Hubbers before me have already noted) be used as a supplemental method of supporting your main efforts.

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                  Shadesbreathposted 13 years agoin reply to this

                  Even though for me it's not about monetizing the blog itself, I do want to accumulate readers. That said, your reply sounds like another argument for moving it over to my website. Thanks for jumping in.

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