Switching from Blogger to a Custom Domain

…could not be easier.

1. You need to sign up and buy a domain name

A custom domain name or URL is something like FabulouslyBroke.com, instead of fabulouslybrokeinthecity.blogspot.com

It usually costs $10 USD a year. I got mine through GoDaddy.com for $8.99 or some silly promo but Blogger sells them too, at $9.99 USD/year.

2. You can decide to host the site via FTP or through Blogger

I chose to keep it with Blogger. Free hosting = awesome. If you decide to go the FTP route and really remove it from blogger, it will cost around $7 USD (on average) a month for a good host.

FTP is great if you want to really control the blog with images, custom pages, etc.

3. You can still create custom subdomains even via Blogger

Don’t be fooled, you don’t need an FTP hoster for this.

Something like: money.fabulouslybroke.com is possible. You just need to create a CNAME record with your domain name hoster, with “money” as the CNAME.

If you do decide to do the custom domain and keep the hosting with Blogger, it is very easy.

What stays the same:

• Feedburner URL (you won’t lose any subscribers or “Google Juice”)

• Adsense Advertising (you just need to make sure that if you have 2 different email addresses, that you go into Blogger Monetize and point Adsense to the right email address)

• All of your widgets, etc. (I lost my blogroll only because I set them all up to be as Google Followers or copied from my Google Reader and not actual, HTML, hand-entered links)

What changes:

Just your name. You should try and get bloggers to point to your new URL rather than your old one.

But with Blogger, either way you go, it will always redirect anyone back to your new custom domain.