Make$ Money$ Blog - Truth, no scam

A few of my women friends/bloggers have been pondering long and hard whether to get their own domain and host their own WordPress blog. Many decide to wait because:

• they want to make sure that they earn enough from Adsense first;
• they feel that it is too frivolous and their husbands may not like the idea
• there are so many free services, so why pay
• they are afraid they may lose their interest in blogging after a while
• they don’t know where to start or how

So this post is dedicated to convince them why they should just jump right in, buy a domain and blog from their own hosting:

1. A domain name costs only +/- RM35 per year.  During special offers, domain names go for even much lower.  I got mine for USD1.99 per year before.  In fact, I think I have like 10 domains.  Can’t be sure ‘cos I keep buying one every once in a while. :P  Whenever I think of any kewl name, I buy.  It is just one email to my webhost.
2. We can manipulate and add more ads on our own hosting.  Right now, if I am not mistaken, only Blogsome and Blogger allows their user to add in advertisements.  Even that, Blogsome has a term that state that we cannot remove their ads code.  Which means we are having Blogsome’s Adsense occupying our  blog.  Therefore, own hosting equals more income from ads because you can add banners, text links and everything.
3. Having our own hosting and domain costs less than RM200 and can be as cheap as RM100.  Certainly any woman deserves that?
4. Free services do not always guarantee 100% satisfaction because there are down time and etc.  I found Error 500 the other day when I tried to visit several blogs.
5. Having a short, catchy name for a domain is way cool than yaddayadda dot yaddayadda dot com.  Chosing the right name also guarantees better traffic.
6. If one has been blogging for a while with at least 30 pages (posts) it is already a site worth keeping.
7. It takes a while before our site gets recognised by the search engines.  Therefore, grab your own site, own domain name and keep it if you have some little hidden desire to have a bigger presence on the net in the near future.
8. If you keep waiting, you are losing out on a good domain name and a strong presence on the net.
9. You can go wild with changing templates on your own hosting.  There are thousands of pretty templates to play with while free services provide very limited numbers.
10. It is so easy. Just find a reliable webhost, ask for quotation and ask them to instal WordPress for you and you are good to go.

From day one until now, I do not know how to get a blog running (though I vaguely know how to do it, of course).  All I know is to email/MSN my webhost and tell him, “Hey buy this domain name for me.”  Few minutes later, I am blogging from the new blog.  How hard can that be, eh?

I hope you also enjoy reading my ponderings in January 2005 when I was still blogging from Blogger.com.  I am sure many women go through this ‘Should I buy or should I not?’ phase.     My say on this is – Jump right in.  Don’t hesitate.  You won’t regret it.  Make your presence known on the net.