Sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me and you know what they say, “curiosity killed the cat.” But not this time! This time my curiosity helped me for the long run. I bought my own domain name within the first week of each blog that I own and after doing research, I’m glad I did.

Okay, so you’re probably thinking, “what the hell does that have to do with domain names?” Well, apparently all these free sub domain names that you keep until you get all your page rankings up, will eventually bite you in the ass. Very hard.

Here’s where my curiosity kicked in…

I decided to look up one of my older blogs on alexa.com to see how terrible my traffic rank was; and I noticed the impossible - I was ranked 12th overall!

Yeah, that’s not right. Especially at the time, my blog was only a few weeks old. But I had typed in my ‘free sub domain name’ which usually ends in dot blogspot dot com, or wordpress dot com. Then when I typed in the domain name that I had bought, my traffic ranking was more realistic, disappointing, but realistic. I’m kind of embarrassed, but let’s say if you multiplied what my impossible ranking was by 250,000 - then that number would’ve been a closer number to what it should be after a few weeks running.

After all of that, my curiosity got to me even more. I decided to ask around to see what people had to say about buying a domain name compared to a ‘free sub domain name.’

Here, I’ll give you the good news first. Um, it’s free? Obviously, because it’s a ‘free sub domain name’ given by blogger or wordpress, in which they also give you free blogging services.

Here’s the bad news…

A lot of people assume that if you use a free sub domain name supplied by blogger or wordpress, then eventually purchase your own individual domain, all your rankings and everything will transfer over fine. Apparently, that’s wrong.

If you build your page ranking, gain great stats from various sites like Technorati, Alexa, StumbleUpon, etc., from your ‘free sub domain name’ and switch over to a domain name that you bought, all your previous stats and rankings will go down the drain. Hey, don’t believe me? This has happened to tons of people already. I’m just trying to help and forewarn everyone so this doesn’t happen.

I mean, it’s not expensive to purchase a domain name to begin with. Most ‘.com’ and ‘.net’s’ are around $10 dollars a year. And if you use blogger, they will still host everything and supply you with various tools such as a mailing service for your site, calendars, etc.

Wordpress charges around $15 dollars a year, but that still isn’t bad. You guys probably spend more money on lunch each day than that!

What do you have to lose? Besides picking a very crappy domain name and spending $10-$15 dollars? Is it worth losing all your hard work getting those ranking and stats? I didn’t think so. Go buy one now… or put that money to good use and donate to ‘Dat’Money.com for the friendly advice!

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