There are a number of us who started out down the internet marketing path by putting up a blog, more to the point, a free blog on a hosted site. What this means is blogs that are residing on a site that hosts them for you, and makes creating them drop dead simple. Some examples of these are blogs at Blogger.com, Weebly, WordPress.com, Tripod and a host of others.

Who can blame them? It’s so easy, and you have an instant online presence, all at no cost! You may even have achieved some level of success doing this. So where do I sign up?

No so fast there, bucko. What they neglected to tell you and what you’ve come to understand since then is that hosting your blog on a free blog site, particularly if it is your business blog, has some inherent problems associated with it. Let’s look at why you may want to avoid these, and how to migrate your blog to your own domain.

Let’s look first at why you’d want to leave the land of the free and opt for a paid option. First, there is the fact that you don’t own the domain where your blog is located, and this can be huge. If for instance, the blogging platform decides that it doesn’t like your particular market or business, they delete you. Blogger is infamous for purges, and recently Squidoo deleted many lenses saying they were spammy and not up to snuff. So, are you really comfortable knowing that they have the power to put you out of business? Or decide that your market is unsuitable?

Another great reason is that many don’t like affiliate links, usually because they have a number of their own sitting on your site! To remove their ads, you usually have to pay an upgrade fee, and even then you’re still at their mercy as to what you can put up on your site.

By far the best solution is a self-hosted blog. Web hosting is dirt cheap, and blogging platforms, especially WordPress, are easy to install and use (and unlike WordPress.com, its evil twin, a regular WordPress blog installed on your own domain is a powerful, customizable platform begging for action).

If you are moving your blog, download the content files (if available), or copy them to move them to their new home. Put up a notice on your old blog stating that “We’ve moved!” with a link to your new blog home.

Try not to delete the old blog, at least until you’re sure the migration has worked properly. If you are using a new domain name, then you likely won’t have any issues with your domain name servers, (DNS), but if you’re moving the domain name as well, the above advice is even more important. You want your site to be down as little as possible. This is another reason why it’s so important to keep your domain registrars and web hosting companies far apart from one another!

Hosting your own blog is a wonderful thing. You are in no way constrained, no one can delete you or tell you your market isn’t acceptable, and you can monetize your blog any way you like, and you don’t have to share it with anyone. (Except perhaps your significant other!) Get your blog self-hosted today!