I use GoDaddy to register all of my domains. I’ve been using them for 5+ years, and I’ve been happy with them. I’m well aware of the horror stories out there, but thankfully I never saw that side of them.

A couple of years ago, I received a free domain – I believe it was through a Buy.com promotion or something. In any event, they forced you to register the domain through a different registrar. No biggie. I filled out the info, got my domain, pointed the nameserver to my server, and all was good in the world.

After my free year was up, I got an e-mail that it was time to renew, and I paid for another year with them. I was planning on moving the domain over to GoDaddy, but I guess when it’s time for renewal, they won’t let you do that. I got caught up in a number of different projects, and didn’t pay much attention to this site for awhile.

In November, I tried accessing the site, and it wasn’t coming up. After checking everything, I came to find out that my domain had expired, and I never got a renewal notice! The company claims that they sent it out and I never responded. I don’t think so! GoDaddy will send 4 or 5 reminders, as early as 90 days before renewal, and even after a domain has lapsed and is still in the redemption period!

This company never sent me a single e-mail! Then, to add insult to injury, they offered to sell my domain back to me, for $150! (Or I could bid on it through their auction service, with a minimum bid of $75) I cursed out the rep, and hung up.

Fast-forward to April, and on a whim I decided to see if my domain was available through GoDaddy. And guess what? It was! 5 minutes and $7 later, I’m back in business..

Now to properly build out this site, so I can turn around and sell it for some big money.

You’re pretty web savvy. You’ve been on the Internet since 1994. You were using Altavista when everyone else was using Webcrawler and Lycos. Sound familiar?

We spend most of our days on the Internet, and as such we’ve become pretty adept at finding stuff through the search engines. But we forget that the vast majority of web users are novices, and the way they use search engines is WAY different than the way we use ‘em.

Case in point: I was using my wife’s computer the other day, as I wanted to see how my website would look in 800×600 in IE6. (I run 1680×1024 on IE7 and Firefox 3, a vastly different animal) As I was putzing around her computer, I saw a few of her recent Google searches in her Google Toolbar. It was crazy!

Her searching habits left me dumbfounded.. Typing in entire questions into the search box, putting the name of the website (eg. weather.com) into the search box instead of typing it in the address bar, spelling mistakes, etc. It was a real eye-opener, as I saw a ton of ways I could target searchers that I was previously overlooking.

Just because I search one way, it doesn’t mean the rest of the Internet does it the same way! I use Google, but I get plenty of orders from people who are still on AOL. AOL?!

Start thinking like your customer, and expand your marketing with those users in mind.. The results might just surprise you!

It’s tempting. A company offers you tons of money, but at what cost?

Tom made a boatload of money selling MySpace to News Corp, but now it’s turned to shit!

John Chow has become MarketLeverage’s bitch. ‘Nuff said.

Tyler Cruz let greed take over. His blog barely gets updated anymore – But why should he care, he’s making tons of money through his contests, from his referral commissions!

I’m all for capitalism. But don’t lose control of your identity in search of the mighty dollar. Plenty of people have found a happy balance.

A few years ago, search engine forums were buzzing about a series of Google patents that threatened the work of SEOs around the world. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) was supposed to change the landscape of SEO by distinguising the theme of a website, and discounting links on those sites that don’t fit with the theme.

In short, if a sports betting company bought links from a PR6 site that dealt with weight loss, those links would hold no value to Google. (And could possibly harm you!)

No one knew WHEN LSI would take effect, but you didn’t want to get caught when it happened. So people started pulling their non-relevant links, and started advertising on sites within their niche.

Now here’s the kicker. According to Leslie Rohde (of StomperNet), LSI never happened! It’s something I wondered about for awhile now.. I often see a site end up in the #1 spot on Google, yet their backlinks are all sitewides from websites that have NOTHING to do with their particular niche.

In fact, I even reported one such blatent manipulation to Google – Yet 6+ months later, that site is still dominating the rankings with those same sitewide links!

Leslie instead encourages you to focus on what he calls “Referential Integrity”.. Some SEOs might consider this the same as pagerank sculpting, siloing, etc. But the focus is on building links to other pages within your site, and being conscious of the anchor text you use to link to these other pages. It’ll help Google better understand the topic of those pages, and help you rank better for your keywords.

Use this information at your own risk. I plan on purchasing some low-cost non-relevant links from other sites, and will conduct my own experiments on some dormant domains I have lying around. It should be interesting to see how it works!

In these economic times, money is tight. Car dealers understand this, and are giving buying incentives like never before! Home prices have dropped significantly, and yet as a buyer you can still negotiate prices down even further. Why don’t the same rules apply online? Maybe it’s because you didn’t ask!

Recently, one of our VIP customers called me. He had already found the item he was looking for on our website, but he wanted to see if I could give him a better price. Given the amount of business he’s given us over the years, I didn’t even hesitate. I gave him $50 off, and threw in overnight shipping at no extra charge.

I locked in a profitable sale, and he’s getting a deal. Everybody wins.

On the flip side – I have a web development project that needs to be done. My regular guy is already committed to another job, so I searched around and found a team that met my needs. Their initial quote was much higher than I expected. But through a series of negotiations over the next few days, we finally agreed on a price that was fair for everyone.

I could have found a cheaper solution, but I may not have gotten the quality that I wanted. Negotiating got me what I wanted, at a price I was comfortable with.

Everyone wins!

When I got sick in the “real world”, I’d just use a sick day and call out of work. But when you work for yourself, it’s harder to deal with. I got sick over the weekend, and I’ve been struggling ever since. And now my wife is sick, just as I’m getting over my cold. Hopefully she won’t reinfect me.