Free or paid domain?

Should I move to a paid domain or wait with my free domain. My blog is 2 months old and I don't get much traffic yet. So should I wait until I get enough amount of traffic or move right away to a paid domain. My niche is guitar.

 

I have had both in the past and I have to say, I think paid domains are better. You don't have to worry about the provide going down, they are cheap and you can get a top level one (such as .com, .net, etc). It shows you are serious and won't be a fly by site.

 

Paid domain without question. Takes money to make money. It doesn't cost much.

 

Thanks Speel00 and dcristo for your valuable advice.

 

I will recommend to buy a paid domain. Free domain are usually sub-domains which are not ranked well on google. In order to gain organic traffic you should go for paid domain.

 

go for a paid domain so you start promoting your permanent url. it's going to be a hassle especially with google webmaster tools if you will not do it now

 

Yes paid domain is the best choice.

 

Go with Paid domain. It help you in SEO of your site and increase trust among users. Free domains are useless and there is no guarantee with it.

 

I'm just gonna repeat what everyone else has said - go with paid. Sub-domains look unprofessional and cheap IMHO, on top of all the other reasons given in this thread.

 

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The point is clear to me now. I have one issue that needs to be resolved before moving to paid domain. Certainly after that I am moving.

 

is it something that we can help you with?

You do need to move to another domain, however, it will not magically solve your traffic problems.

Even if you are not ready to migrate your site to a new domain, as soon as you can, try to buy a domain, and move later. It can take alot of time to find a suitable name that is not in use.

First thing is to start finding a suitable name, and buy it -> even if you are not ready to use the domain just yet.

 

No if No But only Paid Domain. If you are using Free Domain it means domain is not related to your business b'coz Free Domains have own criteria. Paid Domain is your suitable name which reflects your business and niche too.

Regards.

 

Paid domain name all the way.

 

You should go for paid domain.If you are going with free domain than it won't be having your website name,must be having some criteria.So go for paid domain.

 

Get a paid domain or just visit hosts which offer hosting package + domain.

 

Paid domain for sure. Users have a lot more interest and attention to blogs on paid domains. In addition, it looks much more serious and responsible.

 

I have both paid and free sites and the paid domains are by far the exceptional choice. Although I do a LOT of writing, I would not consider myself an SEO expert. I did spend years trying to get SEO right, but the rules changed so often I spent more time trying to figure that end out rather than producing my writing. In any case, my paid sites ALWAYS ranked higher in all circumstances and by all metrics.

 

I would not take your low traffic into consideration when making this decision. Changing your URL after you have good traffic can actually hurt your traffic. Your URL is very important for SEO. It takes time for your URL to gain trust from the search engines. A paid domain is fairly cheap ~$40/yr from wordpress. SEO is a long term investment and the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

 

Paid, of course. It's not serious to work with a free domain.

 

Free Domains ofcourse can't make you money, cannot get you traffic (because definitely no one wants to read a Blog post on subdomain), Search Engines won't rank you! Yes, free domain can cost you to lose backlinks when you later upgrade to paid.

Best Option;

Get a Paid Domain as soon as possible and save your brand