tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72315231897792183482024-03-13T13:36:06.170-07:00The Webmaster JourneyStupidosaurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14440677810342540223noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231523189779218348.post-13252421014581625962013-10-02T10:41:00.000-07:002013-11-06T23:42:34.111-08:00Why buying a domain name is a very good idea.<div class="webj-main-summary">
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A domain gives your website or blog a platform-independent identity. It gives you freedom to sell the site later if you want. It lets you change platform, host or even domain itself without affecting users or SEO backlinks and search engine ranks. Learn more about these and other benefits of buying a domain...</div>
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<a name='more'></a>The main focus of The Webmaster Journey is to explore resources, tools, techniques and ideas for running websites for free. It is technically possible to run a website for free on different platforms (we will look at them in another post). But as I have <a href="http://web-journey.stupidosaur.net/2013/08/what-is-webmaster-journey.html#domain-needed">noted earlier</a> (but not elaborated) I would recommend that you make one essential expense - purchase a domain for your site. In this post I explain the reasons why purchasing a domain of your own is a very very good idea, even though it costs some money.
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A domain gives your site address a professional feel and brand identity.</h2>
When you use a public blogging platform like Blogger, Wordpress (free version), Tumblr or others, they will give you an identity on their own subdomain. For example,
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subdomainsarecrap.blogspot.com
subdomainsarecrap.wordpress.com
subdomainsarecrap.tumblr.com
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This makes your site come across as amateur. A name on its own, like subdomainsarecrap.com would sound crisper, more professional, easier to type, easier to remember, and create a better brand identification with readers. For people who consider blogspot, tumblr blogs as amateur, a domain of your own sends the message that you mean business!
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A domain puts you in control of your own url</h2>
When your site url ends in blogspot, wordpress tumblr, etc, your identity on the web is entirely in control of these platforms. If the platform decides to suspend your blog or account for any reason, or itself ceases to exist (like Posterous went bust), your whole identity disappears! On the other hand if you buy your own domain and use it with these free platforms, your identity on the internet is intact even if the underlying blog/site disappears. You just need to get your content back up on same or different platform!
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A domain provides a stable identity to your users and search engines</h2>
From the above paragraph, you may ask why is it so necessary to be in control of your own url, or identity on the web? Why not just setup the blog at another url if one public platform url goes down? Well it is the means by which readers reach you. They may remember and type your url, they may bookmark it, or use any such means of recording it. If it is gone, these readers will not know how to reach you!<br />
Another important aspect is back-links and search engine rankings. As more people begin to like your website or find it useful, they may link to it or to some of its specific pages from their own webites/blogs. Seeing such 'back-links' tells the search engines that your site is nice and significant. So they start showing your site's pages at higher ranks in their search results. If you lose your original url and setup an identical website/blog at another url, the old links from people will no longer link to your new site and its pages. So even if your site carries the same content as before, the search engines will stop showing your articles at same high ranks as before. So you better be in control of your own url!
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A domain gives flexibility to change your blogging platform or host</h2>
Let us say your free blogging or hosting platform never suspends or deletes your blog or your account, and it never goes kaput like Posterous. That is all good. But what if you decide that another platform is better? Maybe you find out that Blogger offers some better features than your current platform Tumblr. Or maybe LiveJournal launches some awesome features that makes you want to leave current Blogger platform. Or maybe you decide you want the full flexibility and control offered by self-hosted wordpress. Or maybe you want to move to your own custom built site! This move becomes viable without losing your old readers, backlinks and search engine rankings only if you had your own domain instead of using the free urls that ended in blogspot.com, tumblr.com or such domains.
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A domain gives flexibility to change your website domain itself! </h2>
Suppose you were blogging at subdomainsarecrap.blogspot.com. You decide that instead of that, you like subdomainsareok.blogspot.com better. Surely, Blogger will allow you to change your url. But again, users, back-links and search engine ranks will be gone. Same would be true for most other platforms. But if you have your blog at your own custom domain like subdomainsarecrap.com, and you want to now change it to subdomainsareok.com, it is a simple thing as long as you own both the old domain subdomainsarecrap.com & the new domain subdomainsareok.com. You can set the DNS records of your new domain to your existing site, and you can set-up the old domain to redirect it to your new domain! You can do 301 or 302 redirects. 302 will just redirect users who try to access the old url, while 301 will also pass backlinks and search engine ranking benefits of old url. We will take this up in more details in another post.
