HostEntrepreneur

A successful web site or blog is always made meaningful by its domain name. The web address that you choose must suit the theme and tenor of the web site or blog. Make sure that your name matches the subject of the web site or blog. Almost all well-known web portals have a domain name that is short, easy to remember and type into the address window of the browser. You should understand the system by which a domain works and performs. An effective name is always catchy with a definite theme and subject. Your visitors will feel that the domain name of your web site is quite powerful as it can evoke very strong connections with something that is special to the web user.

As far as possible, use main keywords that connect to the theme and topic of your web portal. You may wish to avoid hyphens and underscores as they can confuse and mislead your site visitors. Complicated web domains are those that are very difficult to type and remember. Extra symbols and strange characters can put off web users.

Choosing a very meaningful and practical domain name is actually very simple and straightforward. You need to sit down and think over all possible combinations of good keywords and their phrases. If you want to choose a good name, you can start with a comprehensive list of prospective names and shortlist the best ones among them. When you create a list of good names, the next step is to check whether they are available for registration. To conduct this important search, you will need to use an online tool that tells you about the availability of names.

Domain ownership identification tool is a very simple utility where you will find out who is the owner of the domain is and whether the name of your choice is available or not. This tool provides you the complete details of domain ownership including the date of expiry. Choosing a domain name is a trial and error exercise most of the good domains are already in use and you may need to work hard to create a good name. Domain name tools provide you a number of alternatives when the name of your choice is not available. You can pick the one from the list that best represents your theme and business idea.

If there is a domain name available for purchase, you can pounce on it and buy before someone does it. Domain name industry is a highly competitive industry and you never know when someone is going to buy your domain name ideas. While searching for a domain name think of all possible keyword phrases and wordings because most web users have their way of choosing products or services. Keywords play an important role while searching for domains by using domain name ownership online tool. If you do not find the domain name of your choice, you can always sift through the alternative list to choose the best one. Most of the online tools are efficient in providing a listing of most probable choices that eventually allow you to find a domain name that best represents your business theme, topic, style and tenor. Another emerging trend is to buy expired domain names from registrars. You will need to be very careful while buying an expired domain because the name that you wish to buy may have a shady past. However, expired domain market is a very good place to find those domain names that are not available in the fresh domain name market.

The general rule of thumb is to buy a domain name immediately when it is available in a domain ownership tool. It is always better to buy the domain name of your choice even if you are not creating your web site right now. Never ever, allow someone to buy your domain name. You may regret your decision of not buying your domain name when it was available.

John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web site called www.expireddomaingain.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

Straight from the horse’s mouth…

 

What: V7Network RoundTable
Where: http://www.v7n.com/chat/
When: Wednesday Oct 7 at 1:00 pm and an encore session at 7:00PM CDT
Discussion: How to identify problem areas on your web site.
Cost: FREE to all V7N members.

Win A Free Listing In The V7N Directory For Attending Our First RoundTable Live Chat!
 

 

 
“If at first you don’t succeed; call it version 1.0″
 
As many of you already know, our first attempt with this service crashed down around our feet when we experienced unforeseen technical difficulties. Those issues (knock on wood) have now been corrected and we are ready to get to hit the ground running offering V7Network RoundTable live training chats to the community. To thank you for your patience, we’ll be giving every person that attends a discount coupon for the V7N Directory! And two lucky winners will get free directory listings!
 
These will be structured interactive text chats covering a wide range of topics for webmasters and small business owners, focused 100% on helping our members build a highly successful online presence. At this time, our plan is to offer this training 2-4 times a month based on the response from the community.
 
The next live training chat is scheduled for October 7, 2009 at 1:00 pm CDT. We will be discussing ways to evaluate your site (and the tools that I personally use) to determine what types of changes you may need to consider making in terms of SEO and marketing techniques. Afterward, we will be opening things up for questions and answers. We will repeat the session that night at 7:00 pm CDT.
 
