You can’t make money blogging when your blog suddenly vanishes.
Think it can’t happen? Well, it what happened to Angie who posts at the PPP forums under the nickname “echo123″ at the Pay Per Post forums.
How did it happen?
Just before Angie left for a her grandmother’s funeral, Angie posted content a friend found objectionable. Angie had been hosting her blog under that friend’s hosting account. That friend took Angie’s blogs off line.
So, when Angie returned, she discovered a number of rejection notices from Pay Per Post. That meant: no earnings on any posts that didn’t appear for the required 30 days. Needless to say, a blog off line also means no Adsense clicks, no Alexa rank boosting traffic, no affiliate sales, nothing.
Talk about a hit to the pocket book! Imagine if a host became very aggressive; a blogger could also risk losing the full contents of a database, then “poof” years worth of traffic- attracting posts she worked so hard to create would vanish too.
What was the objectionable content?
Angie, following her pediatrician’s advice, was going to give her daughter Benadryl while traveling to her Grandmother’s funeral. This would both calm the daughter and relieve her allergy symptoms.
Lessons: Avoid this problem, and also prepare for the worst!
Of course, you think your blog would never vanish for no good reason, right? Let’s hope not!
But even if you don ‘t host on your friend’s account, you could find your blog vanishing for a variety of reasons.
Your host could go belly up: Two years ago, my former hosting service suddenly seemed incapable of keeping my blog on line more than 1 hour a day. Their ticket and help service became unresponsive. I finally had to cancel my account, find a new hosting service and point my domains to the new service.
You could get hacked. Three years ago hackers can defaced my knitting blog. They could have deleted! Then what would I have done?
Four steps to protect your blog from total loss
So, to protect ourselves from total blog loss, we all need to:
- Get our own hosting plan: If you are posting sponsored ads, the $10 -$20 a month is well worth the price.
- Back up our databases: For all practical purposes, the databases are the blog. I have my databases backed up and emailed to me daily using WordPress Database Backup. Now if my blog disappears because lightening can struck the server, I can repopulate the blog!
- Back up our WordPress directories.It’s worth periodically backing up your WP directory and saving to your home computer. I try to do this once a month. Two years ago when something went horribly wrong at my old host, I was able to create a new account with Dreamhost and load everything quickly, including all template customization.
- Keep control of our domain names: No matter who hosts your service, you should keep track of your domain name registration. Should your friend become power mad or your hosting company go belly up, you need to know how to point the domain name to a hosting service of your choice. The pointers generally take 24 hours to resolve to a new hosting service, which can be frustratingly slow when you are upset at your hosting service. But that’s still much better than never getting yoru blog back!
Most important: Never, ever, ever host under a “friend” plan!
This idea bears repeating: Saving money by hosting with a friend is dangerous. Even the least expensive of professional hosting services companies won’t yank your blog unless you violate their TOS.
Get a real host!
Great post. I’ve been thinking about starting a second blog. And I think you’ve convinced me to go ahead and get a host and use WordPress. I’ve only had my blog for a little over six months, but I would be horrified if anything like what happened to Angie happened to me.
That’s one of the reasons we recommend all are customers register their own domain names and set up their own hosting. Unscrupulous web developers or those that go out of business can hold people’s websites and blogs pretty much hostage. OUCH! If the customer has a problem doing it- we will hold their hand during the process.
I must have to agree with all points of the post! A Comprehensive and analytical post. What I’ll add is a feeling of freedom that one gets having own hosting, i.e. from customizing the blog to monetization, everything goes the way you want it.