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Is there some kind of thresh-hold to start seriously considering buying a domain and moving away from the [name].[blogspot,etc].com?

In this case I have a blog that focuses on personal miscellany (food, politics, etc); get about 110 visits, 350 pageviews, 3.6% bounce per month; have had that for a few months now; and am looking to grow. I'd like to buy my TLD since it's available, but am also wondering if switching to the TLD would drop/obfuscate traffic. (If it matters, it's on [name].squarespace.com currently.)

Thanks

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The sooner you get your new domain the sooner you can begin the transition and the less painful it will be. As you get more and more readers you will have more and more people who need to be aware of your new address as well as more RSS feeds that need to be updated. Plus you'll have a bunch of links pointing to your old site that need to be updated as well.

If you plan on continuing to grow your blog I'd say there is no better time then right now. :)

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  • So is it basically 'the sooner the better'; no base metric for X hits per month or anything like that?
    – mfg
    Dec 3, 2010 at 18:54
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    There's no magic number per sé. I'd say your goals would be a better guide. You have a good base of users and show potential to grow even more. I'd say do this while the growing pains would be small rather then waiting until you've had that growth and it gets to be more of a hassle/problem.
    – John Conde ♦
    Dec 3, 2010 at 19:09
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At less than $10*, the answer is immediately (and ideally, on day zero).

Moving to a new URL is a real pain, especially as you get larger. Moving will have an impact on bookmarks, links, PageRank, etc. The sooner you take care of this, the easier it is for you and your visitors.

* no affiliation, just a happy customer.

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  • got two years at $15 with godaddy*, but thanks for this option. (*evil lurking but lowest price with the Fan3 promo code knocking off 35%)
    – mfg
    Dec 6, 2010 at 14:36
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If you intend on ever moving it to its own domain, then do it now. It's only $15 for a domain name and you can find hosting for less than $100 a year. Start getting links built up to its permanent location and getting your visitors used to that domain.

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If your blog provider offers an option to do 301 redirects to your new domain it should be a lot less painful of a transition as far as traffic loss. I know Wordpress recently started doing that, but I'm not sure about other providers.

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/making-redirects-permanent/

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