1 and 1 Internet

I regularly use two domain registration services, I started with 'GoDaddy' and have found them to be excellent, but when I discovered that they don't really do '.co.uk' domains, I had to find an alternative.
I have to say I have been very pleased with 1 and 1 for domain registration - they offer a cheap and comprehensive service with easy-to-use front panel which allows you to change settings such as DNS. They are also helpful when it comes to getting support.
However. the reason I am most impressed with them is they are turning into my most active affiliate. The payouts are relatively small, but come in quite regularly - I even had two notifications today! The reason they are successful for me as an affiliate (I believe) is that I think they actually provide a decent service - and they really do offer competitive prices. So many other affiliates I try to promote are not really competitive price-wise. They offer big incentives, but you can't really put your heart and soul into promoting them because you can't in all honesty say they offer great value.
So hand on heart, especially for UK domains, if you are looking to buy a domain name or looking for a comprehensive hosting or email package, try 1 and 1 (they are not limited to UK domains by any means, but that is the reason I started using them in the first place).

Domain Registration bonus

I had my first affiliate sale for 1and1 domain registration this week, quite a surprise because although I had done some work to promote this affiliate, I tend to have low expectations of affiliates as a rule.

Affiliates are tricky because often you know you are not promoting the best possible deal, but with 1and1 internet, they genuinely do offer a good competitive service and decent commission at the same time. I have yet to find out the details of the sale, but am pleased to report this small success with a view to having (hopefully) more in the future.

Affiliate sales are something I have only really dabbled with so far, but nonetheless I am aware that opportunities in this area are real and profitable if pursued properly. There is a recent article written on livewyre.NET, that gives a small insight into the world of affiliate marketing.

Cheap webhosts and domain registrars

During this month, I am going to be posting about the domain services I am using, this is mainly because I have just gone through a period of changing all my hosting around so that I am getting a better deal.
My new strategy is to treat domain registration and webhosting as separate things because webhosts (even though they sometimes offer one domain for free) are not usually the best people to offer cheap domain registration, and the best domain registrars do not offer the cheapest webhosting.
I have had a couple of UK hosting services because I started with UK domains, then discovered that the best service for registering gobal domain names (.com, .info etc...) is GoDaddy, the best service for registering UK domains is 1and1, and the best webhosting package is from Webhostingpad.
These individual companies offer the best value for money for those who aready have multiple domains, or are thinking of adding domains to their portfolio.
I have been able to save myself a lot of money by taking steps to ensure I have the best cost-effective solutions, and would encourage all my readers and friends to do the same. Click on the links above to find the individual posts about each company.

My new hosting plan

I am delighted with how my new hosting package is working out at the moment. I have managed to get an unlimited package which allows me to host as many sites as I like all for a single price. I can also add subdomains which makes it easy for testing sites before buying a domain name - I have even found that it is relatively easy to get a subdomain listed in Google results, so I can test out SEO techniques on my subdomains too. The whole package is administered via a Cpanel dashboard which gives me full control over domains and subdomains, MYSQL databases (also unlimited) and FTP and file handling.
[note the screen-shot showing a bandwidth of 100000MB, disk space of 10GB, and databases, suddomains and FTP accounts etc... all going up to infinity...!]
I was previously paying about £25 a year for site hosting (per site) I have moved two domains to my new package which will save me £50. The costs for my unlimited hosting package will not cost me anywhere near £50 a year, and I can just keep adding domains as I feel like it.
I am using 'livewyre.net' as my main domain, and have found it ridiculously simple to add sub-domains for site testing, I also plan to add domains for my friends who are only using the email part of their domains and have not constructed a website as yet. I am now contemplating extra domains to support the various projects that I am working on at the moment.
I wrote about the services that I use for hosting and domain registration on livewyre.net, if you want to find out how you can get a similar deal, visit the link above...or the banner below:

Domain registration

When you start your first website, it is quite natural that you will have a combined domain registration and webhosting package, especially as many hosts will include domain registration for free. As you develop your ideas and branch out and experiment with new sites, you quickly discover that this can be a very expensive way of operating.
My preferred method is to see domain registration and webhosting as two entirely separate services and buy them from different sources. I have written about the services that I use on this blog and on Livewyre.net - I created a new page all about the cheapest webhosting and domain registration packages (click on the link). Besides the unlimited webhosting package that I am now using, I also have two domain registration services that I use, GoDaddy for iinternational domains, and 1and1 for UK domains. If you are using UK domains, you could do yourself a favour by having your domains hosted by 1 and 1 - my .co.uk domains are costing just £2.99 a year!

