If this letter is looking familiar, it’s not surprising. In addition to your web development and web design, it’s important to protect your domain. These letters go out every day and if your domain name is coming up for renewal, be ready to receive one of these.
It’s a scheme, pure and simple, and there’s an easy way to avoid it. Be aware of who you actually bought your domain name from and make sure you renew it through them. GoDaddy is a good choice for buying domain names and for hosting.
The company you bought your domain name from will undoubtedly send you a notice for renewal, or you can usually set yourself up for automatic renewal and be done with it. This is important because if you will notice the price structure , one year is $35 while a 5 year commitment comes out to just over $20/year.
That’s a far cry from the $7.99 – 11.99/year GoDaddy typically charges.
To the initiated, these letters are a joke; however, to the uninitiated these letters look official and cause the easy expenditure of countless dollars every day. This company, as well as others, keep a running tab on web addresses that are close to expiring and are trying to get those who don’t know better to pay a premium for their web address under the guise of carefully worded “renewal.”
A few years ago, our friend Mark Boyd lost the web address for his band/recording entity “World Famous Nobodies”. Life happens…in this case, divorce and the lovely legal speed bumps that come along with it. When Mark contacted the person who bought the domain (and wasn’t using it for anything but a static bull$#@& page), they emailed him that there was a lot of interest in it and that he could buy it back for $13,000.
Yep.
13 K’s, friends. Needless to say, Mark said “no thanks.”
He had to wait several years, but recently bought it back when it expired.
$9.99 per year.
A savings of $13,990.01.
And the moral of the story, kids, is just keep your wits about you. Obviously, without your domain name your web development and web design becomes irrelevant. Don’t forget who you bought your domain name from, or it may cost you. Not $13,000, mind you, but in this economy every bit helps:)
It’s been said many times over and the truth only gets stronger…while content is king, linking is queen. While it’s important to have strong content, in web development and web design your links are right up there in terms of importance. How many people link to your site? How many sites do YOU link to?
What you give is definitely what you get.
Linking not only builds your networking, it builds strong, active networks of honest interest. It’s important that you take on the mindset of initiating these contacts. Read other people’s blogs, visit other websites, leave honest feedback and comments, link from your site to posts and articles that you find most compelling. When you’re sincere in your efforts with this, you will incite natural interest in your own work, resulting in more links back to your site over time and a whole new audience will continue to open up for you.
Like any good online marketing, it’s not an overnight sensation and takes time to build. Be patient and keep reaching out and making more contacts. If you strip away the technology and algorithms, the search engines are set up to create an even playing field for everyone. It’s really not a complicated concept, but the process keeps getting more and more complicated to execute because of the large number of people choosing to try to get around the system rather than work with it.
Take time to link every day or at least every week. In addition to building your business, in the immortal words of Bill Cosby and Fat Albert “If you’re not careful you might learn something. So let’s get ready, okay? Hey, hey, hey!”
Andy Mull, web programmer at MIND Development and Design, made a stunning discovery yesterday while vacuuming at the MIND headquarters in Lancaster, PA.
“I noticed in the far corner of our meeting area that it looked like the corner of the carpet was a little loose and starting to curl,” Mull explains. ”Out of curiosity, I tugged a little on the corner and it came right up.”
What was revealed was a crudely patched over hole in the floor. The contents of the hole came as a total shock to Mull.
“It was a cooler…big enough to hold a couple six-packs,” he says. “When I opened it, there was all of this dry ice and what looked like a perfectly preserved human brain.”
“Andy brought it right over to us,” says MIND co-founder Chad McComsey. “And it was definitely a brain.”
MIND co-founder David Zimmerman immediately brought the brain to the lab for testing. ”There was no time to waste,” explains Zimmerman. “Someone was missing a brain…and it was under our carpet.”
Preliminary DNA testing of the brain suggests that it belongs to actor Charlie Sheen. Final results won’t be known for about a week.
Sheen was unavailable for comment.
