Top 5 Reasons NOT to Upgrade Your Blogger Account to a Custom Domain

All over the internet, different blogs and online personalities have extolled the benefits of upgrading to a custom domain.  To those in the dark, the only difference between my site and my site of three weeks ago, is that I no longer have the word blogspot in front of my .com in the url.  I paid the 10 dollars to upgrade to a custom domain, which I now own for the next year.

"You have your own website!  You must own an iMac
as well!  Lucky rich people." 

Yippee.  If this was 1998, I could brag about having my own website.  MY OWN WEBSITE!  But it's not 1998, and million of people have websites, most of which are attracting more attention than mine right now.  All because I took the advice of other websites, and upgraded my account.  Why, you ask?  Well, they said it was more respectable to have your own url; that Google and StumbleUpon, and other traffic sending sites would respond favorably.  No search engine takes you seriously, when you have a free .blogspot.com, or .wordpress.com, or .tumblr.com after your name.

There were other reasons, as well.  Like the ability to customize my site.  I realize that I could turn this into a decent looking website.  I could pay somebody a few hundred dollars, and I could look like a respectable writer, with catchy graphics and lots of tabs that go to neato places.  As if my hours of labor writing, editing, researching, thinking, etc. and posting online for free weren't charitable enough, I could pay someone else to make my free stuff look even more enticing.  There's nothing quite like advertising your free wares to get rid of them.

"Oh, is this deal tomorrow?  I could've swore I read this
deal was happening today when I read it yesterday."  

Well, a custom domain lets you advertise, they said, you could recoup your loses over the course of nine years.  Yeah, but I don't want to advertise.  The only thing I'm advertising is my writing, and I don't have a published book yet, so what am I going to advertise?  Shiatsu back massagers?  Legos?  I mean there's tons of stuff I could endorse, but then it starts looking like thousands of other shady websites where the real goal is to get you to click on the ad banners so that they can reap the rewards.  I won't do that.  I have integrity, or at least I tell myself I do.

So here are the 5 reasons I shouldn't have upgraded my account.

5.  Loss of traffic.
Before my upgrade I averaged between 350-600 hits a day on days when I posted a new blog, and about 200+ on "off days."  The majority of my traffic was via Google, and the rest via self promotional work I did to get it noticed.  Since the upgrade, Google has forgotten who I am, and I get about half the numbers I used to.  Some say that Google will re-recognize my material and filter it back into their search engine databases, but who knows how long that will take, and if my old material will ever be included in their search results.

4.  I don't need a professional website.

I've been thinking of making a few Samurai movies, either
Way of the Box Cutter, or Highlander: eBay Sword Morons

I'm not selling my samurai tutelage skills or revolutionary lovemaking techniques, so nobody needs to think of me as professional.  If somebody read my articles previously and thought, wow, I like what this guy has to say, and then looked up at the url and noticed it was plumbeddown.blogspot.com, and thought, "oh...nevermind, he's an amateur."  Well, balderdash to that stuffy person.  I'm not selling anything, so no need to be professional.  Next thing I'll know, they make sure I write my blogs in a suit and tie.  Not gonna happen corporate America, so just back off.

3.  Don't need ads.
I have a lot of respect for the guys and gals who dance around outside with a sign, or dressed up in a silly costume for hours on end trying to divert a small amount of traffic to Little Caesars, or the local furniture store.  I respect them, cause I would never do it.  When and if I sell out, it will be on my terms for large sums of money.  The pennies I could make with adsense and banner ads is not worth the traffic I would lose to people being turned off.  Plus they're ugly and obnoxious.  And I prefer to be the only ugly obnoxious person in the room.

2.  Paying money for upkeep.

Leave the zipper alone Danica.  It's not helping bring any
traffic to my site.  Maybe you should focus on the traffic
in front of you on the track, and you might win one.  

I'm cheap, but not that cheap.  The ten dollars it cost to upgrade wasn't a big deal.  By default Blogger recommended the upgrade through GoDaddy.com.  I've read elsewhere that there are cheaper web hosting sites, but after reading the majority of the arguments, it appears that GoDaddy is still the best host.  I'm not a prude or a feminist, but I do get offended at the content of their commercials.  Danica Patrick may be an average driver for NASCAR, but it's too bad she has to smut-it-up for endorsements like GoDaddy.  So now, this questionably ethical company hosts my website, and I have to watch out for spam, and hope it doesn't crash, and back up my content.  All things that were free on the old blogger format.  I love paying for upkeep I can't see.  Like paying a maid to clean your already clean rooms.

1.  Loss of social media scores.
This is the only one that really bothers me.  At the bottom of every article is a Facebook "Like", a Twitter "Tweet" and a Google + button.  When people really like what they read, they usually hit one of these buttons, or commented.  I really appreciate it.  It's the only way to know if my words actually meant something to someone.  Some of my articles had over 50 "likes."  one was nearing 100.  Now they're gone.  I don't know where they went, but they have all been replaced by goose eggs.  Zeros.  Don't get me wrong, I don't frame college papers that got As, or live and die by how "popular" a post is perceived.  But in the growing changes of the internet, these scores are incredibly important.  It's like having a peer reviewed paper in college.  It's one thing to know your data and content holds up, but another to have other industry professionals put their stamp of approval on it.  I know which of my older posts were popular with people, but now they sit there with no social media love, and it's sad to look at them.  And it also makes them unimportant to search engines.  Most people who are searching on Google are looking for an answer.  I don't provide answers.  But hopefully I make people think about their lives in a different manner.  And now, I have 35 posts that will not be found on Google, and will not make people think.  And they will find their answer elsewhere without having to think, and I don't think that is knowledge.

Many Guantanamo Bay inmates
complained that they had to hear this
on repeat.  My Own Prison: Cruel and
unusual punishment.  

Overall, the message is this:  I upgraded an account in an effort to maximize and legitimize my content to the internet gods, and have failed on both attempts.  If you are going to upgrade your account, do it early, before Google starts recognizing your previous website url.  And if you do upgrade, realize your past is unimportant to the new url.  It's basically starting over fresh, like transferring schools where the credits count, but you have to go to the trouble of re-impressing all the new professors, regardless of how many letters of recommendation you hand them from your previous school.

And remember:  If you go back in time to 1998, and you say, "I have my own website," you'd instantly earn the respect of nerds and lay-folks combined.  I'm living there in the past right now to feel good about myself, and it's pretty cool.  Although they are playing a lot of Creed on the radio.