The DOT COM experience

Having the Dot Com has concentrated my mind on trying to get the best I can out of this blog and consequently I have instigated some subtle design changes to reflect the new attitude I have towards the blog. If you choose to use your own domain within 'blogger' there is a warning that tells you that will need to be using a standard template. I must have made some changes to my header that did not conform to this standard template, and it took a lot of work to restore the header and it still isn't how I would want it - I have also noted that other 'edits' I have done to the template are now gone, so some 'fiddling' will be required. If I really want to take this any further and regain control over the blog, my next logical step would have to be to take the blog onto a wordpress platform.
To be honest I am not ready to move the whole platform, so I am going to tinker with the blogger site until I can get it as near to how I want it to be. If anyone else is thinking of going Dot Com, then I would urge you do do it now especially if you have dropped PR recently as I think this might be a good way of responding to the 'Google slap' and it's possible that the new domain might not attract the same negative response as the old one did.
With this in mind, it is pretty imperative that I spend some time 'weeding out' references to paid posts and sponsored posts and the like... so that this new domain has the best chance of being given a PageRank as possible. I am happy with the layout for now, so will concentrate on cleaning up the blog in an attempt to comply with new Google PR criteria as far as I can guess what it might be.
As far as the Go-Daddy hosting is concerned (thanks to the Hot Dog Man for the heads up on Go-Daddy), they offer a free holding page edit program and an advanced 'Website tonight' feature which is basically a free 5-page website hosting included with your domain - what a great way to start on the internet, a whole 5 page website for the cost of a domain - $7...
Having this feature has enabled me to make a page that redirects any visitors to 'http://munny4hunny.com' straight to 'http://WWW.munny4hunny.com' using a javascript redirect. NB. blogger doesn't allow you to point both versions of the URL at your blog and the received wisdom is that you should use the 'www' version on your blog and use a redirect on the version without the 'www'.
I now feel more inclined to post at least four or five times a week if not daily, and may even go as far as having regular features... all this fresh attitude inspired by having the dot com is the perfect antidote to losing the Pagerank - It's time to fight back....

Munny4Hunny goes DOT COM!

Finally I got around to buying a domain for this blog. We are now officially residing at www.munny4hunny.com. I have had the domain for a few days and I just got round to redirecting the DNS, and found it remarkably straightforward. What's more, I got the domain from Go Daddy for a little over $7 for a year - one step nearer pro-blogging for the price of a Starbucks...
The blogspot remains active for old visitors, but I hope to drive some new traffic and raise some new revenue with the 'dot com' status.
Thanks to Rachel for going ahead of me, blogger for the instructions and Glamumous for posting a great article to help those who are thinking about doing this.

domain or no domain?

I am aware that having a blog domain eg: www.myblog.com is preferable in terms of being taken seriously by readers and paid to post schemes alike, but having a free domain is central to my study of what can be earned via the web without investing a cent.
I have sites that I have considered using, and if I get to the point where I thought it was really possible to earn a decent second income (or even a primary income) from this type of activity I would certainly use a domain. So far this is an experiment, if I find that I can achieve PR4 and that I could make let's say a regular $500 a month, I might switch from the 'hobby' approach. Right now, my hosting on blogspot is free so I don't have to justify any investment.

So, how do you blog on your own domain? One easy option would be to enter your URL into the blogspot dashboard (settings/publishing/custom domain). The better option would be to go for a wordpress blog. Why use wordpress? There are a whole host of very nice free wordpress templates available to you to use. These templates are instantly recognisable as being the sort of template that pro-bloggers use, and can give your blog a bit of extra 'kudos'.
The templates have a nice 'clean' look and have a whole host of plug-ins available to customise your blog just the way you want it.
Although you can host a wordpress blog for free on their own domain, if you are going to combine it with your new domain, it would make sense to find a hosting service which already offers wordpress on their servers. Many hosting services do this, check the specifications of the service to see what options are available.
How to choose a domain name? Many people just use their own name which is fine if you are going to use that as a kind of brand name, alternatively an SEO-friendly option would be to use a name which contains keywords that you would like to use to bring visitors to your site from search engines. It is worth noting that SEO for blogs is only really important if you are intending to drive visitors from search engines. Personally I think social bookmarking and social sites are probably a better way to gain traffic.
(more on this later...)