I made my fist ever blog on Blogger exactly 2 weeks ago. Everything is fine and all but after reading alot of threads similar to this one I decided to move to self hosting ASAP. I'm thinking it is better to make a little more effort right now then have issues later. Now within 24 hours I have it up and running. Also I gotta say I love Wordpress.
Yeah, this is true...if you weren't using a custom domain with Blogger, you will lose your pagerank and backlinks. You'll pretty much be starting over from scratch as far as that goes. Hey, look at the bright side though...WordPress baby! Most people don't make a switch like this and let the blog die. All of your efforts from here on out should be for keeps.
wow I just ceated my first blog on blogger, it was easy enough since i'm new to this, guess i better go learn wordpress since I really want as much seo muster as I can get
Thanks for all the advice. Sounds like I need to go with Wordpress ASAP, which I will do. Thank you waxingpoetic for the offer of help, I'll probably take you up on it. Seems like if there's some way to mess up even the easiest application I'll find it. donrock
Not a problem. I'm no expert by any means, but just having made this move myself and being that I will be doing it again soon with my second blog...I can give some insight. One thing about it though, there is A LOT of documentation online about WordPress, so...it shouldn't be too bad. Also, I don't do that "install it from scratch" stuff...I always try to make sure my host has the one-click install with Fantastico. I'm too non-techie to be trying to create MySQL databases and things of that nature. hehe Anyway...PM me if you need a hand. My messenger names are listed on my profile and I am available all day (PST) via PM or email (waxingpoetic75(at)yahoo(dot)com) and in the even via IM. Best of luck.