Email This Post
« Latest News | Home | WHY YOU NEED TO OWN YOUR BLOG PART II »
WHY YOU NEED TO OWN YOUR BLOG PART I
By Glen Graham | February 25, 2008
but it’s free
Big companies like Google have taken notice of the blogging phenomenon and have invented ways of taking advantage of the momentum. One way is by letting members create free blogs hosted on their servers. We all realize some times getting things for free can come at a price. All of the reasons for not having your blog hosted on a free service is buried in the terms of use section.
Reading the fine print
Most people don’t read the terms of usage section for anything free, big companies are counting on that. Below are a few things that I have taken out of the terms of usage section of free blog sites like blogger.com , blogspot.com and live Journal.com. I picked these three as examples because they are popular among new bloggers. (Google owns blogger.com and blogspot.com I just found that out by doing the research on this article.)
Terms of usage for Blogger.com and Blogspot.com
- Google may, in its sole discretion, modify or revise the Blogger Content Policy at any time, and you agree to be bound by such modifications or revisions.
- You agree that Google has no responsibility or liability for the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any Content and other communications maintained by the Service.
- Google retains the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time with or without notice.
- Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account.
- In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system for some time for back-up purposes.
Terms of usage for livejournal.com
- LiveJournal reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice at any time.
- You agree that LiveJournal, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, journal, or account, and remove and discard any content within the Service, for any reason
- By using the Service, you agree that LiveJournal has the right to run such advertisements with or without prior notice, and without recompense to you or any other user.
- You also understand and agree that you will not obscure any advertisements from general view via HTML/CSS or any other means.
This concludes Part I of a two part series “Why You Need To Own Your Blog” I will be posting the second half next week. I will be providing solutions for taking control of the situation.
Technorati Tags: free hosting, blog traps, blog spot trouble, problems with blogger, self hosted blogs, independent blogs
Stumble it!
Topics: my articles |
February 25th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Thanks for this. For new bloggers, such as myself, this can be very daunting. I look forward to the solutions you will offer. I blog for fun but as I grow and learn, I would like my content to be safe, accessible and my own.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Houseonahill.org
I use to have a blog for an event planing company on blogger.com. I had about 20 posts on there when I went to back it up on my computer. I noticed it was deleted. I was going to complain when I noticed that in the terms of usage it said they could delete my blog at anytime for any reason. Ever since then I urge any one to move your blogs off of servers like blogger.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Hey Houseonahill;
I was an LJ user for years and years with a personal blog or two there. Recently I took the plunge and created a “real” blog. I have had a personal web domain for years — my hosting service is ICDSOft, which costs about $5 a month — so I just downloaded Wordpress, uploaded it there, and…
Whoops! One tiny problem. I searched ICDSoft Support for one TINY line of code that had to be changed to work with Wordpress (so it was a problem on ICDSoft’s end), and boom… I was launched and running!
It couldn’t have been easier, despite that one token glitch. So basically…
– Google for “Webhosting reviews” and get your own domain
– upload Wordpress
– ready, set, blog!
And now I need to stop blog surfing and get back to writing my next article.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Hey Ellen;
Thanks for sharing your story with my readers. I want more people to experience the freedom of hosting their own blog.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
hey Glen,
I kept debating about hosting my own domain. Do you think there’s less visibilty with having a .net (or something) vs a .com? the domain I want will cost 1300 and I’m not sure if it’s worth it LOL
Also, can you give some tips on the best servers for good prices? (psst what happened to my banner? lol)
Thanks!
February 29th, 2008 at 2:54 am
I’m not Glen so you should wait for the expert, but I just wanted to offer one small resource>: Vista Inter’s list of the top ten web hosts according to customer reviews. I donno who Vista Inter is, but they just let me post a review of ICDSoft (the most recent review), so I know they’ve got regular run-of-the-mill customers posting there.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Hey Dj Diva;
To answer your first question
1. Do you think there’s less visibilty with having a .net (or something) vs a .com?
my answer: I think in the begining it was tough but if you focus your efforts on blogging and promotion you can do quite well in a non.com.
Please don’t by a domain name for $1300 the money could be better spent on the design and marketing.
for starters I send all of my clients to namenova.com they beat the pants off companies like godaddy.com that charge almost $40 for 2 months I bought my domain name for 10years at $85
from namenova.com usd.
Can you refresh my mind about the banner
I must be getting old.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Hey Ellen B;
I welcome any input you might be able to offer.
We can all learn alot from each other, the comment section is a great way for sharing knowledge in real time. I plan on checking the links you have provided thank you.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
you used to have links up…and you left a comment on my spot that I would be getting a link banner too LOL
February 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Hey DJ Diva;
I use to have a page with banners that linked to other sites that I like. The problem is I monitored the traffic for that page and it had very low traffic. So it was no good to my blog or other blogs.
I’m thinking of another way to show some love to my fellow bloggers.