The importance of having your own domain name

Posted by Angel

Darren Rowse wrote a post last year about the importance of choosing your domain name. Darren came up with these objectives to consider when choosing your domain:

What is the topic of the blog? - an obvious starting point - most blog names reflect their topic
What do you hope to achieve with your blog? - is it about having a hobby, is it about building your profile/expertise, is it about earning an income via ads, is it to support an existing business
What style will it be? - is it a blog with one or many authors? What length of posts will it have?
What tone and voice will it be written in? - Will it be conversational, newsy, rant-ish, humorous?
Who is the intended audience? - Are you wanting to appeal to professionals, young people, cool people, geeks?

I have been reading blogs for a couple of years, and I have to say that in terms of blogs I “trust”, those that have their own, original domain names score higher than those, for example, that have “blog”, “blogspot”, “wordpress”, and so on in the address. It isn’t that free blogs are always bad, but they don’t have the instant appeal of a snappy, simple .com. They also don’t look as professional. You can register a domain for about $20, so it’s no big deal.

When I chose my domain, I wanted it to reflect a couple of things:

It had to say something about me: I’m a human being and I wanted my domain to show that. Having my name in the title makes this blog about me, although I’m fortunate to have an interesting first name to use.
My domain had to be catchy: When people come here I want them to remember the domain. World of Angel. Say it loud. I think it has a nice ring to it. If people like the content then they will remember the domain.

There are some people, like Kumiko from www.cashquests.com, who choose a domain based solely on what they are blogging about. That’s all well and good, but I think in doing that sometimes blogs can become mechanical and lose their human side.

Maki over at Dosh Dosh writes that it’s best to include one of your keywords in your domain address. I can see the logic here, but I prefer the domains JohnChow.com and DesiNotes.com to ProBlogger.net. Maybe I’ve made a mistake here, but it’s one I will live with.

Once you’ve made your mind up about choosing your domain, all you need to do is register it. Pay a visit to Register.com and see if your domain is available.