Buying A Domain Name - Must for Bloggers?

I have seen several debates on forums about buying a domain name. Several people seem to think that for bloggers to be successful, they need to have their own domain name first. Having a blog on free web hosting service or blogging service like Blogger and Wordpress is looked down upon by many and thus makes it intricate for quality bloggers to succeed. But is it really that important to have your own domain name? Does it really matter if my blog has its own domain name?

The idea for this post came from a thread started at WebCosmo Forums. As you can see from the replies, a lot of people seem to think that having your own blog domain is a good idea if you are a serious blogger.

Here are some of the advantages of having a domain name:

1. Helps brand your blog
2. Shows that you are a serious blogger
3. Easier to remember

Lets tackle each advantage separately.


Branding
Sure, branding is very important these days but does having a free domain name is show poor branding? I agree that just having a proper domain name without any sub-domain is really great but I have seen several blogs with sub-domain names that get lots of great traffic because of good branding. Maybe I am sounding a bit crazy but I really don't think that branding heavily depends on having an own domain name.

Serious Blogger
A lot of people believe that having your own domain name shows that you are a serious blogger and you are passionate about what you do. That's completely ridiculous. There are thousands of blogs on the internet with trashy content. Just because a blogger decides to stay with a sub-domain name does not mean that he (let just say he is a guy) is not serious and does not write good articles. Don't judge a book by its cover and don't judge a blog by its domain name. The only thing that you should worry about is the content. Of course, other things like layout matter but content is the king!

Easy to remember
I don't really think that remember a domain name is a big problem nowadays when we have so many bookmarking services available. But still having a nice domain name that is easy to remember is very important. But www.seoforblogging.blogspot.com is just as easy to remember, in my opinion, than www.seoforblogging.com. Blogger's providews the subdomain "blogspot" which is extremely popular and thus is easy to remember for others.

Overall, yes it is true that having own domain name is important because it adds to your image. But I would just like to say that it is not a must for bloggers and domain name is definitely not more important than the content. So do not judge bloggers and their blogs by domain names. In my opinion, it's OK to start a blog with a sub-domain name and develop it. When you are satisfied and think that you would like to work more on the blog then you should go ahead and get a domain name.

Please remember that this is just my opinion and I would love to hear what you guys think about this issue. Is it a must to have own domain name for bloggers?

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