NameCheap the west coast hosting company and domain registrar, is sponsoring an enormous contest on Twitter, starting tonight at Midnight Pacific time.
Every hour there will be a new trivia question asked from now until Christmas. You should all have at least some kind of decent chance to win some of their $17,000 dollars worth of giveaway prizes.
NameCheap is well known for having various types of hosting packages to fit any budget. Now you can possibly win free domain names, or free hosting packages in this Twitter contest.
If you have not yet registered for Twitter yet, and you two people know who you are, then you should get right over there and get a Twitter @[handle]. Say what you need to say in 140 characters or less and twit, tweet away.
Hey domainers! Here’s the question, how do you keep track of your domain names?
Around here it gets a little crazy at times. We intermittently go from writing, to checking stats, to email, to twitter, to news groups, to writing, to posting, to checking stats, to reading, to skypeing, to downloading, to pugins, to themes, to writing, and on and on… You do too, tell the truth.
Domaining Tools:
In between all of the above, every now and then a brainy idea pops up and we go looking at domain name availability on various subjects. Some of the tools that we keep in a bookmarked folder are NAME.com, pcnames.com, NameBoy.com, justdropped.com, wegotdomain.com, archive.org, and our favorite hosting company, BlueHost.
With all of those tools opened in tabs across the top of the screen one is able to jump from one possible resource to the other to try to snap up a real cool name.
Now none of this is a problem if you have a handful of domains to worry about, but what if you have many hundreds of them as we do, or even many thousands as some serious domaniers do? It gets confusing.
DataBase Management:
For instance I have a database with domain name ideas for future search that I just put fleeting thoughts in to, until such time as I get geared up to go domaining. Then there is another database with all of the domains owned, activated, where hosted, and where some are parked earning paltry sums of revenue sharing, and some are just plain dormant which sometimes leaves me wondering, what the hell was I thinking?
Sonoma Wine Country:
So my daughter is living in the Sonoma wine country and as I have a very popular New York State Wine website, she decided that she would like to set one up for Sonoma wine. Great !
So a couple of weeks ago I started to search for some cool names that might work good for a California wine website, found a half-dozen or so, and wrote them down in my notebook. I checked them on pcnames. All were available. Great !
Purchase Domains Today:
So today I went to NAME.com which is where I always purchase names in bulk. I have never found anyplace any cheaper. It is a little bother to point the DNS servers to your hosting companies, but it is not difficult and after a couple of days you can set up the website.
Well anyway, of the six names that I wanted to buy, every single one of them was now unavailable. some no-good-dirty-rotten-scoundrel had beaten me to them! Hmm does pcnames monitor searches?
So I said something like, shucks (ok not what I said,) and started looking for some possible alternatives. I found a couple that would work and went back to NAME.com and bought them. Then when I signed in and took a look at all of the names I own on NAME I was shocked to see that I was that no-good-dirty-rotten-scoundrel ! LOL !
I had indeed purchased all of those other names a couple of weeks ago and did not enter them into the database. I have absolutely no memory of doing so. Now I’m wondering how many more I own at a half dozen or so various registrars I have used.
How about you? Has anything like this ever happened to you? Do you have a “System” that you could share with us?
Wow, Twitter never ceases to amaze me. One of my latest Twitter followers is DNfame.
So naturally I checked out the associated link and was blown away! DNfame dot com is a F.R.E.E. Tool that almost instantly reports on tons of metrics for any domain name that you type in the search box.
It couldn’t be any easier. Go to the website, type in the url you want to check and as fast as your ISP connection will allow, it returns all of the data listed below:
Rank Data:
Google GPR
Alexa Rank
Famous Rank
Compete
Quantcast
Technorati Rank
Technorati Authority
This is a very humbling experience when you search on your own children. Websites that you have worked extremely hard on for a year or more returning paltry numbers might have a tendency to discourage you after all of the effort that you have put in to it.
I would prefer to take that data and make a plan to sally forth and do battle! Knowing what you know now by using this tool you should be able to go out and kick some ass. Find your weak points and compare them against your competition and you will instantly discover what you have to do to excel.
I must admit I have never heard of some of the sites that are used in this tool, but they probably all bear looking in to. DMOZ is so hard to get in to and Google says they use the information on that site quite a bit so I would like to know what one has to do to get listed in DMOZ.
I have always been of the opinion that I don’t care where my sites rank in the above stats, and that it is more important to work on getting your keywords to rank on the first page of Google. I actually still believe that, but it wouldn’t hurt to work on improving the above stats and in turn that would likely help your keyword ranking. The proof will be in the pudding.
Thanks to DNfame.com for twittering and a VERY BIG THANKS for letting me know about this FABULOUS TOOL !!!
ps: If you want to rank up there with someone that I have written about many times on this blog, whose name shall remain annonymous, but whose initials are GCDC, you need to go out and get 33,300 Google Backlinks.
Let us know how you rank by commenting on this Blog.
SUBSCRIBE NOW ! - (Oh and if you backlink to www.linkmoney.org please let me know personally.)
