The Blog Host Blacklist - What To Do Now?
In light of the recent news regarding Blogitive removing some of the blogs hosts that are not Blogitive friendly I decided to write about some of the options available. First of all those of you who have blogs hosted on the “blacklist”, try not to panic.
You may not realize this but transferring your blog to your own host is actually better for you in the long run. Blogging has becoming a way for regular “Joes” to generate an income. Paid blogging, Affiliate Marketing and Adsense are a few of the options available to bloggers these days. Whatever you choose to do don’t limit yourself by limiting your blog growth.
So what are the options?
Hosting Your Own Blogging Software
Hosting your own blog will allow you to have complete freedom with design and the ability to generate income however you please. Wordpress is by far the best blog software available. Wordpress not only is easy to use but it has the most free templates, plugins and information available. Hosting your own Wordpress account would be the best choice but you will have to pay for a web host. There are hundreds of reputable web hosts that offer one click installation of wordpress software at very affordable prices. There are many web hosts that don’t require a contract. My suggestion is that if you are just starting out with web hosting you should find one that allows you to pay month to month. I have a favorite web host that I wrote about on my blog.
One important suggestion when looking for a web host is to find one that uses Fantastico software installation. The is literally a “few clicks and your done” type of installation. As far a price goes, there is no need to spend more than $10 a month for a web host. Another benefit of finding a good web host is that you can host other software such a discussion forums, guestbooks, wikis, image galleries and mailing lists.
Blog Hosts That Charge a Fee
Another option is paying for blog hosting. I don’t have a lot of personal experience with these companies but I have been to many blogs that use them. MovableType is one that does offer a free account but in the terms of use it says that you are not allowed to use an affiliate type advertisings. They also have paid accounts started at $49.95 a year that I think you have more freedom with. SquareSpace is another blog hosts that requires a fee. They have a basic package that starts at $7.
Free Blog Hosting
Blogger.com is still a good options for those of you who don’t want to attempt to host your own blog. Blogger is a bit limiting but they do allow advertising. LiveJournal is another free host that allows advertising (according to terms of use).
LiveJournal offers a free account that permits advertising. On the downside, they also display their own ads on your blog. You can also upgrade to a premium account with no ads except your own.
There are probably other free blog hosts that allow advertising but these the only two I have any knowledge about.
After choosing one of these three options you will have to decide what you want to do about your previous posts on the old hosts. You can either start a brand new blog from scratch or your can transfer the posts to your new hosts through feeds. I have experience transferring data using blogger.com and wordpress software so I will be posting a little tutorial in a few days. Here is an example of a blog I just transferred - click here then here (both are wordpress). I am still researching how to do this with Bloggerparty and Writingup type platforms.
Those of you using Wordpress.com my suggestion is that you save your rss feed as soon as possible and find a new host. You don’t want to loose all of the blog posts you have already entered.
One last suggestion, keep your old blog account open even if you don’t plan on posting on it regularly. You can always stop in and post about your new blogs which will help with your link popularity.
Mona
My Blog
December 8th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Don’t want to spam a link here or anything, but if someone is interested, they can email me and I can set them up with a hosting account for $5/mo or $36/year.
December 8th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
I’ve already posted about offering a subdomain and the specs- the only thing I’m charging is $15 to import their blog, set up the databases and install WordPress or whatever blog platform they choose. Nothing additional per month unless they go way over the bandwith- which is doubtful since I have so much to begin with.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Great suggestions. I would recommend, getting a hosting provider, may through USwebs.com since they are the sponsor here. Show the love. Then grab an established PR 3 or PR4 domain off of ebay for around $20, then you have an established domain, and can build off of that. Just a thought. It has worked well for us And plus we get to sell links off the site as additioal income.
Happy Holidays! Feel free to contact us with any questions. But please support the company behind Blogitive to help build the community.
Jeff
December 10th, 2006 at 9:41 am
I wouldn’t suggest buying a domain off Ebay at all.. heard several horrible stories about the process. You’ll be better off getting it from other webmasters on Digital Point Forums, there’s always a lot of domains available and the webmasters are relatively trustworthy.
December 11th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Thanks for the input everyone!
December 19th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
You can buy established domains as long as you do your homework.
check to insure the domain is not listed in the spam registers and look it up in the wayback directory to determine what the domain was used for in the past, which might give you an idea of whether or not you want your name, content, readers associated with the recycled domain.
sedo.com is one of the primary sources for buying/listing domains for sale, but they can be expensive sometimes.
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Lunarpages offers really great hosting too. I fully agree that it’s best to have your blog on your own domain. That way, no one can tell you what you can or cannot do in regards to ads and whatnot.
December 28th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
I need help.
I want to have my own blog with WP.
How do I contact you Beth?
January 4th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Malathy,
I can help you move off….
but might as well get yrself a domain!
January 9th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
There are good suggestions in this thread. Don’t be afraid to start your own blog on your own domain even if you have to pay for it. You can easily make the monthly costs back with one or two paid postings. It is well worth the investment.
January 17th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I do have my own hosting thru my own domain and I used wordpress since it was provided for free thru my hosting which is thru go daddy. That shouldn’t create a situation where that blog was removed, but it looks like it did.
I haven’t moved my other blog off of blogspot since it is over two years old and it is not quite as easy to re-establish page ranking as some have suggested. The blog I did move to it’s own domain had a page rank of 5 when it was a blogspot blog (infact it still has that ranking even with no updates since November) - over two months later the new home of the blog on my own domain is still a page rank of 0 and I have re-established most of the prior links.
So, while you should make sure you clearly read the TOS of where you blog, basically starting all over again from a page rank perspective is not something I want to do at this point.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
IMSC hosting is good value and you can install World Press with 1 click so it could not be easier to start your own blog lots of other free stuff as well
January 17th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Great advice Mona.
If anyone is looking to set up their own blog, I’d suggest starting with purchasing a domain name and purchasing a hosting account.
Setting up WordPress is actually quite easy - there’s even a WordPress installation video if you’ve never done it before (along with some additional tutorials) - and WordPress offers a variety of import options including general RSS import.
If you’re moving from a WP.com site, you can actually export your entries and they will be ready for you to import right into your own WordPress blog.
Good luck to anyone moving over!
January 19th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
I have free hosting at blogsavy.com and it’s pretty good. I know they guy who owns it and they allow you to advertise with blogative and other blog advertisings.
January 26th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Hey, what’s happened with your blog entries? Have they all dried up just like your opportunities?!
February 5th, 2007 at 8:39 am
B2Evolution blog software is free, very easy to use and completely customizable. You can have ads on it.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I think the safest to use is wordpress since you can host it and “control” it. RSS feeds seem to be gaining in popularity all the time.
March 29th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I second wordpress as well.