Posts Tagged ‘domain names’
Within 48 hours of having posted “Frak GoDaddy: How to Win Enemies and Irritate People“, GoDaddy rep, GoDaddy Guy, who vigilantly monitors and responds to blogs and social media has posted a response to the points I raised. But is that enough to clarify and remedy the issues I faced?
I appreciate any company who’s taking efforts to monitor their brand on the busy social web landscape and craft replies explaining the situation. Obviously, customers like myself may not be aware of everything that takes place behind the scene.
As a customer, have I felt I have been taken care of?
GoDaddyGuy says:
We understand that domain names are unique and can therefore be highly valuable to our customers. To prevent customers from unintentionally losing a domain name, we reach out by email several times, starting 90 days before and continuing past expiration.
–
Obviously, if I have been receiving email reminders that my domain is expiring and I don’t do anything about it. Then I whine and complain after the fact, I’ve obviously no case.
Here’s a screencapture of GoDaddy emails I’ve received:
Since 15 May 2009, I’ve received 21 emails from GoDaddy, announcing “Last Minute Deals”, “Spring Closeouts” and “Mid-Year Blowouts”. While it has been tempting to get a “closeout” or “blowout” before the [sarcasm]supply of domains runs out[/sarcasm], I’m hard-pressed to find out “email outreach several times” before and after my domain has expired.
I took the effort to read the emails back to July (before I had to give up on reading all this wonderful promotional email…), but nary a reference to expiring domains could I find.
GoDaddy guy’s other point:
Finally, we provide the registrant some time to take care of his or her account by allowing a 19 day grace period to renew without penalty.
I logged into my account about a week after it expired, well within the “19 day grace period” to renew without penalty, and was slapped with the ridiculous $80 registry recovery fee. Grace period? What grace period.
–
Just in case you think I’m unnecessarily bashing on GoDaddy, consider its illustrious competitor, Namecheap.
Here’s a list of emails (more…)
Talk to any marketer and chances are that they’ll have a stash of domain names for projects that may likely never materialize. Talk to the enthusiastic ones and they might have a couple of hundred domains registered at their domain name registrar.
I’ve just renewed another 7 of my current ones for another year at Namecheap, using the coupon code GOLDDEAL (good for renewals if you have more than 50 domains) which saves you a little under $1 in registration costs.
And I’ve picked up a new one using the Namecheap December 2008 coupon code THREEKINGS, saving about $1 too.
(If you’re looking for great value webhosting, check out Bluehost, which was my first shared webhosting account and I still keep it around, even though I have a dedicated server now).
The next step is to start planning and scheduling time for doing something with the domains. A couple of the partners I’m working with are going into a consolidation phase and weeding down the number of projects each person is working on – no more than 2 major projects – which will go a long way to maintain focus. It’s a great idea in my opinion.
I like to manage my risks by spreading my domains across multiple registrars.
My favorite domain registrar remains Namecheap. (see latest Namecheap discount code)
Although I have a couple over at GoDaddy. The latest discount code for domain renewals (working as of 2nd May 2008) is “ZINE3“. (Cuts 1 year renewal fee from $9.95 to $6.95, before taxes).
What I don’t quite like about GoDaddy is that the admin panel is somewhat clunky, it takes a while to refresh it’s settings.
Having said that, having all your domains at one registrar is probably a worse outcome – and I’d say that NameCheap and GoDaddy would be my picks among the hundreds of domain registrars and sub-registrars out there.
–
On the Web Hosting front, I’d suggest newer webmasters take up a shared webhosting account (This blog ran on a shared webhost for about 2 years) – and you can expect up to 500 websites to share a single server.
My preferred choice remains BlueHost.
I’ll have a future post on higher grade webhosting accounts like: premium shared webhosting, VPS/VDS (virtual private/virtual dedicated servers) and dedicated servers.
If you’re like me, you’re registering domain names all the time. Except for a couple of domains that are scattered at GoDaddy and another domain name registrar (who’s service is less than spectacular, so I’m going to pass on naming them), I have all my domains at Namecheap.
The discount code/coupon code for Namecheap for January is: WINTERFEVER
The code will cut your registration cost from $9.29 to $8.41.
It won’t make or break the bank for most affiliate marketers out there, but if you save a couple of hundred dollars, that translates into a couple hundred more clicks for you to do testing.
As the new year starts up, I’m hitting the ground running with a new campaign and got a bunch of domains yesterday.
If you’re new at this, here’re a couple of domain strategies to think about:
- Domain names can be split tested like anything else. At $8-10 a pop, they don’t require as much effort as some of the other variables you might test. Split testing two similar domain names might mean the difference between a 1% and a 5% clickthrough rate (which is huge).
- Go for a benefit-laden domain as these get visitors intrigued, curious and ultimately, motivated to click. Marketing guru Dan Kennedy had to come up with the product name for a new insect killer, his choice “Kills Bugs Dead”. The result? Sales went through the roof…Nuff said.
- Adverbs in your domain name need to be in line with the mindset of your prospects. If you’re selling a high ticket item, you’d want to avoid “free”, “cheap” or “discount” and look at “Quality” or “Best” instead.
- Go for a 1-year registration and if it’s a winner, you can renew it next year. Even if a “2 year registration costs just $1 more”, you’ll probably want to do more tweaking before settling on a domain. I prefer having a whole bunch of 1-year domains to test with.
If you need a hosting account to go with your domains, look for webhosting providers which host a large number of domains. In some cases the hosting account will host an unlimited number of domains.
You might like to check out:
–> Hostmonster
–> Bluehost (slightly higher grade)
They’re both brands/corporate entities owned by the CEO Matt Heaton and are based in Orem, Utah.
I was looking through the comments for the previous post, and Char gave an example of her permalink structure, citing “domainname (dot) com / postname”.
For the record, domainname (dot) com is an actual domain. And it has a decent PR6, Alexa 153,000.
Imagine 500 bloggers or content publishers citing that example and reproducing the link on their site every month…
That would add up to a significant number of backlinks would it?
And by extension, you can leverage on your Google PR by pointing at your other domains, or selling text or banner links through PlanetAndrea’s banner/text brokering services.
Sounds compelling, doesn’t it?
