To .Com Or Not To .Com - Blogging For Beginners Series #1

Before reading further, I suggest you read this article first — Why Do You Want To Blog — this is my way of ensuring that you get your head straight. Blogging may be easy and fun but it burns a lot of time. Make sure that you don’t waste yours by thinking about the questions posed in this article.

Ok, assuming that you already have all your ducks in a row, the first and very important thing that you need to tackle is this.

Should you get a .Com or not?

There are many arguments surrounding this question. But most of the time the counter-argument is always THE COST. Why would I shell out money for something that I will be doing for fun and only in my free time? Why indeed?

I believe a little background is in order.

There are two very powerful blogging platforms in the internet today– Blogger, and Wordpress. Sure there are others like Xanga and Typepad and if you’re Pinoy, there’s I.ph. And all of these blogging platforms are free. Before I get ahead of myself, blogging platforms are the sites/technology that allow you to do your blogging. So if these are free, then why the need to go the .Com way?

For one, it’s for aesthetic purposes. These platforms will allow you to use their services for free and will assign a sub-domain for you. Example; if you use blogger, your blog site’s name will be http://your-blog.blogspot.com; for wordpress it will be http://your-blog.wordpress.com and so with other blogging platforms. You see how many characters you need to put in the browser window to get to your site? Whereas if you get your own .com or your own domain, your blog will be http://your-blog.com. It’s like getting a free rent (using free blogging platforms) and owning your own real estate (with your own .Com). See the difference?

Another counter-argument for having your own .Com is that you need to host it. By hosting it means that you need to have some place or a ‘host’ that will allow you to store your articles, pictures, videos. And yes, you have to pay for that too. An exception to this is Blogger. Blogger allows you to host your articles, pictures, videos in their servers even if you want to have your own domain name or .Com.

Cost Considerations

Oh yeah, costs money versus free. Actually a no-brainer right? But let’s have a clear mind about this and examine how much all this will cost you, assuming that you are curious about having your own internet real estate.

First is the domain name. The running rate now is around $6 - $10 USD/year. If you take advantage of Yahoo!’s offer, you can get a domain name for $1.99 for the first year and then regular pricing for the second year.

Next is the hosting company. You can get a hosting plan for as low as $14 a year. I even got a hosting plan a couple of months ago for only $7/year.

So in terms of economic comparison, there’s the free ==>$0 versus your own home for around $25/year. How does this feel for you now?

Now What?

My suggestion is you keep a cool head about this one. Nobody is rushing you. You have all the time in the world to make this decision later (but not so later). I say, get your hands dirty first with blogging. Sign up for one of those free blogging platforms first and then see if you can hack it for a period of time writing stuff that interests you. I’m saying this because with blogging it’s easy enough to get hooked. Once you get to interact with other bloggers, see people visiting your site, there’s a surreal thrill that comes along with this very popular media.

[Here's a little article I made comparing the merits of Blogger and Wordpress which I hope will guide you when you choose your blogging platform. You don't want to be thinking about other platforms at this point.]

But, as I said, you need to go back to thinking about getting your .Com after a few weeks or a couple of months(not more than 2 please). The reason for this is because, after your free blog is in existence for some time and you have felt the rush in doing this thing, the powers that be, in this case Google and Technorati and Alexa, will start rating your site. Trust me, when that time comes when you’re getting serious and you have all these nice looking Ranks and Authorities, you’d wish you got your .Com from the very start because when you allow a lot of time to elapse before getting your own domain, you will have to let go of all these beautiful Ranks and Authorities and start from scratch.

Don’t let these things bother you at this time though, I will be talking more about this one as we go along this series. The important thing right now is immersing yourself in this blogging experience. Go out there and write your fingers off. Have fun.

Homepage Startup And The Entrecard Dilemma

Homepage Startup is a nice little website that allows an internet user to display thumbnails of his favorite websites. Instead of clicking on your bookmark or having to memorize all the internet addresses that you like, all you have to do is assign a box/thumbnail for each of these websites. That way, should you need to go to a particular website all you have to do is click the appropriate boxes. This makes things really easy especially if you point your homepage to the HomepageStartup you created. The site is free and registering to the site is quick and easy.

At first glance, there really is nothing extraordinary to this site. In fact it’s pretty harmless. Sure it’s cool and makes things easier but a lot of sites are cool and make things easier too.

But you see, while most folks see a regular, helpful, efficiency enhancing website, my somewhat perverted mind sees something else. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Because what I’m seeing is a beautiful farm.

A beautiful Entrecard Farm– ripe, mature, and ready for harvest.

Now how do you create something like this. It’s actually very simple.

1. Register at HomepageStartup.com
2. Go over to the sites with Entrecard Widgets.
3. Right-click on the Entrecard Drop button, then Copy Location.
4. In the website space for each of the boxes, paste the copied Link Location.
5. Repeat steps 2 - 4 until satisfied.

Once you’ve cultivated your farm, and you’re ready to drop your cards, all you have to do is press on the Ctrl key, and then click as fast as you can on each of the thumbnails.

Now here are the Entrecard Parameters.

1. For each of your account, you can only drop as much as 300 cards a day.
2. If you have multiple Entrecard accounts, you can only drop as much as 600/day. That’s the cap given for every IP address. However, if you have a lot of computers, and a lot of profiles, then the number can go as high as the number of computers you have. If you’re very good at masking IP addresses and you can pass the server test, then there’s no limit to the number of cards you can drop.

Where do you find all those websites with Entrecard Widgets? It’s not that hard as they’re all over the place or you can just search for that Entrecard Power Dropping Site. There’s a list there of all these fast loading blogs.

Another thing about this website is that you can make as many 12 boxes/page tabs as you want. And if there’s not enough space, you can just create another account.

Ethical Considerations

Should you be doing this? The answer is no. But let’s face it, how many of the Entrecard Droppers actually stop and smell the roses of the blogs they visited after dropping their cards? Most folks are just concerned with dropping their cards thus the bounce rate of Entrecard visitors is pretty high.

All I’m saying is for those who want to exploit the point gathering system of Entrecard, there are ways. This is one of them.

Page Rank Leakage

One interesting thing related to links is the idea of a PR leakage. The PR theory is that a single link to another site counts as one editorial vote. Editorial votes are the building blocks of Page Rank. Accordingly, the higher the PR of the site doing the voting the bigger will be the impact come PR upgrade time. This also has a bearing on a particular site’s SERP standing.

Supposedly, PR leakage occurs when a certain blog has way too many outgoing links. When this happens that site’s voting power becomes less potent compared with others of the same PR but with way lesser outgoing links. That’s the general idea behind this concept.

Now whether you believe this concept is entirely up to you. I have read about this in several authoritative blogs but I have yet to read about a concrete example of this. Although this makes a lot of sense to me, I still wonder how this actually pans out. Will a blog with too many outgoing links be downgraded in the subsequent PR upgrade?

It seems improbable however that a blog, not a directory, would have that many outgoing links, unless you participate in one of those viral blog link thing, or you’re engaged in excessive reciprocal link exchanges. Now that’s something that you don’t want to be caught red handed now that you know better.