Anyway, here’s some recent domain registrations that were made (not by me!)

JerrySandusky.com (created 2011-11-06)

PennStateScandal.com (created 2011-11-09)

PennStateScandal.net (created 2011-11-10)

PennStateSexScandal.com (created 2011-11-09)

PennStateAbuse.com (created 2011-11-07)

PennStateAbuse.net (created 2011-11-07)

Still available:

pennstatescandal.org <—- not touching this one.  Although, I think if you put up the right blog, and aggregated all the “non-mainstream” news surrounding the case, ie, conspiracy theories and such.  Then covered the site with donation buttons to child welfare organizations and state child abuse hotlines, you might be able to help turn a horrific travesty into increased awareness and advocacy to child abuse and welfare organizations.  The right site could generate millions of visits I think, and hopefully donations of support for prevention of such atrocities.

This whole story is STRANGER THAN FICTION…

This monster actually wrote a book called “Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story”… No Really!!! Look: http://www.amazon.com/Touched-Jerry-Sandusky-Story/dp/1582613575

and…

PSU pulled the “Sandusky Blitz” namesake dessert off the menu (thank goodness) at the Penn State Creamery, but, here’s the Google cache as proof!! it’s not an internet joke! Jerry Sandusky actually had an ice cream dish named after him that included “Banana Flavored ice cream with Chocolate covered peanuts” <—- say whaaaaaat?

Somewhat unexpectedly, Google toolbar pagerank (what is actually shown publicly) updated on November 7th, 2011.  Many are rejoicing in the streets because there is now some quantifiable metric associated with all the hard work that’s put into marketing your website!  For others, a rather grim day and the realization that Google can giveth and taketh at any point.

I’m pleased that we are exactly where we usually are, a strong PR5 with all sub-pages at PR4, even many of the blog posts are PR3-4… which is where a 10 yr old site SHOULD be. We actually were a PR7 at one point when there was 2 dmoz listings for recycled-traffic, somehow they got removed, bastards… Anyway, I await the comment spam to get more aggressive.   Although, BadBehavior and captcha combined have really made most of the comment spam go away.  But, there’s still a few pesky Russian IP’s that always slip through GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

All the PR transfer happened pretty nicely on this site because I spent the time making proper 301 redirects to the new pages and got rid of the “www” prefix so all PR is now consolidated to the root domain without prefix.  Even though PR means nothing more to me than something to look at, it still gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside!!! It may not mean much to the ranking algorithm, but it’s still a powerful internet monetization variable.

When it comes to ranking right now, the most powerful attribute I’m seeing is AGE OF DOMAIN.  I have a few 10+ yr old domains that are dominating rankings with only a handful of links.

How did you all do?

But this post is not about why Godaddy sucks as a webmaster resource, domain registration company or hosting platform. This post is about the CEO Bob Parsons, and why I think he’s a DICKHEAD. Maybe douchebag is more appropriate, with his little hipster earring and all. He reminds me of those dudes I see in nightclubs that are so far past their prime, yet still try to fit in at 50 yrs old by wearing MMA graffiti shirts because they still can’t get over being teased in high school for being such a douchebag. If Anthony Jeselnik were here, he’d say: “If you look up the word douchebag in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of Mike “the situation” Sorrentino, but if you look really closely, you’ll see The Situation is actually holding up a picture of Bob Parsons”

Now for the real reason of this post…

I’ll start by saying, I’m not some PETA animal rights freak, but I do care about the welfare of animals and I do not advocate hunting unless it’s for FOOD or population control. Which this video tries to use as a rationalization. Believe me, Zimbabwe’s people don’t need Bob Parsons the extreme hunter to fly there to kill a “problem elephant” and “help feed the people”. But, on the other hand it’s kind of fitting, since a TON internet scams originate in Africa, it’s a good place for Bob to familiarize himself with his peers. The fact that he tries to rationalize a hunting safari by hiding behind the mask of philanthropy insults our intelligence just as much as those commercials do.

What’s worse than shooting an endangered animal that could potentially be totally extinct in the wild by 2015?  Uploading a video and bragging about it.  I realize elephants are harming particular farmers but that’s because human beings have destroyed and invaded their habitats.  Killing them all is not a solution, it’s a brainless uninventive way of brushing things under the carpet.
Bob Parsons <------ DOUCHEBAG.

