Moving to a domain name and monetizing

  • Unknown's avatar
    benjity · Member ·

    I would like to change my free wordpress blog to one that I can monetize. I did that once, but reverted because I had established a good following on my free blog and didn’t want to lose my Alexa status and devoted readers. Can I have someone help me with that? What exactly is mapping?

    Thanks so much.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    Do understand clearly that purchasing a domain name and having your .wordpress.com blog entries mapped to that domain name does not provide you with the ability to have advertising if the blog remains free hosted here at WordPress.com.

    What domain mapping does is seamlessly redirect all visitors who click the .wordpress.com blog links to the same content under the new domain URLs.

    One can move content at any time but if you don’t have a site redirect or domain mapping then every one of the original links will be broekn. It takes 3 – 6 months for Google to clear their caches. Every time someone clicks one of those original .wordpress.com links they will experience a “404” (page not found).

    You can read up on both here:
    Domain Mapping and Domain Registration
    Take the ‘wordpress’ out of your blog’s URL by registering a custom domain for your blog, or adding one you already own. Add a domain from Settings > Domains to purchase. This upgrade starts at $12.00 per domain, per blog, per year.
    Site Redirect
    Easily redirect your blogname.wordpress.com blog, and all of its permalinks, to your new domain, if you decide to leave WordPress.com. This upgrade costs $12.00 per blog, per year.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    The process is to hire a web host and set up a WordPress.org install for self-hosting.
    Then you set up a new theme and plugins. (You cannot export the theme you have here.)
    Next you export your content out and import it into the new WordPress.org install.
    Links must be separately exported and imported.
    You must copy and paste all content in text widgets as it cannot be exported.

    Most bloggers I know that take this route move to monetize via advertising who had free hosted blogs with page ranks of 5, do not make up for their hosting and domain registration costs today. Note that literally millions of people are downloading and installing Adblock plus on their Firefox browsers each month and fewer and fewer people are seeing ads.

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