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7:04 pm
January 1, 2013
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First Million is the Hardest
| | Buffalo, NY | |
| Member | posts 119 | 
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Happy New Year Yakezie!
As we all tend to do at the end of a year, I've been reevaluating my blog and looking for ways to improve it. I've noticed that the fact that my URL & Blog name are different it causes some confusion when people link to me etc… As you can imagine, when I started out I had no idea what I was doing & didn't think anyone would ever actually read what I wrote. So I didn't forsee a problem, but now that I'm starting to get some decent (by my standards) traffic, this is becoming a personal annoyance.
Right now I'm debating on whether to just buy 'thefirstmillionisthehardest' .net or .org (.com is taken) and move everything over. Or if I'd be better off essentially starting over and re-launching under a new shorter & more unique name.
I've read Andrea's thread & post about her experience, and I was wondering if any other yakezie members had gone through the process.
Those of you that have done it, is it worth doing? How long did it take for your traffic/social media following to recover? How will a move like this affect adsense and affiliate relationships?
Basically,I'm worried about killing the progress I've made to this point. But I can't help but think it's a better move for the longer term. Any thoughts or input you guys have would be appreciated!
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7:39 pm
January 1, 2013
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Edward Antrobus
| | Fort Collins, CO | |
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I switched from a free .co.cc subdomain to a .com last year. Late in 2011, I rebranded from Entry Level Dilemma to Edward Antrobus and migrated from blogger to wordpress. So that is two actual domain changes in 12 months. If you are going to make the switch, its absolutely better to do it sooner than later. Because you will loose progress and take some time to build it up. It's been about a month since the last change; my rankings aren't fully back yet, but my traffic is already up.
My advice would be to keep the old domain and re-direct to keep all your incoming links. And email as many of those websites as you can find and ask them to update their links.
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6:09 am
January 2, 2013
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sooverthis
| | Kentucky | |
| Moderator
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Hi Jay,
I think in your case it might make sense to just rename the blog "The First Million Blog" and use "The First Million is the Hardest" as a tagline. Worth a thought, anyway. That would help you avoid the move, it would help your URL make more sense to people, and it would allow you to keep the overall sentiment behind the blog. Rebranding sucks in the beginning but if it truly makes sense to you, it's worth it in the long run.
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6:21 am
January 2, 2013
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debtroundup
| | Raleigh | |
| Member | posts 190 |
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While I haven't re-branded my PF blog, I have done it on other websites. I did it on my ecommerce site once and it was horrible. It took so long to get everything working again and all of the contacting to get the links updated. If you can just change your name to match the domain, I think you might be better off. This is just my two cents. Good luck Jay!
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7:19 am
January 2, 2013
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seedebtrun
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Since we are going to be out of debt in a few months, Michelle and I discussed re-branding "See Debt Run", to more generic non debt-centric theme…
buuuuuut.. we aren't going to do it.
just too much effort has been put into building the brand to throw it away..
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2:56 pm
January 2, 2013
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Eric – PersonalProfitability.com
| | Portland, OR | |
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I like Andrea's advice. You already have a great domain, don't ditch it for something more complicated.
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8:39 am
January 3, 2013
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Eliza Cross
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Several years ago I went through this very dilemma with my blog, and I decided to do the hard thing and transition to a new name. My old blog was called "Urban Homesteader," and I felt it was too limiting for all the things I wanted to write about. I also had personally come to the realization that I was increasingly interested in a simpler lifestyle, and that I would probably never raise chickens – ha!
I took the plunge, registered Happy Simple Living and transferred over all the files. It took about six months for my traffic to return to previous levels, but it was so worth it. The site has stronger branding and name recognition, and is a much better reflection of my interests. My traffic is now 20 times what it used to be at Urban Homesteader.
I didn't do a redirect, and instead created a page explaining the move and sending people to my new site. Interestingly, the page I set up on my old blog is still my #3 source of traffic. You can see it here:
http://urbanhomesteader.wordpress.com/
In the end, only you can decide what's best and I'm sure you're looking at this from a, long-term Big Picture perspective. Good luck, and let us know what you decide to do!
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2:06 pm
January 4, 2013
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David Trounce
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Post edited 2:06 pm – January 4, 2013 by David Trounce
Jay,
We are going through the same thing right now. I think your domain name and page title are not incongruous and I would not change them. if anything, change the name but not the domain.
I had a look at your site and because the words, "First Million" appear in both domain and title, it was entirely consistent and did not cause any negative reaction in me. In fact, together, the blog title and domain name were immediately reduced in my head to, "The First Million" and that's a nice catchy name to be known by.
Moving to an entirely knew domain name will have an impact on many things (adsense, links, Rank, domain age, etc). I would not do it. It wont improve revenue will it? Better to focus on "marrying the two" so that they become synonymous in the readers mind (something that happened automatically with me when I read your blog).
You said there was some confusion. Can you be more specific? How do you know people are confused? Are there some other ways you could over come the confusion?
All the Best!
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8:22 am
January 5, 2013
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First Million is the Hardest
| | Buffalo, NY | |
| Member | posts 119 |
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Thanks for all the input everyone, I appreciate it!
In the end I've made the decision to purchase thefirstmillionisthehardest.net and will be transfering my site over to the new URL. It may not be the easiest, or even best decision, but I think in the long run its the one I'll be happiest with. Hopefully by just changing the URL and not going with a full re-brand I can get away with keeping the same RSS feed and social media profiles to ease the pain a little bit.
Now begins the process of figuring out how to actually pull this off…wish me luck! haha
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11:07 am
January 5, 2013
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sooverthis
| | Kentucky | |
| Moderator
| posts 1041 |
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Good luck! Email me if you get stuck and I'd be happy to walk you through. The most important thing to do is put a wildcard redirect in place once the new site is set up – very easy to do within HostGator's cPanel and it will update your .htaccess automatically.
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8:29 am
January 6, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Jay,
May the force be with you. Changing anything large scale on my sites gives me the hives. Hope everything goes well!
Sam
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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3:08 pm
January 10, 2013
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First Million is the Hardest
| | Buffalo, NY | |
| Member | posts 119 |
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Well, the transfer is finished. I think the whole process was 100x easier because I was simply moving URL's instead of changing the whole identity of my blog. It sucks that I just cracked 200,000 in Alexa under my old domain and now I'm sitting at 24 million, but I think it will be for the best in the long run.
Thanks again for all the input guys. If anyone else is contemplating a move, I'd be more than happy to help out in any way I can!
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