As the title says, I’m thinking of making some changes around here. In particular, I’m thinking about taking the leap from wordpress free — from my humble pavorisms.wordpress.com home — to paying for my very own .com.

WordPress claims this will get me more traffic, and that’s well and good, but more to the point I feel like there are a few more important benefits to it:

1. I’ll be able to get the title for the blarg that I really want. I can’t get that domain as REDACTED.wordpress.com, because it’s currently claimed use by a woman who created a blarg about trying to get pregnant with her husband back in 2010, made a grand total of two freaking posts, and abandoned it. I can have it, though, as a straight REDACTED.com. Not that I don’t like my home at “Pavorisms”, but I think my other title will have a more betterer appeal.
2. TA piece of advice I’ve heard from a few authorial-advice sites is that I should own my own stuff. This one I’m hazy on, but I think that shelling out for the domain makes me the owner of the material I post to the site, whereas currently, technically, WordPress is the holder of my stuff. Not that I think anybody’s planning to steal my stuff, but long-term plans are to actually sell books and have something of an online presence through which to interact with readers directly. Cart before the horse, I know, but it’s something that’s in my mind.
3. This one is pure self-trickery, but up until now, the only thing I’ve invested in this endeavor has been time. A sharknado-load of time, I’ll grant you, but only time nonetheless. Turning this into my own site with its own unique .com would mean putting my money where my mouth is, literally — which might motivate me to continue taking this writing thing seriously on days when I otherwise might not.

Okay, so it’s an awful lot of agonizing over essentially $20, but something in my nature riots against paying any amount of money for something that isn’t worth it or that I don’t directly and tangibly benefit from.

So, if you’re reading, what’s your advice? Shell out for my own domain or keep on sliding with the freebie?