I've been blogging on my main blog White Sky Project for a few years, and about a couple of years ago I thought it was about time that I own it. I did my research, learned a few things, and finally took the plunge. Basically, here's what I did.
First, I backed up my blog. This was my main concern about switching to my own domain. I was terrified of losing all my content. I went to my Blogger dashboard, clicked on Settings, then Basic, then Export Blog and saved the file in my computer. Just to check if that little file really contained my blog content, I created a new blog and imported that file. The new blog looks just like my blog. I didn't publish that new blog though to avoid having a duplicate blog. That's just weird.
Second, I bought a domain at GoDaddy. They had an ongoing promo so I got my domain for $7.67/year, which is roughly 400 Philippine pesos for the year. I'm not sure though if that price will still apply when I renew next year.You can actually purchase a domain through Blogger, but I read mixed feedback about that route so I decided to purchase directly from GoDaddy.
Third, I changed my settings by following instructions I found here. There are a lot of tutorials out there about switching to custom domains, but this was the simplest one I found.
My new domain started working within minutes. I had to figure out a couple of things like how to redirect my naked domain (without the www) to the new blog url. Apparently, I had to tinker more with my settings to get it to redirect to my new blog address. My next steps were to update my profile in online networks. Actually, my old blogspot address will redirect to the new url, but I think it's cooler if I put my new site address.
Interested in switching to a custom domain? Here are the tutorials I found useful:
Domain mapping with Blogger and GoDaddy
Blogger - how to use custom domain
Blogbloke - Custom domain
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