First off, if your not using wordpress, you’re missing the boat.  Not only can you launch a pretty nice looking site within an hour or so, there’s a ton of plugins available to automate and tweak your site.  In the past, the most popular thing to do with an expired domain that had existing link popularity, was to just park it and hopefully capitalize on the traffic via PPC with sedo or any one of the other paid parking programs out there.  However, I’ve found it to be somewhat self-defeating because eventually all inbound links will disappear and all indexed pages will vanish even quicker… and, therefore all traffic will cease.

What I recommend, is to quickly throw a wordpress site up and try to closely match the old content and page structures.  If you register the domain fast enough, within 1-3 days after it becomes available again, you can salvage the existing indexed pages.

The first thing to do is investigate which pages are indexed… try Googling the domain name in quotes first: “domain.com” to see if its indexed at all. If so, query Google like this:

site:domain.com

This will give you a list of all pages still indexed.  Copy each and every one of those page structures… then download simple 301 redirect plugin for wordpress here:

http://www.scottnelle.com/simple-301-redirects-plugin-for-wordpress/

Once you set up your new site simply go into the plugin settings and enter each of the old pages, you can now forward them wherever you want.  This tells Google the page is permanently moved to a new location.  This is exactly how Google prefers you to do this, and avoid 404 errors as best as possible.

Alternatively, you can build the new site with the exact same structure as the 0ld site, without 301 redirects.

What really piqued my interest on Ron Jackson’s list: http://dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

Is that I’m on it again! It’s been a few years!

However the details are not quite correct on that site, I purchased VeterinaryClinic.com (for an absolute steal) from a private seller with a huge portfolio at fabulous. The deal was brokered and escrowed through buydomains… NOT Afternic DLS.

Clarification, someone emailed me saying “Buydomains is part of the afternic DLS network” Yes, this is true.   But, it was not because of the DLS that this domain was sold. I sought out the domain privately, directly through the owner, but because they are over seas, I needed some extra security in the transaction. I chose to use Buydomains as my escrow.  I don’t like someone taking credit for a top domain sale, when it’s simply not the case.

I’ve used SEDO quite a bit too in the past. But I chose Buydomains this time because for starters, when I call, someone answers the phone!  Sedo has pissed me off in the past taking too long to transfer domains and answer emails or calls.  When the sales price is over $10,000 I expect a lot, and answering the phone is just the beginning. Sending a wire transfer for that much coin is nerve-racking enough… I’d need a stand-by portable heart defibrillator for a $50k domain!  But, its definitely on my list of things to do! So, now I have the .com to go with the little brother .org, which I believe by owning both, increases the value of the whole, but I plan on developing both domains anyway unless someone forks up 6 figures…

I’ve used textbroker.com 5 times… I can say I’ve been pretty happy with the results.  There is a learning curve so to speak, on how to get the most out of your authors.  The more detail you provide, the better the result.

I made sure I added in the briefing of requirements:

A) where the copy will go

B) an example URL of the site its going on

C) the tone of writing I would like set

D) what important topics should be touched upon

E) keywords I would like prominent use of

F) links to other example articles and references

I chose to go with the level 5 writer for this particular project. The article is about nanotechnology and how it applies to a waterproofing product.  Talk about niche! It did take a while before someone took the project, actually I didn’t think anyone would touch it because its so “out there”.  But, after about a week I was delivered the article.  I’m not the world’s best writer, so to me this was exactly what I wanted and am pretty happy with it.  Here’s a screenshot of the:

Level 5, 300 word article at 6.7cents/word, for a total of $20.40 spent:

For the next examples, I used textbroker.com for a couple of articles about divorce.  These had very quick turnaround times as they are common niches, and example texts are plentiful.  I had the next 2 articles within 48 hrs…

This article is to go on a webpage of a Law Firm, under “practice areas” focusing on “Fathers Rights”.  For this project I chose:

level 4 writer, 250 words, 2.2 cents/word for a total spend of $5.80:

Here’s an article for “Frequently Asked Questions” pertaining to Divorce, specifically in the State of Michigan.  For this article I chose:

Level 3 writer, 520 words, 1.6 cents/word, for a total spend of $8.62:

I thought for the price, the level 3 writing was pretty darn good, I mean its 1.6 cents!  You can be the judge, I’ve posted pretty good examples between level 5, level 4 , and level 3 writers.  Although I was pretty detailed in my direction and what I wanted.  Overall I’m very happy with what I payed for… I won’t hesitate to use textbroker.com again.  I think the biggest decision you’ll have to make is which level of writer to use.  For the price, it seems level 4 is the way to go. But, if you have a pretty generic topic that won’t require a lot of research for the writer, you could probably get a lot written, inexpensively, by a level 3 writer.  If you ever need a very technical, very niche subject matter article, you might be better off with the level 5, since they are more than likely highly educated and able to comprehend their research better.  The other cool feature about textbroker.com is that there’s a wordpress plugin available that will allow you to order and publish articles right from your dashboard.  You can find it here: http://www.wptextbrokerplugin.com/

I liked Softlayer, the support was pretty good and they’re big enough that uptime is as close to 100% as possible.  It was just getting too costly for not having full management and backups included.  Mind you, I’m good enough as a server admin to only need support once a year or so.

