Free blogs vs. buying domain...

buy the domain every time. They appreciate as they get older and you have more control. Its worth $10 per year.

Well... once you get around 5-10 money sites, buying domains for all the feeder sites doesn't make sense anymore. I just use blogger, wordpress.com, livejournal blogs for this type of stuff. Use a different account per free blog-- that part I just heard somewhere else I have no idea if it matters, but I do it.

Well, if you just want to use the blog to drive traffic, it helps to use a free blog since they normally give you more ranking ability...

But a paid blog can create an asset for you in the long term, so I guess it depends on if you want to target the short term or the long term.

Yeh, there is a little difference between top level domain and free domain for blogs.

Every affiliate program such as adsense, CPA, PPC is activated quickly in top level domain, thats it.

According to content of your blog, I don't think there is a difference. If it is qualitiful then domain doesn't matter.

To gain link juice benefits from your own domains they need to have different IP addresses, hard core SEOers also avoid footprints left by shared domain contact info, adsense or analytics codes.

A few years ago Howie Schwartz had a course (Conversation Domination) touting the benefits of networks of free social sites, saying at the time he had stopped buying domains, things are constantly changing though, his approach may no longer be as effective. I see there is a 2.0 version of the course.

Here's someone's 2009 Howie promotion:

its just waste of money, you can use free services of blogger and wordpress, you can optimize them and they can derive traffic for you too...

The control freak side of me says use your own domain every time.

Free blogs can - and do - change the rules when it suits them.

Wordpress blogs (on the Wordpress [dot] com domain) say "no commercial intent".

Blogger blogs - it's specifically against the TOS to use them to help your site to rank.

Squidoo/Hub Pages/etc change the rules and will lock pages that no longer fit.

If you do use free, that's the risk you run...

Trevor

Well, you said you are targeting long term. It's hard to ay exactly without knowing what your exact strategy is. It seems like a waste to create a lot of content long term for sites you don't own. You could have a primary site and several mini sites that point to the main site, or even each other, though you would need to make sure you have different IP addresses with them. You can then use the blogger, wordpress,com, etc, to drive traffic to all of them.

The Howie Schwarz method referenced early, was a short term, high gain strategy, and admittedly kind of grey hat. It was not meant to last long term. The problem with the public sites is they can shut your account down without warning an you lose everything that was on them. Howie was fine with that. That might not work for you. I have heard people say they never had a problem, and I have heard horror stories. I would honestly not put anything on them that I was concerned about losing. I would not count on them as part of a long-term solution.

Buy your own domain at least you will have a better control over your blog, especially because some free blogs are full of ads and links form your homepage...

Yes you can use free blog platforms - but don't be depending on them solely for driving traffic.

If you're thinking of long term, buy domains to suit.

Use away at free hosting platforms that supply you free domains, but "note," any content you create for them, back it up every post you write, having it stored somewhere like a simple pen drive can save you a lot of grief if free hosting platforms decide to change their terms.

pleasei ve a domain and a paid host can a goo samaritan plz help me to upload a good script plz mail me so we can talk better and give u details

Buying new domain would be better idea as it offers more control and you can use plugins and other software that help to increase traffic.

I have a few blogs that are on free blog accounts, but like mentioned above, free blogging companies can change their rules whenever they want. They can close down your account too without warning, so there is always the risk of that happening.

I do still use them though and so far I've been ok with them. I use Squidoo and Hubpages too and also article directories.

I do have my own websites that I also use but I try to only link from sites that are on a different hosting account. I think that was mentioned above also that the backlinks need to be coming from a separate IP address so you'd need separate hosting unless you get dedicated hosting I believe.

Only a slightly related question but what about .info domains versus .com domains? If the content is good, does it matter if it is a .info?

Thank you Alexa. And thanks for the links to the other threads. And as for the free blogs -- I was booted out of Wordpress entirely -- they closed it all right down and I have no idea why. I think I was trying to monetize but that was only peripheral. I was blogging about my miserable attempts to lose weight.

Thank you guys for all the input. I now know exactly what I needed to know and then some.