One of the most effective and wallet-friendly (in some cases, FREE) ways to promote your business and direct traffic to your website is through press releases. Not the spam/infomercial “press releases” offered by so many online resources at exorbitant costs, but true press releases.
A true press release is an unbiased statement of fact. The idea is the factual information will allow an editor to make an educated determination of whether or not the information is newsworthy…either on a mass, regional or local scale. Quotes used in true press releases may reflect opinions (even very minor bias) by the individual being quoted, but this is the only real exception. Contact information (especially a link to your website if it’s an online release) is crucial in every press release to make it easy for people to find you.
With the advent of online publishing and the rush to to jockey for high search engine position through SEO and keyword-rich content, the market for an individual opened up on a mass scale like never before via the Internet. Since individual knowledge amongst businesspeople with regard to what constitutes a true press release is pretty low overall, many businesses are susceptible to being wooed into spending tons of money on what amounts to infomercials masquerading as “press releases.”
The detrimental effect of this is two-fold. One, the sales pitch most commonly used is “We’ll get you on the top of the search engines,” which is what every businessperson WANTS to hear. The reality is that no one can promise you this and consistently deliver. Think of how many thousands of people in your line of business alone who have been told this very same thing and the preposterousness of that premise.
In your web development and web design efforts, it’s important to simplify and the best way to do that is to have two main categories for your releases: press releases and news releases.
Next week in Part 2 you will learn the true difference between press releases and news releases so you can more effectively put your best foot forward for your business;)
Did you know that most major video game consoles have a number of Social Media features? Within the last 3 years the video gaming industry has developed social technology alongside with their own new technology to provide users with another way to stay connected. The three largest markets for computer and video games are the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. 60% of all Americans play electronic games of one kind or another. Currently services like Netflix and Last.fm are available for instant movie and music downloads on consoles like the Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox360. Social Media sites have also made their way to online gaming with features like Facebook and Twitter being available to update other users about your status in the game world as well as the real world. These features connect to your console like they do for your blog… it’s pretty easy and you don’t even need to get out of your seat!
Along with online gaming comes the individual online communities. XBOX uses an online system called LIVE. On XBOX LIVE you are able to connect with 
friends, listen to streaming music, watch streaming video, get gaming news, download updates and game add-ons as well as play games together with a million other users around the world. How does this relate to Social Media? On XBOX LIVE when you fill out your profile information you are able to choose a “Gamer Zone”. A Gamer Zone is how you choose to use your membership or how you play. Zones include “Pro”, “Recreation”, “Family” and “Underground”. Initially these were set up so players could game with other players in the same Zone… avoiding the overly aggressive pros or finding a gaming syndicate on the underground. The Gamer Zone is the first breakdown on the XBOX LIVE Social Community… by simply checking a players zone you are able to get an idea of how they play, why they play and what kind of games they play while online. This is a big step; knowing and understanding your market.
The more revealing way social media is involved with XBOX LIVE is the Reputation or “Rep System”. Beginning on day-one with the first game you play online you are being ranked. Initially your reputation starts out at 3 out of 5 stars, once you play online and with other people your stars can go up or down. Players are able to view other gamers profiles and depending on the time spent in-game with them, players are able to prefer or avoid them. This then positively or negatively effects your reputation… it’s a full social community at work!
When the system works the way it’s supposed to you’ll be able to avoid players you dislike (either due to skill or over the mic communications) and never have to play with them again. Think of those guys as the SPAM of XBOX LIVE, they’re not really there to help, they just wanna mess stuff up. Equally you will be able to play online with your close friends as well as gamers they have deemed worthy to play with. This opens up a whole new social circle for you online and allows your gamer experience to be even better.
So by using what you know in Social Media and how social communities operate online, how would you market yourself or services in this seemingly untouched resource?
If this letter is looking familiar, it’s not surprising. In addition to your web development and web design, it’s important to protect your domain. These letters go out every day and if your domain name is coming up for renewal, be ready to receive one of these.
