I can’t really say anything other than we’re all fucked. Goodbye democracy. Goodbye freedom.

Did I mention we’re all fucked?

Whilst I realise that this is entirely my own fault for not reading the contract I entered into before registering domains I can’t help but think this practice is slightly dubious. How many other registrars set domains on auto renewal?

I’ve since tried to cancel the contract (after I received another email saying that I’d be charged again in 40 days for domains I haven’t used in 2 years) but I’m getting nowhere. I initated the cancellation process through the 1and1 contracts control panel and the system said that I’d receive an email with a confirmation link that would make the cancellation final. 4 days later - and I’m still waiting. I’ve since contacted the 1and1.co.uk and they’ve been largely unhelpful, recommending that I contact a different department.

It’s been a frustrating experience and I won’t be using 1and1.co.uk again. In future I’ll be more careful and actually read the terms and conditions before registering domains. Or I might just stick with companies that I know and trust.

The key now is to continue to update the website regularly. Failing that you might want to target more SEO keywords on each of your pages to generate additional traffic to your website. You can use a tool like the Wordtracker Free Keywords facility for such a purpose. By targetting additional SEO terms you are likely to encourage more unique visitors to your website and subsequently increase the chances that someone will link to your site.

Just because you have not updated a website in a while is not an excuse to leave it to die. In fact during the period of inactivity the site may have gained additional link authority from the search engines. On the flip side, other sites may have started removing their links to your site. If this is the case you can simply emailing the site owners and inform them that your pages are back on the internet.

I’ve found this is useful for acquiring names of people who are currently in the news. The problem with registering these names is that a lot of people are in the news for a week and then are never heard of again! Through this site I’ve only found one domain name of value and that’s Justin Tuck.com, who is a footballer in the NFL. The crap thing is I might run into issues with copyright or intellectual property rights.

If you land a popular persons name, it’s probably best to develop a fansite dedicated to that person on it. Having the .com domain will definitely add value to the site.

Popurls

This site is an aggregation of most of the popular technology blogs on the Internet. It’s great for finding generic technology names but again you have to careful to avoid registering trademarked domain names. If you keep seeing a new technology popping up such as UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC’s) it’s worth digging deeper for shorter, long tail keywords. For example run a query at Wordtracker Free Keywords for UMPC and see what comes up.

As I speak on the 1st of February umpcmediaextender.com is available. Even though the term only has 14 daily searches, this volume is likely to increase, especially if UMPC’s continue to grow in popularity. You should check to see if this is currently the case over on Google Trends.

It seems as though UMPC as a search term isn’t growing that much, so umpcmediaextender.com probably wouldn’t be worth registering.  Although you never know!

The crap thing is that most of the popular generic search phrases are registered by the big fish. They normally have access to software that uses the Wordtracker API to reel in most popular names. Notice how I say MOST.  By thinking outside the box you can easily land yourself some hot generics.

It’s just about persistance and having a positive attitude !

If I read another article about how to write “the perfect title” I’ll cry. Honestly.

Fuck me.

For example I built Jesus Illusion during the summer of 2007 for seemingly no reason at all. My initial intention was to monetize it through Adsense, but due to the risque nature of the content I was unable to do so. In the end, I’m left with a site that’s basically worthless and I’ve no real intention of updating it.

So from now on I’m gonna put a bit more thought into planning the site’s purpose before even registering a domain. I feel quite ashamed at the amount of money I’ve wasted by buying silly names. At one point it was almost an addiction! Nowadays I’m much more restrained. I’ve went full circle and become very conservative about business as the negatives have been outweighing the positives. I’m determined to keep at it though and to maybe even try to post here again a wee bit more regularly!

I’m gonna let all of these domains expire…….Tragic.

I’ve really missed blogging to be honest. I’ve missed all of this stuff! I’ve just been so busy with college it’s unreal!

Anyway registering them proved to be a great waste of money. I didn’t have an end user in mind for any of the names which is why I didn’t sell any of them (except json.info). Nowadays I’m a lot more conservative with domaining. I only buy names after thinking about what I’m gonna do with it for a while.

But yeah, I should have invested that $2000 into my sites. I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way. But now I’ve moved on and I’m ready to do it right this time.

Before making any investments on the web it’s important to sit down and consider the alternatives. It isn’t wise to use all of your money to finance one idea (unless it’s a really good one of course).  Nor is it smart to buy the first website you see. You need to develop a plan for that website before you make an offer. If you can’t imagine what you’ll do with it then it likely has no future in your hands and you should look elsewhere. The same thing applies with domain names. There’s no use in thinking that a name is good unless there is a potential buyer.

Things are going pretty well at the minute although I’m spending a lot of my time on final year uni work. I’m actually enjoying this year so far. It’s been cool.

I’m gonna move this blog over soon to the new server in a minute so comments will be disabled until then. Although this place is something of a ghostown since I haven’t updated regularly in about 60,000,000 years.