Do you Make Money In Your Shorts? I do. I live in a pretty remote area up on top of a big hill with forest all around me. This time of the year I have a nice and cozy wood stove heating the whole house and my office is right next to it.
Most of the time I am on this damn computer 16 to 18 hours a day, every day, and if I didn’t love it I would never work so hard for anyone else.
So I sit here in my shorts much of the time, and I usually cook my meals on the woodstove because I can keep good track of it. I keep the old standby ready reference tool known as the Yellow Pages phone book, right next to my desk.
When lunch or supper is ready, I usually just eat right out of the cooking pan. That’s where the Yellow Pages comes in handy. The Yellow Pages book is a way over two inches thick and no matter how hot the cooking pan is, I can set the pan on the Yellow Pages in my lap and I NEVER burn my nuts!
My point is, Print Is Dead. The Internet has changed everything, in all fields.
Soon there will be no more printed newspapers, unless some of them hold out for the curiosity value. Magazines, City Directories, Catalogs, and yes Phone Books will all be relegated to museum status. Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes said he felt a little sorry for the newspapers demise. Oh well…
There’s not much call for Mule drivers on the Erie Canal lately either.
Oh, and by the way, grab a handful of those Yellow Pages to use as a fire starter when the coals die out. Don’t worry the idiots will probably send you a new one in a couple of months.
You too can Make Money In Your shorts.
Come on everybody, if you like this Blog, then SUBSCRIBE !
You gather up tons of bookmarks and save them in your bookmarks or Favorites Manager file. You will gain efficiency by arranging the Favorites Manager folders and files.
This weekend I have been going through my bookmarks and arranging them in to their appropriate category folders. Though it is rather boring it reminds one to revisit several sites that you intended to check out some time.
This all came about because of the loss of one of the tools that I use every day and that is Linkbun.ch. That website allows you to open several tabbed websites at one time by just saving the group in a Linkbun.ch folder.
So I had folders groups for startup, which would be a Google search page, Gmail and the Google reader and the stats analyzer page for all of my websites that I track constantly.
Then I had another Linkbun.ch folder for domaining which included sites for newly expired domain names, and a nice tool pcnames.com that lets you see if domains are available as you type. I also had some of my webhosting companies and NAME.com for the cheapest place to buy domains.
I had another folder for microblogs, such as Twitter (I’m linkmoneydotorg,) and Plurk (where I am richhill.)
Another Linkbun.ch folder for Social Networking sites, such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Sphinn, and a couple of others.
Unfortunately Linkbun.ch has been down for a couple of weeks now, and the message they show indicates they are working on the site, but it does not appear as though they will be back any time soon.
I had become accustomed to relying on that service to open my various groups as needed, so decided to go about it a different way. You might find this handy also.
I set up some folders in my Favorites Manager named; 01startup, 01domaining, 03microblogging, and 04social. Then I put the appropriate sites that I want to use in each group.
Now when I open up my browser I just go to the bookmarks and click on one of the folders mentioned, and select “Open all in tabs.”
That’s all you have to do and your three or four favorite sites immediately open up on your desktop and you are in business.
So when you get some free time I would suggest you arrange your Favorites Manager and speed up your productivity.
Thanks to everyone that read this story and weighed in with your thoughts and suggestions.
The massive outpouring of support for MakeUseOf dot com was phenomenal. The rightful owner of the blog just made a post that GoDaddy did return it after 24 hours and he said that it would not have happened without the help of all the bloggers and tweeters that kept GoGaddys feet to the flames.
We are very happy that it worked out, and again, thanks for all your support.
Rich Hill
ps: What do you all think, should MakeUseOf initiate legal action?
This has nothing to do with ICANN the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, but they certainly ought to be involved in a major policy change.
The domain of the very popular website MakeUseOf.com has been STOLEN! This was reported by Daniel Scocco during the night on his Blog DailyBlogTips.com.
The report says that MakeUseOf was being hosted on GoDaddy and that GD allowed the domain to be transfered away from the owner to somewhere in Dubai. GoDaddy no doubt will cover their ass by saying all security terms were met, but I say Bull Shit! Get better security terms!
How can this happen? MakeUseOf has over 20,000 subscribers, I being one, and we all enjoy the tips and free information given out contiuously be MakeUseOf.
This is a Nightmare, a Horror Story fitting for the Halloween season for sure, but sadly true and how will it be resolved?
What would you do if your baby was stolen and taken to a foreign country?
This industry needs better security methods similar to what the online banking industry uses such as, multiple security codes, a primary image associated with the account, two security questions, a mouse pointer select keyboard, and anything else that someone could come up with.
I did notice that one method being offered by some registrars is to limit activity to a specific IP address. That way transfers could only come from one specific computer. That seem like a good idea to me, what do you think?
For now you should make sure that you use DIFFERENT passwords for all of your domains, your administration panels, your hosting company accounts, and so on. Use multiple email addresses for different accounts.
What do you think? Can anyone come up with ideas on how to make this more secure. Lets talk about it. This HAS to be fixed.
Come on GoDaddy, fix this and return MakeUseOf to the rightful owner.
Rich Hill
UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE:
MakeUseOf has a temporary home on blogger until this gets fixed. go there and give them your support.
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