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With your own domain, you may sell your site in future</h2>
For most platforms. you have right on your content, but you neither own the site url (which ends in blogspot.com or such platform specific domain) nor do the terms and conditions let you 'sell your blog'. If you own the domain, the doman which got popular because of your blog could be sold at a good price because of traffic and backlinks, as well as the quality of domain itself it it is considered to have good quality, in demand format and word(s). Or you could sell the domain as well as content after changing your content hosting from a free blogging platform to your own paid server.<br />
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An owned domain lets you have unlimited subdomain sites with a central identity</h2>
When you have a domain, you can theoretically create an unlimited number of subdomains on it at no extra cost, and have separate or related sites on all those subdomains. I myself run a number of sites at subdomains of site stupidosaur.net, such as <a href="http://web-journey.stupidosaur.net/">web-journey.stupidosaur.net</a> (this site), <a href="http://comics.stupidosaur.net/">comics.stupidosaur.net</a> (funny webcomics), pics.stupidosaur.net (photos), blog.stupidosaur.net and some more. One very popular high ranking site network like this is <a href="http://about.com/">about.com</a> who have various topics on various subdomains.<br />
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You can set up email ids at your domain</h2>
Depending on the offer provided by the domain registrar you buy your domain from, you can setup one or more email ids at that domain, either for free at some extra cost.<br />
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An advantage specific to using your own domain for Blogger</h2>
Since early 2012, Blogger redirects urls on blogspot.com domains to various country specific domains such as blogspot.ca (Canada), blogspot.co.uk (UK), blogspot.in (India) etc depending on the country from which you access that blogspot blog. It is said that this is to enable Google to censor content specific to countries, if ordered by those countries' laws. This has several disadvantages for your blog. As traffic gets split between various domains, each domain will rank lower in traffic based ranking services like Alexa, Quantcast, etc. Also, when people link back to your site, they will link back to whichever country specific domain they are able to access. So your backlinks will also get split between domains and affect ranking of your site pages in search engines. If you buy and use a custom domain with Blogger, these disadvantages go away!
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So you can see, there are lot of advantages of getting your own domain, which can cost you anywhere from around $5 to $25 per year depending upon what top level domain (TLD) you choose (.com,.net, etc) what domain registrar you buy from, what discounts are going on, etc. This expense is worth it and you should definitely get a domain.
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There are many factors to consider when buying a domain, such as choice of the top level domain (TLD) to buy, choice of the domain registrar to buy from, as well as how to choose the domain name itself. We will be looking at these factors in several future posts.
Stupidosaurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14440677810342540223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231523189779218348.post-20966532454433234972013-08-27T18:00:00.000-07:002013-11-07T00:00:30.151-08:00Why having own website is way better than just social media accounts<div class="webj-main-summary">
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Instead of just expressing your creativity & opinions on Social media like FB,Twitter,G+,etc, you should do so on your own blog or website. This article explains the many benefits including greater flexibility, ownership & control of your content (even after death), you earning money from your content instead of social media companies, somewhat reduced plagiarism, and much more!
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<a name='more'></a>In this modern age, almost everybody with internet connection can and perhaps should create a web presence in form of a blog or website. It is relatively easy, can be done for free or very low cost and allows you to express your views, share your expertise in your subject or showcase your creative talents to a literally worldwide audience! But then you may ask, why do you need a website to do all that when even social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter etc. allow you to do all that? Well, there are a number of strong reasons.<br />
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Transient vs Stable content accessibility</h2>
On social media sites, when you post something, it remains in visibility for a short time. After that, it vanishes down the Twitter TL, or Facebook wall/page or Google+ page or whatever it is. You would either have to scroll a lot to reach it, or in case of Tweets, it may be inaccessible even by scrolling, either if the tweet gets too old, or if you have tweeted a lot after that (You can only access up to last 3200 tweets by scrolling). If someone connects with you on a social media platform at a later date, they have no practical way of reading your content which is a few months or few years old, or to trace and enjoy your content creation journey from beginning to end as it happened.
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On the other hand, your older content on your website remains easily available, through proper link hierarchy, archives or site map. Readers can reach any content you published in the past, with just a few clicks!
