404 error: Would Ogbongeblog move to paid hosting?

I noticed that Ogbongeblog is not working again and this is a top Nigerian tech blog that really receives a lot of daily traffic from both mobile and desktop users.

Ogbongeblog is hosted on a blogger platform and has a custom domain too while the site is monetized mostly by Google Adsense. It is one of the few financially successful Nigerian websites that has all it takes to remain in business for the next 10 or 20 years or so.

Lately I discovered that it is no longer working. A visit to Jide Ogunsanya's Ogbongeblog for a few days now keeps on giving an error which reads:

"404. That’s an error.

The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know."

I recall the last time I noticed this happened and wrote about it here.

Hosting a blog on the blogger platform has an advantage which is the fact that the owner doesn't have to pay for web hosting which comes free but it also comes with some rules which could however be avoided if one were to actually start paying for hosting o another platform.

The blogger platform is a great blogging platform to use and it's powered by Google. The only thing is that Blogger paltforms for now are not available on paid hosting platforms and that's why bloggers would have to move from Blogger to Wordpress when moving away from the Blogger platform. Wordpress is available and can be installed on most web hosting accounts but one would have to pay for the hosting site.

It can be hard moving from blogger to paid hosting and still maintain old urls since blogger urls tend to be a bit different from Wordpress or other blogging platform urls. Most bloggers who start blogging by using Google Blogger tend to prefer staying on the platform rather than migrating to paid hosting since it can be a bit of complex work.

One disadvantage of hosting one's blog on Blogger is that there are a list of rules one has to abide by and one's blog can also be suspended and even deleted by Google without much notice or based on their terms of service.

What I recommend for Ogbongeblog
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- Doing an immediate backup of his blog posts
- Filing an appeal to Blogger if there was a mistake
- Consider Switching to a paid hosting service(This will prevent your blog posts from being deleted at least)
- Consider moving from Blogger to Wordpress(If Blogger's terms are not good for your blog)
- Finally move from blogger to paid hosting and redirecting old urls

Note:
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It takes about 6 months for a blog to be delisted entirely from Google search results and so if the 404 error continues for that long, Ogbongeblog may lose out to competition and it may be harder to recover. Already, some urls from Ogbongeblog are being delisted and this could continue daily if the 404 error persists.