why getting a .com domain for your blog is a good idea

I wonder how the first ever website looked like. And I wonder who created it. But what I am sure of is the dude was one happy fellow for his achievements. Achievements that would make him an instant winner for worst website of the year prize by today’s standards. Those days, web design was a job that could only be handled by some nerds that loved typing incomprehensible stuff into notepad or WordPad or whatever text editor was in use in those “primitive” times.

Then somebody began to think, "why keep in repeating myself writing this same stuff each time I want to create a new website?" And so the mighty CSS was born. And that must have led to the birth of templates which must have led to the birth of content management systems like WordPress and blogger. Ignore my timeline because it is anything but accurate. The main idea I want to put across is that with the content management systems, novice users have now been enabled to build beautiful websites and blogging has never been easier.

Want to create a blog? Easier than ABC! Just go to blogger or word press and a few clicks later, you will have your own blog up and running and without paying any web designer too. But before you get excited, listen to my brotherly advice first.Build you blog using your favorite CMS but by all means, avoid those free sub domains. I know you might decide to start with a free sub domain due to financial constraints but in the long run, you will still need your own TLD domain like .com, .org, .net or .info. lets see some reasons against the free subdomains

What a long name!

Those free sub domains are just too lengthy. One of the qualities of a good domain is that it should be short and easy to remember. That way, a visitor that comes to the site can easily remember it and just enter it in the address bar without much hustle,

Protect your domain

It’s a jungle out there. And people are always looking for a way to make some money, even if it means doing it in unethical ways. Somebody may visit your blog and like it and decide to register the top level domain before you do it. E.g., if your blog's address is yourblog.wordpress.com, someone may register yourblog.com. He will then either park it on another domain to get some of your traffic or he will just wait for you to come begging to buy it from him and need I say, his price will be higher than the market price?

What if you move…?

Free sub domains will not give you access to the .htaccess file. And why would you need it? Ok. Let’s say you have a domain like yourblog.wordpress.org then decide to move it to your new domain i.e. yourblog.com. You will need to move your traffic from your old domain to your new domain. This is usually done with a 301 redirect. In simple terms, this is like leaving a forwarding address so you don’t miss your mails. In domains terms, this will tell the search engine where to locate you. Ofcourse you can post a page telling your visitors you have moved but that will work only for the human visitors but not for google, bing or yahoo. For that, you will need to employ the 301 redirect command which can only be placed in the htaccess file and a free sub domain will not give you access to this important file.

What if they close down…?

I know it is very unlikely that big hosting companies will close down but why take the risk? Someone took the risk with Netscape and am sure he has learnt it the hard way

Load time
this may not be true for all situations but most free hosting+ free domain packages don't give you optimal speed. that will mean that even if a visitor has a reliable internet connection, he will still find your website loading slowly

Enhance your Image
Image is everything. People will tend to trust you more if you have a TLD as opposed to when you have a sub-domain. The free domain might make you look cheap or even desperate. Its not how you view it that matters but rather how your visitors view it.

I know we all like free things. but when investing in an online business, keep away from the free domains. Of course i know you might have no money but want to start a blog anyway. Start blogging with your free domain by all means but my advice would be, as soon as you can afford it, buy a .com domain immediately.