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Your views and content don't get lost in the crowd or suppressed by the platform</h2>
On Twitter or Facebook, people tend to follow or add as friend a large number of people. Further, most of the people tend to chatter or share content/status etc too frequently. Because of this, your content may not be noticed by even interested people because of sheer avalanche of other content. And once it has passed down people's screen, they may never go back to see it, like I explained in the point before this one. To make matters worse, social media platforms may have their own way of suppressing your content even from those who have chosen to receive it, if their algorithm feels it is not so important or interesting enough. For example, it has been known for quite a while that Facebook doesn't show all updates in news feeds, and that algorithm also keeps changing or tweaking as they see fit. Here is their recent post about the same <a href="https://www.facebook.com/facebookforbusiness/news/News-Feed-FYI-Showing-More-High-Quality-Content">https://www.facebook.com/facebookforbusiness/news/News-Feed-FYI-Showing-More-High-Quality-Content</a>. I am not on Facebook a lot, but have been regular on Twitter. Even there I have observed that I don't see tweets from all people I am following, on my home timeline. In fact, sometimes even mentions from small but legitimate handles don't show on my interactions tab. I accidentally become aware of them later, if I open my original tweet, and see their reply 'sticking' to it like replies made from web twitter as well as many other Twitter clients do. Based on their own experience, people suggest that the extent of this phenomenon also varies depending on the Twitter client or app. That is perhaps true. Twitter officially said they will rank the tweets and assign a 'filter level' of 'none', 'low', 'medium' or 'high' importance to tweets and also make this filter level available to developers for use in their applications. You can read about that here: <a href="https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-new-metadata-for-tweets">https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-new-metadata-for-tweets</a>. So, if a Twitter application filters out your tweet, it may never even show up on timelines of people who have subscribed for your content in some way, even if they are diligently looking at each and every item that comes on the timeline.
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The best way to make yourself a little immune from such oblivion of social media overcrowding and their somewhat punitive, unpredictable and unfair content visibility/suppression is to have your own website where you publish your content! If some reader is following you through RSS or any other means, they are more likely to find your new content when they open their feed reader/email etc, even after few days. You can be sure your content won't be unfairly 'hidden away from sight' by any algorithms, though of course occasional glitches can occur in various types of syndication methods/feeds that you use. You may also have another small advantage. Content for websites has some depth and usually takes some time to create, as opposed to instant frequent updates on social media sites. So if a person subscribes to same number of twitter accounts as websites, it is more likely that they will see your feed notification instead of tweet, because of less crowding from other content sources.
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Content plagiarism is reduced and is easier to call out</h2>
On most social network sites, people heavily copy content from each other on the same social network as well as across the networks, without giving any credit to the original creator. In fact after the deluge of copied content, it becomes impossible to know who was the original creator. Further, with the very transient nature of content visibility and search results of social networks, after few days it can be impossible to see who is copying your content and request them to not do it. Even if you find out who it is, it becomes almost impossible to show the content was yours, because your own older updates are hard to access.
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On the other hand, website content gets comparatively less copied, for many reasons.
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1) On social network, everybody who reads you has their own account to copy to. Not as many readers have own websites to copy to.
2) Website content has depth, variety, its special style, structure, etc. So it may need some extra effort to adapt and copy to another website, or social networking platform. On the other hand it is trivial for people to copy your content on social media site to their own account, because it is in the same format as needed. Most people are just casual copiers and not malicious people copying for specific gain to them or harm to you. So they may not bother to copy if it is not very simple and straightforward.to do.
3) If someone copies your Twitter or Facebook content, nothing prevents them from reaping the 'rewards' such as retweets, favourites, likes, shares, etc. But if someone copies your webpage, that will create 'duplicate content' on the web. Search engines don't like duplicate content and give it lower ranking in SERP (search engine result page). So there is some disincentive.
