Video To Blog Blows Away Blogger

Hi, I’m Richard Ellwood. In my latest video, I walked through a bit of a journey: trying to get Blogger to work with my domain, rediscovering a piece of software I’d bought earlier, and ending up with a tidy website without paying hosting fees. Below, I’ve written up what happened, what I learned, and how you can try some of this yourself.

The problem I started with

I wanted rickellwood.com to point at a Blogger site. My domain is parked at GoDaddy until 2031, so I went through Google’s instructions, added the CNAME records and followed the steps. Everything looked fine — except the site only showed up if you typed www.rickwood.com. If you typed rickwood.com (the root domain) you got nothing.

That was annoying, but not the end of the world. Normally, I’d keep at it until I either figured it out or gave up. While I was faffing about, I remembered some software I’d bought earlier in the year and decided to give it a go instead of typing out a blog post by hand.

Enter: Video To Blog

I’d purchased a tool called Video To Blog (bought via AppSumo), and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I uploaded one of my recordings, and it automatically created an article from the audio. It didn’t do a word-for-word transcript — in fact, it produced something clearer and much more helpful than my usual ramblings. You can tell it the tone you want (friendly, serious, etc.), and it also finds stock images related to your keywords.

• Automatic transcription and article creation
• Tone and style options — you can make the text friendlier or more formal
• Stock photo suggestions tied to keyword themes
• Hosted site option, so you don’t need separate hosting (I get a set number of conversions per month)

The time savings were huge — instead of typing the article myself, I had a near-ready post to tweak and publish. It also linked easily to Blogger if you want to transfer the content over.

How I used it with rickwood.com

I uploaded the video, downloaded the article the software produced, and linked things up. The tool also gives you a website; I didn’t pay any hosting fees because the video-to-blog system hosts the page for me. If you head to rickwood.com (without the www) right now, you'll be taken to that hosted page.

Note: I still have the DNS at GoDaddy. The CNAME changes I tried for Blogger only worked when the www prefix was used — that’s usually a DNS configuration issue. If you see the same behaviour, common fixes are adding A records for the root domain or setting up root-to-www forwarding in your registrar. If you want help, I’m happy to show you the steps.

AppSumo and licences — a quick note

I picked up Video To Blog on AppSumo for about $55 on sale. AppSumo deals often run for a limited time and you have to redeem your licence within a window; I’ve bought a number of products there and sometimes forget to redeem them, which is annoying. Fortunately I redeemed this one right away so it’s sat on my hard drive ready to use.

There are different pricing tiers if you want to convert more videos per month, but the basic deal will be enough for many creators who want to turn recordings into blog content quickly.

Another domain: richardellwood.com and DashNex

Separately I’ve got richardelwood.com which points to my online bio at DashNex. If you don’t already have a website and own a domain, DashNex  is worth a look. Through my invite you can create free HTML sites, lifetime, no hosting fees — the setup points your DNS via Cloudflare which is straightforward to follow.

Some key points about DashNet / DashNext:

• Two free websites included — HTML-based, not WordPress
• Templates available (free and paid)
• Option to add a shopping cart / e-commerce functionality
• Learns you how to point DNS via Cloudflare so you get lifetime hosting at no cost

It isn’t WordPress, so if you’re heavily invested in the WordPress ecosystem this won’t replace that. But if you want a low-cost way to get a domain live, build a company page, a blog or even a simple shop, it’s a solid option.

My experience as a DashNet partner

I’ve been with DashNet for over seven years. I signed up early, picked up some of the founder products and over time I’ve seen things grow. If you sign up via my invitation you get a free licence and I believe there’s a small $10 credit applied to your account (and to mine) — a little incentive to build the community. I’ve accrued around $656 in earnings from people coming on board; it’s not huge but it shows the model works.

How you can try what I did

1. Check your domains: know where they’re registered (GoDaddy, etc.) and what DNS records are set.
2. Decide whether you want to use Blogger, a hosted video-to-blog solution, or DashNet HTML pages.
3. If you have recordings, upload them to Video To Blog (or similar) to auto-create articles — tweak the tone and images before publishing.
4. If your root domain (example.com) only serves with www, either add A records for the root or set up forwarding from the registrar.
5. If you want a free site with lifetime hosting and Cloudflare DNS, try DashNet (DashNext) and use an invite to get the free licence and tutorials.

Links and housekeeping (featured image)

Quick housekeeping: I’m regenerating links because I forgot to include a featured image in the first post. If you want to find the services I mentioned, look up Video To Blog (video-to-blog.io), AppSumo, DashNet / DashNext, and of course rickwood.com and richardelwood.com. Those are the names to search for.

Stick with me because this time next year we could be millionaires.

Final thoughts

I’m pretty chuffed with how simple this turned out. Instead of getting bogged down in DNS drama and rewriting my own posts, Video To Blog did the heavy lifting and DashNet gives me a place for a static site without ongoing hosting bills. I’ll leave things as they are for now, add more converted posts and see where it goes.

If you’re wrestling with Blogger or want an easier way to turn your recordings into readable posts, give the workflow a try: record, upload to a transcription-to-article tool, tweak, publish. It saved me a load of typing and made my content look cleaner than my usual rambles.

That’s it — I’m off to finish my lunch and have an orange. Thanks for reading, and remember: stick with me. All the best. Cheers.