Yeah! You've created a website at one
of the managed sites like wordpress.com or blogger. Maybe you went
the Facebook or Google route instead. Regardless of how you did it,
you now have a presence on the internet where your readers can find
you.
Congratulations!
Then something happens. You want to
move from wordpress to blogger, or maybe it’s time to host your own
site on your own virtual server somewhere. What happens to the fans
who have bookmarked your site?
You don't want to lose them, and you don't have to.
I’ll use The Independent Writer’s
Support Group as an example. It has a blogger address of
tiwsg.blogspot.com. That address is a subdomain provided free from
blogger. It also has the address of tiwsg.com. This one was
purchased through a domain registrar. It costs a little bit each
year, but it can be linked to any internet address I control. Today
it points to the same address as tiwsg.blogspot.com.
Now, whenever the address of this site
is shared, I use the tiwsg.com address. In fact, except for
examples, I never use the tiwsg.blogspot.com address. Now if someone
links to tiwsg.com and later I move from blogspot to wordpress that
link will still work. I can change it to point to the address of my
new website. The tiwsg.blogspot.com address will still be pointing
here, and that won’t be good if I no longer have access to this
site.
Is it foolproof? Nope. You can have
links to articles that might change, and if someone bookmarked that
article they won’t find it. They will find your website though,
and If they can find your website, they can find you.
There are a few other reasons why you
should consider a custom domain.
- It will probably be shorter, and therefore easier to remember.
- It looks more professional.
- When you include the address in the back of your book, you won’t have to change it later.
- If you want to, you can set up email for your domain name. author@mywebsite looks better than author@hotmail (yahoo, gmail, or any of the other free email services)
There are lots of ways to get a custom
domain. Google now offers them at https://domains.google.com.
You can also go through sites like https://www.godaddy.com
or https://www.namecheap.com/
I used Namecheap when I decided to get
a custom domain for keithkeffer.com. It has a good history of customer support with
extensive on-line help. It would not only register my domain
name, but I could host my website and manage my email all through the
same management module. It worked well for me, but if you talk to
five random people about the provider they went with, you are likely
to get five different answers, and each of them will be happy with
the results.
Do you have to get a custom domain? If you are serious about building an audience, then yes, you should. But, you don't have to. J.A Konrath's A Newbies Guide to
Publishing blog is a blogger site listed as
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com. He also has http://www.jakonrath.com which is his main site, and from there he provides a link to his blog that points to the blogspot address.
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