4) Both your original content and the copier's content are usually quickly accessible through search engines. So finding violators is easier than social media sites and proving that the content is originally yours becomes relatively easier because search engines also can show the dates the pages were created or indexed (I am not sure which of these two dates the search engine results show)
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Your content is not trapped with the platform/provider</h2>
Twitter allows you to download your tweets, but you cannot simply upload it back. Google Plus, and Facebook also have download features for your content. As far as I am aware there isn't a way to upload it all back. Even if they have provided such a feature I am not aware of, you would be limited to uploading back to same platform, to same (or maybe another) account. On the other hand, your website is your own. Set it up at one domain, set it up with one hosting provider, change it to whichever hosting suits you later, or even move to another domain if you like (which may have some disadvantages in terms of SEO)
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You too earn from your content, not just some tech company</h2>
Why do so many companies offer you free content creation and sharing platforms? Well, because they monetize your presence, your info and your content in some way or another. Further your presence and engaging content draws in others who are your friends, or fans or become so and the effect feeds and grows on itself, growing the monetization. Facebook shows you ads, Twitter has promoted tweets, trends, handles and so on. Google shows you ads on various sites/services it provides. As long as you use an environment entirely controlled by a company, you help them earn money but you don't get anything material in return for your time, creativity etc. When you put the same content on your own website, you can monetize it in various ways, such as ads, affiliate links, and more. Why make memes for Facebook? Make them on your site! You can share link to the same Facebook friends, but instead of just Facebook making ad money from their engagement, engage them on your own site and get paid by advertisers! If you use Flickr for photo storage and sharing, you don't pay anything, but then you have to see their advertisements, which make them money. While that is ok, why not show the same pics on a website and make some money on your own? You could even use Flickr or Picasa or such free service itself to host pics, and just embed them in your website! What is more, the money you make with this could help you buy paid Flickr account with no ads and better features, or Picasa storage space beyond the free 1GB! This is just one idea. The way you can leverage your creativity and free services to run your own money making website is endless!
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Your estate/relatives/friends get better control over your content after your death, if you want</h2>
Social media platforms or third party services offer you very limited control over what happens to your account and content after you are gone. Broadly, they fall under three categories. 1) You can request account to be deleted upon inactivity or your estate can make the request after your death. 2) Your account can go in some kind of mummified state where it can have no further activity, and limited public view is available. 3) You may nominate a person to get your account's data, either through some technical means provided by the platform or by getting court orders.
e.g:
Getting Twitter account of the deceased deleted: <a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/87894-contacting-twitter-about-a-deceased-user">https://support.twitter.com/articles/87894-contacting-twitter-about-a-deceased-user</a>
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Getting Facebook account of the deceased deleted or memorialized: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/help/www/359046244166395?rdrhc">http://www.facebook.com/help/www/359046244166395?rdrhc</a>.
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Getting data from Facebook account of the deceased: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/help/www/123355624495297">http://www.facebook.com/help/www/123355624495297</a>
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Planning to make your Google account data available to person or deleting it after your death <a href="https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en&ref_topic=3075532">https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en&ref_topic=3075532</a>
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Getting data from Google account of deceased <a href="https://support.google.com/mail/answer/14300?hl=en">https://support.google.com/mail/answer/14300?hl=en</a>
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However none of these companies allow actual or complete access of the account to your estate/family. They are not allowed to continue to run it after you, even if you wish so. This may not be what you want if yours was a public account that created content and has fans/friends/followers that would like to continue receiving updates as a form of nostalgia, additional commentary about you from people who knew you, etc. When you own a website, as long as your domain (the main url of your website, which you purchased for your site) hasn't expired, it can be passed in your will to your rightful heir and they may use the same to either just keep your site available to public as it is, or make changes as appropriate to serve the following that your site has built over time. Even if you miss to include legal instructions regarding your domain in the will, ideally it belongs to your family/estate/heir. Here is an example thread (do read comments as well to get an idea of how things went when domain owner died without leaving legal instructions about the domains <a href="http://www.thedomains.com/2013/02/22/after-75k-in-lost-domains-igal-in-death-teaches-us-we-need-an-after-life-plan/">http://www.thedomains.com/2013/02/22/after-75k-in-lost-domains-igal-in-death-teaches-us-we-need-an-after-life-plan/</a>)
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Thus you can see, having an internet presence in form of your own website gives you a lot of benefits over having just social media accounts. However it is true that social media platforms have a huge userbase and so may give you a better audience quick. To get the best of both worlds have both website and social media accounts. But create your content on your website, and share it/promote it to the larger audience. Don't let just social media company benefit from your content. Benefit from it, and make social media work for your benefit!Stupidosaurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14440677810342540223noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7231523189779218348.post-76879445526576338422013-08-22T09:58:00.001-07:002013-11-06T18:41:15.786-08:00What is The Webmaster Journey?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What is this website about and why should you read it? The short answer is, it is where I write about the things I learn along my journey of running great free websites, and I show you the way how you can do it too!
