About buying someone's account? As in: http ://www. myaccount.blogspot.com I would be leery of buying something like that on a free service as blogspot, blogger, etc could just shut it down for any reason.
Oh, no IowaDawg... I meant that I have www. myblog. blogspot.com - should I buy www.myblog.com and redirect it to the blogspot address. Is there any benefit? Or would there be some value to redirect it to the non-blogspot address?
The current received wisdom seems to recommend that if you use a system such as blogger or wordpress you should host the blog on your own domain.
PROS: Control. Blogspot is less likely to mis-handle your account if you have it on your own domain. You are no longer considered just a hosted user, but instead are now an API user. You can even import your blog into MoveableType or Wordpress. Then you gain all sorts of new cool functionality (themes, plugins, widgets, spam filters, etc). Email. You can be , instead of . Advertisers. If your site becomes popular, more advertisers are likely to pay to be on a site with its domain, than on a blogspot.com site. No longer "just a blog". If you are on your own domain, you can add-on other types of content to extend your site. For example: domain.com/forums, domain.com/advertise, dir.domain.com, wiki.domain.com, etc. CONS: Cost. I know, $7.99 per year for the domain and $2.95 per month for hosting is a lot when you are used to having it free. Backups. upgrades, and security fixes: you can rely on your host for backups and general server admin like Linux and PHP upgrades. But most of the time you'll need to manually create your own backups (most hosts provide tools so it isn't terribly difficult) and any security patches for any software your run will be up to you. Don't let it scare you though, most open source software has pretty good and easy to follow directions for upgrade processes. My recommendation: Get your own domain. The advantages far out-weight the disadvantages. Find a good host that can help you with the setup and you'll be ready to roll. Good luck!
Lol - a PR5 is not that hard to get back. Just run a backlink check in yahoo's siteexplorer, findout who is all linking to you, and jsut send a few emails asking them to direct their links to your new homepage. Most bloggers would be happy to do so. It may take a few months for the toolbar PR to update, but that's just the toolbar PR...
you can keep your blogspot domain and all the posts there, and just start new on your new domain. Create a "final" post on your blogspot account saying "I'm moving..." with a link to the new site, then put a link in your template on the sidebar or something to the new site too so every page on your blogspot account has a link to your new account. This is what Robert Scoble did when he moved from Typepad to wordpress.com. It worked really well. You keep your old PR on your old site, and some of it carries over to your new site as well.
Why don't you just dump blogspot and use another software platform, i.e. Wordpress. Host the blog yourself and have the functionality that blog software like Wordpress offers.
I use wordpress for a site I have, as well as drupal. I have already developed this blog to an extent, I will just have to decide if I want to uproot the site altogether. No biggie, thanks guys.