If what you are currently doing is working, please do not consider changing a single thing. In fact, you probably don’t need this type of training. If however you find yourself not getting the results that you have hoped for, then perhaps it is time to think about sitting down and spending some time with us at the V7Network RoundTable and see if maybe we can brainstorm through some ideas for you!
 
We will open the chat area approximately 30 minutes prior to the start of the training session. If you are not already logged in, you will need to log in using your V7N user name and password. I expect the training session to last 1-2 hours, based on the number of member questions.
 
 
 Please let us know if you will be able to attend!

The other day I blogged about tynt.com’s tracer program and how to stop it from annoying you while browsing. The idea behind it makes sense to a lot of web publishers. You don’t want people ripping off your content. But the post the other day pointed out how easy it is to get around these measures.

Google has a feature called Google Alerts, http://www.google.com/alerts, which lets you find content and emails it to you. I strongly recommend that you set up alerts for your domain name, and company name at a minimum, and get them emailed to you as they happen. This lets you keep on top of what people are saying about your company.

It would be trivial to include a fairly unique phrase into pages you are wanting to try to protect. Then setup an alert for that phrase and have Google email you. Sure you may get some false positives, but provided the phrase is unique enough, it should be few and far between. Remember to use double quotes, like “this is my phrase” so that google doesn’t match “this website is not the same as my website, even though it has the same words as my phrase“. See how all the words are there, but it’s not the phrase.  And it could miss a copied page if they did enough editing on the copied content. But since these people are basically lazy, they won’t edit the page much if at all. So it should catch the majority of them.  Catching the others probably won’t happen with the other “solutions” either if they’re modifying the content that much.

I’ve been watching the forums for a product we’re interested in… the next version is supposed to include a feature we’d have to have to be able to use the product. So I’ve been checking back pretty frequently to see when the next release occurs.  But here’s the problem… on the 2 main computers I use (home and office), both anti-virus programs consider a javascript file from tynt.com as “malicious”. I’m not really positive it is, but the fact that every page I go to in the forum pops up a warning, both claiming the code is “high risk”.

Tynt if you’re not familiar with it watches for people copying your content to another site. While in theory, this isn’t a bad thing. I trust the 2 a/v program manufacturer’s to judge safe vs. not, more than what a company is claiming they are doing (or not doing). So I’m not willing to make an exception in the a/v program for this site. This means my options are 1) stop going there – which is an option. There are alternatives to the product, and if they are unwilling to listen to the (potential) users, do I want the product? I have to wonder what’s “measures” it contains as well.  Or 2) I have to find a way to stop the annoying pop up without endangering my pc.

So here’s how to do option number 2 in this case. Since this javascript it being pulled as a linked file, it’s a normal http get request. All we need to do is get rid of the ability to resolve the hostname for it. In this case the host is wau.tynt.com   This is an XP machine so I go to c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc  and edit the file named “hosts”, adding the line:

127.0.0.1  wau.tynt.com 

Save the file then from the command line, ping wau.tynt.com   and the address should come back as 127.0.0.1  which should ping fine as it’s the local loopback address. But any request for the file shouldn’t work, unless you happen to have a web server running on your local machine and it happens to have that file in that directory which would just plain be wierd.

Now to get the browser to pick up the change, close ALL of your browser windows and reopen them. If you typed the url into the browser window, you should get an error message that the page is not displayable.  You should now be able to surf without the annoying popup.

For Windows Vista and Win7, the fix is basically the same, but there is a gotcha on it. You won’t be able to edit the file directly as the directory is protected. You will need to copy the hosts file outside of the system tree, to say your Documents folder, edit the file and then copy it back.  When you copy it back, it’s going to complain, and ask you if you really want to do this. Since you are really meaning to change the file, it’s ok in this case. Normally, unless you’re specifically meaning to make a change to Windows like this, you’d want to say ‘No’.

