Starting a Blog - Where’s your home base?
When organisations are formed, whether it be a web 2.0 startup, religious or music group, it’s important to look at your home base.
What I mean by home base is this; some organisations are tightly associated with a particular location such a country or city. A classic example is movie making where most films are made in HollyWood or Hong Kong. When the majority of people want to make a movie, they make sure their home base is in either of these two places.
Another example is the music industry. We’ve seen bands from specific genres that have formed in Manchester, England. Bands such as Oasis, Joy Division and the Bee Gees. This shows that an organisations home base can help lift “branding”.
Everyone knows that Google and eBay have their headquarters in Silicon Valley and it’s becoming quite a trend. Silicon Valley is now filled with web startups.
Now apply this to blogging.
Your home base may be “Blogger.com” or “wordpress.org”, but how many “successful bloggers” have free hosting accounts?
I’m seeing an increase in ProBlogging where people are obtaining domain names and purchasing hosting which is fantastic to see. It shows enthusiasm and professionalism.
So if you’re new in town, sit back and have a think.
Where would you like your home base to be?
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POSTED IN: ProBlogging
4 opinions for Starting a Blog - Where’s your home base?
Liz Strauss
Jun 23, 2006 at 1:31 pm
You make a great point here. Though we can be snobs about it. If blogging is a hobby, there’s nothing wrong with a subdomain account. To use your analogy — a summer home. :) But if you, like me, are going to get drawn into the fray, then you need a domain in the city where the action is. :)
Mithrill (Matt)
Jun 24, 2006 at 1:43 pm
My home base is definetly with Wordpress, though I do not use the free wordpress subdomain account– I found an amazing deal on a domain name and hosting. I do agree with what Liz said, “If blogging is a hobby, there’s nothing wrong with a subdomain account.”
Lindsay
Jun 28, 2006 at 6:44 pm
I bought a reseller account about a year ago and since have put all my blogs on their own domains on that hosting space. I guess I don’t have a “home base.” One of the things I miss about belonging to a blogging community (I still have a hobby blog on LiveJournal) is that it’s easy to build relationships with other bloggers in the community, creating “friends lists” and what not. It’s a little harder when you go it on your own, but it does look much more professional.
David N.
Jul 14, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Great topic… I had a free Wordpress account, but switched to my own server and domain. People need to realize that sub-domains on free hosting accounts aren’t taken seriously and if they are, it’s quite rare.
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