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What is <a href="http://web-journey.stupidosaur.net/">The Webmaster Journey</a>?</h2>
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In short, it is an evolving collection of tips, tricks and anecdotes from my personal journey as a 'freeloader' webmaster. Yes, that is right. I run a network of quality websites, and I run them at almost no expense* out of my pockets. I run them using many of the free (yet reliable) services provided by various technology companies, especially Google.<br />
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What topics can be read in <a href="http://web-journey.stupidosaur.net/">The Webmaster Journey</a>?</h2>
I write about the various things related to website domains, free blogging and hosting platforms, ideas and techniques to develop state-of-the-art websites on free platforms, security aspects, backup and contingency plans, search engine optimization, analysis of website traffic, ideas to improve traffic, monetize traffic, useful third party tools & widgets, and many other things that I learn, read about, think about about, improvize and implement during this journey as Webmaster.<br />
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Most of the things I talk about are free, and will empower you to create and improve your web presence without costing money.
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Why should you read <a href="http://web-journey.stupidosaur.net/">The Webmaster Journey</a>?</h2>
In this modern internet age, almost everybody can and should create a web presence in form of a blog or website. It is relatively easy, has many benefits and is free or almost free*!<br />
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For example you just want to share your views with the world, a personal website is a great way to do so. But you may ask, why should you make a blog/site when you can share views with social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc anyway? Well there are so many good <a href="http://web-journey.stupidosaur.net/2013/08/why-own-website-better-than-social-media-accounts.html">reasons to have your own website</a>. Go read that post and make up your own mind :) Once you decide to make a blog/website, and would like to know how to best make it for free (or almost free*), or if you already have a blog and would like to know how to make it better in various ways, this site will help you.</div>
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(My own presence on the internet started in mid 2008 with a blog, which has today become a part of my website network at <a href="http://blog.stupidosaur.net/">blog.stupidosaur.net</a>)</div>
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If you are a creative person, say a painter, a photographer, a poet, a cartoonist, a sculptor, or any other kind of artist, a website is a great way to showcase your content, get exposure to a wider audience and perhaps get future leads and commissions! This site will help you implement your website, without the typical high expenses of renting server space, hiring programmers, etc.
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(I myself showcase my photos at <a href="http://pics.stupidosaur.net/">pics.stupidosaur.net</a> and make cartoons at <a href="http://comics.stupidosaur.net/">comics.stupidosaur.net</a>)
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If you have special skills, knowledge and expertise, which you would like to share with the world (you can literally have a worldwide audience!) and make them useful to the world, again a website is ideal for it and this site will help you do that at almost no cost*
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(As you can see I am myself trying to help people out, by sharing my limited (but useful) expertise on making good free websites on this blog!)
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If you are a small business, a web presence may help spread the word about you and bring you customers. But you may be reluctant to jump in because of costs involved. What can be better than trying out making free website? You can get a domain (which costs small amount of money) and build a website on free platform, to test the waters, to make your feet wet. If the idea works for you, you may keep the free platform website, and if it works very well, you might even build a more professional website at the same web address by spending more money later! This blog will help you with the first step - creating an initial web presence, with almost no cost overheads.
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Last but not the least, whatever website you create, be it a personal blog, showcase of creative talents, sharing expertise or knowledge, or creating a basic website for your business, the free website itself can earn you revenue if you put paid advertisements, affiliate links to sell other people's products, etc on your website. I'd say that is a great deal! Almost no expense* and a chance of income! Of course, the amount of income depends on the nature of your website, its topic, its content quality, the amount of readers it gains, and much more. How much your site could earn for you, only you can find out by actually trying out. My blog can help show you the way!
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So what are you waiting for? Subscribe right away, or read existing articles to decide if it is worth your time! I do try to make it worthwhile :)
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<i>*I said 'almost free' a few times because there is one expenditure I consider essential for a website, and that is purchase of a domain. The domain is the basic web address of your website. For example the domain for this site is <a href="http://stupidosaur.net/">stupidosaur.net</a> Although it is possible to use public free platforms without your own domain, there are huge advantages of getting your own domain (article coming soon) by making the minor investment of around $5-$20 per year (varies depending on who you buy the domain from.)</i>
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Stupidosaurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14440677810342540223noreply@blogger.com0