Do you have a website? If you do, odds are you're promoting it — submitting it to search engines and link directories, promoting it on traffic exchanges, submitting e-zine ads, posting in forums.
Promotion is a lot of work. The result of your efforts is usually traffic to a particular URL (uniform resource locator) — by search engine hits, keyword hits, reciprocal links, links in signature files. The result is more exposure to your content and, perhaps, more profit through sales or affiliate income.
Certainly you control most of the content on your website. But how much control do you have over that URL that you're working so hard to promote?
Let's look at the anatomy of a simple domain name:
http://www.blogspot.com
The “com” is the top-level domain, and the “blogspot” is a second-level domain. (Blogspot.com redirects to Blogger.com, the blog service owned by Google.) Blogspot.com also has many user-created subdomains; for example:
http://somewebpage.blogspot.com
Here, “somewebpage” is a subdomain under the second-level domain of “blogspot.”
GeoCities, a hosting company owned by Yahoo!, has URLs that look like subdirectories under the main webspace:
http://www.geocities.com/somewebpage/
Question: Who has more control over these domains? The guy responsible for the content on the “somewebpage” part may control most of the content and may still retain rights to the content he puts on there. But he does not control that URL. Blogspot.com and geocities.com have more control, or put another way, their actions can put all of his traffic at risk.
How? Say the guy spends a lot of effort promoting http://somewebpage.blogspot.com. There are a lot of reciprocal links, posts, search results, etc., with that URL. What if the guys at blogspot.com start charging $100/month for use of that URL when it was free before? What if blogspot.com goes under? What if blogspot.com gets ticked at him and cancels his account?
Since he doesn't control the second-level domain, he's forced to find another second-level domain to put his website under. Meanwhile, all of those links in cyberspace that he worked so hard to create become dead (unless he can redirect from the old site — even then the redirects may not last forever). That's a big blow. He has to promote a new URL and tell his old link partners that they need to update their links.
Note, I'm not saying that blogspot.com is going to jack up their rates or that they're going under. I doubt they would. However, they could do these things, and it's the consequences of the worst-case that are bad.
However, if he had registered the second-level domain as
http://www.somewebsite.com
then he's in much better shape. He can control that domain name as long as his registration is current and as long as no one else has a legal claim to that name. His hosting service bumps up his fees or changes their terms of service to his detriment? No problem! He can transfer the registration to the new server, and he's up and running on a new hard drive somewhere else with the same website name within a few days, or possibly in a few hours! All of the old links work after that. No backtracking!
Main point: The entity that controls the second-level domain holds the hammer. Subdomain or subdirectory holders risk getting hammered if they've promoted their subdomain's URL and the relationship with the second-level domain holder goes sour.
Don't get hammered! You can take control over your web presence by registering a second-level domain for yourself. It's much smoother to make the transition when you're not forced to. Blogger.com even gives you the option of hosting your blog anywhere you have access! (I did this with my blog until I switched to WordPress.) You register for a second-level domain, then choose to host the blog remotely under that new domain. Then you start promoting the new domain — YOUR domain — and ask your link partners to switch their hyperlinks to that new domain, if you already have some under the old domain.
MightyBargainHunter.com is hosted on 1&1 Internet. I've been very happy with their service. You can get three second-level domain names, a ridiculous amount of e-mail addresses, storage, and bandwidth, and a MySQL database (to host cool scripts like WordPress) for under ten bucks a month! Setting up your own domains is a piece of cake!
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A very well thought out post. There are some advantages to not owning your own domain – namely that they are free and already set up so easier to start. That being said, the disadvantages in the long run far outweigh these advantages in the short term.
Another issue is that by having your own domain, you are building equity in it. Even if you decide not to continue with your project down the road, all the links and traffic is worth money and people will pay for it.
Great info. I too have my own domain, and I’m much satisfied with its performance. More power!