There is another way to do this was well… Turn off scripting in the browser. This has an unfortunate side effect of stopping some features of some sites as well. The above is easy, and works fine, so that’s my choice (until I hear back on their thoughts about the reasoning behind using tynt anyway).

Considering how easy this is to get around, it’s really not protecting much. And it’s a major inconvenience to the users (not to mention how it looks to them)… And finding your content isn’t hard… embed your domain name, name phrase, etc. in the content portion. Then use Google’s Alert feature, http://www.google.com/alerts, to find it. I’d think twice before using it.

One of the best services I’ve found for finding expired domains that are cheap is http://freshdrop.net. This one site lets you search several domain dropping services at the same time and sort them based on all kinds of criteria. The only “issue” with it is that it provides so much information that it can be overwhelming. But there are a couple to pay particular attention to… The PR column is just that, Google’s pagerank. But notice the column next to it, “Fake”. This flags domains that may have suspicious pageranking going on. Realize though that once Google sees the site change, it’s likely to redo the PR anyway.

Next look at the ‘age’. Since you’ll pick up these domains on their way out, the age stays with it. It’s one way to make a site appear older than it really is… but that leads to some ethical questions that this isn’t the place to discuss.

Move on the GR and GRN – these are Google search results for the domain with and without the extension respectively. Related to those is GIDX which is the number pages in Google’s index for the domain. GBL will give you the number of backlinks on other domains pointing to that domain.

Similar to all the Google colums, there are columns for Yahoo, Altavista, Ovation, etc. And over on the right there is a very complete search filter section.  You can filter of TLD (TLD is the top level domain – com, net, org, etc. or a country like .us, .ca, etc.) as well as looking for domains with certain terms in them, or excluding, or with based on any of the columns listed. And you can do compound searches: .COMs containing “host”, excluding “adult”, with 10 to 500 Google backlinks, for example. It’s really quite powerful.

The price you see listed is on top of the regular annual registration fee, but considering they have many that start at $5 it’s quite reasonable compared to some services.

If you’re a webhost and have less than 10 employees, you may be eligible for Microsoft’s WebsiteSpark Program, http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/. If you’ve been in the hosting business a long time, you might remember Microsoft’s Certified Hosting Partner’s program, where MS provided some support and leads for customers. This one appears to be the new incarnation of that program. 

You get software:  Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (or R2 if available) Web Edition plus SQL Server 2008Web Edition… so you’ll actually be in license compliance, something I bet most small Windows hosts are not. You also get Visual Studio Pro, Expression Studio 2 (or 3) or Expression Web 2 (or 3) to design and develop websites. 

Plus you get Support and Training from Microsoft and the network partners, and best of all, sometime in the future you’ll get “Visibility & Opportunities” – meaning probably a directory or providers and sales leads.

You can be in the program for up to 3 years, but one thing to note,  a $100 fee is due at exit. So it’s not totally free, but pretty dang close.

.. Or why you should pay attention to your use of grammar, style, and punctuation in your  correspondence.

I’m often amazed how some will complain about not being taken seriously or referred to as a “kiddie host”, those hosts stated typically by teenagers that get into hosting thinking they’ll make millions sitting at their desk while doing homework. There are some great hosts started by young people, HotGator was started while Brent Oxley was in college. He dropped out and went to work full time for his company. So, yes, even ”kiddie hosts” can be taken seriously and make a success of it.

I suspect that part of the problem is they manner in which younger folks will communicate in their day to day business dealings.  If I was looking for a provider and started a chat session, and got something along the lines of “How r u?”, I would say that it would be hard for the company to regain the trust that they were a serious host that they just lost.  You may be thinking that it’s “not fair”, or “shouldn’t matter”, but the fact is that it does. There’s no face, no intonation in the voice, no firm handshake so to speak with purely internet based dealings. So any little reason is brought to the forefront.  In this case, if they’re too lazy to type 4 extra keys, one begins to wonder what else are they too lazy to do?

