How to renew your google blogger vanity domain!

So it's that time of year again, when I have to shell out for the pleasure of being pret-a-mummy.com rather than pret-a-mummy.blogspot.com. The former, for the uninitiated, is what's known as a vanity domain, the idea being that it looks a bit more professional I guess, and gives your blog a bit more of an identity perhaps. The only downside, as far as  I know, of having a vanity domain is that you have to pay for it. Mine costs me about $10 a year, so it's not too bad, whereas the blogspot.com domain is free, which is how most bloggers start out.

Up until this year, the process of renewing my domain and paying the $10 was super easy - google sent me a reminder to my inbox, I clicked on it and then paid through an app called "google wallet". However it seems that google wallet is now no more and instead google have replaced it with a ridiculously complex system that no-one quite understands. Until now! Yes, I am going to take you through a step by step guide of renewing your google blogger domain, and it's pretty easy actually, once you know how.

Firstly, you will not be able to pay for your domain with the gmail account that is attached to your blog, that would be just too easy. Instead you have to find out what your admin email address and password is. If you try and use your normal gmail account you will see this.

 Never heard of that before? No me neither. So here's what you do to access your google admin account.

• Copy and paste this link into your browser:- https://admin.google.com/DOMAIN.com/ForgotAdminAccountInfo 
• Where it says DOMAIN insert the URL for your blog, e.g. mine would be https://admin.google.com/pret-a-mummy.com/ForgotAdminAccountInfo
• press enter!
•  You will then see one of these

 

•  Enter the code and click submit.
• It will then send an email to your back up account asking you to reset your admin password. Make sure you check the correct account - this is whatever account you have on your gmail account as your back up.  If you're not sure which account that is, go into your gmail account and in settings-accounts there is the following page - click on the circled bit you can see in the image below and check what your alternate email address is (what I call back up account) - the email has been sent there. However, sometimes the password reset email just goes to your blogger gmail account, so check them all!

 

•  Click on the link in the email and it will take you to a reset password page, just so you know, your admin email address will most probably be apps-admin@domain so mine is
  apps-admin@pret-a-mummy.com
• It will then ask you to sign in AGAIN with your apps-admin account, then go to billing and make the payment for your domain. Again, this isn't easy and it may be easier to just go back to the reminder email you've had and click on the link on that. If you go to "billing settings" you can add payment details there, I clicked autorenew as it seemed to prefer it.
• When the payment for my domain has been taken in a few days I will probably delete my card details, just in case....

There you have it! PHEW! Why did they make it so difficult? If you have any problems, let me know and I will try to help if I can :P