The rage is cloud. What is Cloud though? To be honest I still don’t know, but they say its good stuff!  The more I try to understand what cloud hosting is, the more I think it’s the same thing most techs have been doing for a decade anyway! It’s a marketing ploy.  In essence, if you’ve ever run VMware and had multiple instances of operating systems running on a virtual environment. You’re running a cloud. Tadaaa. Whatever.

That brings me to Liquidweb.  I found this company by doing what everyone should do when they look for a host. Spend hours upon hours researching trying to find the best fit for what you need.  Liquidweb seemed to be up on their game in terms of cloud hosting. They have a great presence and style online and a lot of big name clients.  TheWhir uses them, and they’re a webhosting info powerhouse.  What really made me finally switch to them was, They’re a Michigan based company close to Spartan land. I love MSU, and the State of Michigan.  The data center is less than 100 miles from me.  So, to be supporting a local business too worked out perfect.

The transfer process was pretty seemless and they offered to do it for free.  Switching WHM over to the Liquidweb smartvps cloud thing went flawlessly.  Support has been truly awesome, they respond within minutes and always answer the phone 24hrs a day.  They call their support HEROIC, so far it has been.  BUT, what’s most impressed me so far with Liquidweb, is the SPEED!  All my sites are running faster on 1Gig Liquidweb VPS cloud, than the dedicated Xeon 2.8ghz dual processor with 4Gig Ram I had with Softlayer.  To me that’s pretty fast… for “cloud” hosting.

In webhosting, you get what you pay for… Liquidweb has been worth every penny and more.

As a final word, I have to just say this, and get it out of my system for once… Godaddy sucks. Don’t ever use them for hosting.  Trust me, I’m an expert.

So, now the newest incarnation has been born.  Ala wordpress!  We love wordpress, and there’s not much that you can’t do with it.  We’ll be adding things slowly but surely in the upcoming days and weeks.  But it was just time to move on to a new server, the old server was almost 6 years old and had never been updated!! Quite astounding that it lasted so long without ANY downtime or issues.

Any questions just contact me!

Sincerely,

Steve

For best results make sure you’ve selected an appropriate photo for each of your domains—the website-like page layouts with photos are often among the best performing, but only when a matching photo has been selected! Also, you should allow some time (up to 4 weeks) on the new setting before evaluating whether or not it’s brought the benefit that you were looking for. If for some reason you don’t like the layout the system selected, you can choose the option “Stop Auto-Select & revert”, click save, and the domain will revert to the previously selected layout. Of course since the top-performer may change over time, we’ll regularly review the layout settings to make sure each domain is always optimally configured.

So give it a shot! Already nearly 1,000 SedoPro customers are actively using the rotation and have seen their CTR improve an average of 11%. You may be surprised which layouts perform the best, and how much of an increase the right layout can bring.

All is quiet in the land of .me with the sunrise period having ended on May 20th. With the new extension, the southern European nation of Montenegro is looking forward to the promise the extension may hold in regards to the English language. Even though a generic .com appears to be a golden ticket for domainers, the use of .me may present an array of interesting domain name possibilities, as well as unique advertising opportunities for businesses. With the growing span of internet access across the globe, a more customized approach is a tactic employed by user-based websites. For trademark holders of infamous .com’s, the addition of a .me extension could be beneficial in creating a more personalized experience for their visitors.

With premium names, such as contact.me and fly.me, going into auction after the open registration period on July 17th, the .me will likely draw big attention in the domain industry. On June 6th, the land rush period for .me will begin, allowing, for the first time, interested parties who do not currently hold a trademark to apply for a .me domain names. Since the .me is expected to have mass appeal, it is already being considered in high demand, with a land rush period reminiscent of .tv.

Encirca.com suggests that businesses may employ the .me extension to further interact with their website’s visitors. This may prove to be a catchy new way of gaining visitors; by making the website not only more personalized but also more engaging.

As the . me registry plans to hold back certain premium domain names, the extension is expected to gain massive popularity within the blogging community. Not only does .me have a massive branding potential but due to the fact that “me” has several translatable meanings, internationalized domain names will be a major player in the rush for the domain names.