You may not agree with this thinking, and that’s fine. However, others are going to judge you and your company based on your writings in chat, forums, company website, and emails. So you need to adjust your thinking and take the time, and care, to represent yourself and company in a professional manner if you are wanting your new hosting business seriously. I’m not saying you have to be a “grammar nazi”, there’s no need for that. Minor mispellings, slightly off grammar, and some incorrect capitalization isn’t going to have the same effect as using “u” instead of you, “r” for are, or a sentence in an ad like “hi come try our services we r the bestest in world we beat all pricez wit unlimited space and traffic we hav l33t h0st1n t00″. That would be fine on some forums, perhaps some frequented by the apparently intended market, but on the more respected forums such a WebHostingTalk, that ad just isn’t going to fly.

The Visa Busines Network,  , is on Facebook… and for a limited time they are giving away $100 Facebook ad credits just for signing up! It’s a simple 3 step process.

1. Signup with a simple basic info form – name, email, create a password, etc. and click the link in the email to confirm the account
2. Request an ad credit… It’s 1 click! And they email you a coupon link.
3. Redeem the credit by clicking the link in the email and creating your ad and facebook account (if you don’t have one already).

A credit card will be required to sign up for the ad program, but does not have to be Visa (I tried a MasterCard just to check). The credit is instantly applied to… Just remember to shutdown the ad after the credit runs out to not get charged. And set a daily limit in case you forget. But don’t forget – go set a google calendar reminder or something. BTW, ads can be per click or per impression.

Get started here:  http://www.visabusinessnetwork.com/    You should see the ad on the first page there… if not use this link:  http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness/adcredit/step1

I know you’ve worked hard to get your Google positioning where you’d like, or are in the process of attempting to do so… time to start re-doing it. Google has announced “caffeine” their new search engine technology. You can play with caffeine at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/  and there’s a cool tool that let’s you compare the existing results to the new engine’s results at http://www.comparecaffeine.com/

Google’s Matt Cutts had this to say

“The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

Part of the revision is said to address the growing implications of social networks on search results. Supposedly it is also faster. Come claim twice as fast. I personally never really had an issue with Google’s speed. I suspect speed matters more to Google themselves as more efficient typically means less hardware required. Less hardware means less expense in capital as well as operation, administration, etc. down the line. That means more money is Google’s pockets. So I could see how they would want that…

On this installment of “Step 1a – Write a Business Plan”, we’re going to look at what a Business Plan is exactly… I’m sure everyone has heard of one, but how many of us have written one before. I’m sure there’s a few of us, but I bet the vast majority of people looking to get into webhosting for the first time are starting it as a side business. They have probably never written one before, and many probably have never seen one either.

So here’s an overview of the parts of a Business Plan.

• Executive Summary -  THE most important part of the plan. Who you are, what you do, and where you are and where you are going at a high level overview written in everyday terms.
• Market Analysis - A description of the industry including size and target market, growth rates, etc.
• Company Description -Another high level description but in more detail than the executive summary, this time specifically about your business and what needs you’re going to meet, and who the target is for those needs.
• Organization & Management – Profiles of the key players in your organization and the roles they will be taking on. Also should detail the overall structure and how those players fit together.
• Marketing & Sales Management – Descriptions of sales force, management, and how they will go about getting business.
• Service or Product Line -What you will be selling and how you will distinguish yourself product/service-wise.
• Funding -  Regardless of if you are requesting funding, this is where you will say how much you need and/or have, and for what it will be used for…
• Financials – Historical and Prospective financial data. One of the later sections to complete.
• Appendix – All the extra stuff that will be needed based on what you’re going to do with the plan. For example, if you are requesting money from a bank, etc., they will want credit information and resume’s on key management.

Today’s was only an overview of what each section encompasses. Begin to read over them and start thinking about each section, and start making notes or outlines for each section.  Next week, we’ll start going into each section one by one and get down and dirty with it.

Last Week: http://hostentrepreneur.com/2009/08/13/step-1a-write-a-business-plan-part-1/
Next Week:  Coming soon…