Domain Name Wire » Domain Services

TRAFFIC sets dates for Las Vegas show

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:07:31 +0000

It’s a year away, but dates are finalized.

For a while there were too many domainer-targeted domain conferences. Then the pendulum swung the other way.

TRAFFIC is adding an additional show in 2013, and today it announced the final dates. The show will begin Wednesday, May 29th in the evening. It will conclude with breakfast on Saturday, June 1 2013.

The event was originally planned to start earlier in the week, but organizers received concerns about its proximity to Memorial Day.

TRAFFIC Las Vegas will take place at the Bellagio.

Show organizers Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu also announced that they “expect to be there for both 2013 and 2014″ as well.

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Why I switched to GoDaddy hosting

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:12:44 +0000

Domain Name Wire is now hosted by GoDaddy.com

A couple weeks ago I changed web hosts to GoDaddy.com. Several people have asked why I decided to change hosts in the first place and why I chose GoDaddy.

Why I changed hosts

When I started Domain Name Wire I hosted it with the same host I’d been using for my other sites for 5 years. I’m not going to mention the host by name because they’ve really been pretty good to me for the better part of a decade. It’s a small company and I still host a number of sites with them.

For the most part my host grew with the site. When traffic levels increased I moved to a dedicated server. And it worked, most of the time.

But that changed over the past year. More and more often, whenever I’d get a spike in traffic my site would slow to a crawl or stop altogether. It’s painful to miss out on traffic like that.

Worse, the company didn’t offer any phone support. Its chat support was limited as well and only offered for part of the day. That’s to be expected with an inexpensive host, but remember that I was on a dedicated server.

I put off moving Domain Name Wire over the years because I knew it would be a pain. But after my most recent site outage I knew it was time to make a move.

My criteria

1. 24/7 phone support

2. Redundancy/cloud solution in case one server had a problem

3. Systems that will help load DNW quickly

3. Cost was not a concern – I’m willing to pay what it takes for peace of mind.

Decision

I was originally leaning toward WPEngine. It’s based here in Austin and has financial backing from the creators of WordPress. All they do is host WordPress sites. The monthly fee for my site would be $99, which isn’t bad. They also have a number of built in mechanisms for speeding up WordPress sites. One thing that’s missing is 24/7 phone support.

GoDaddy wasn’t on my original list. But the more I thought about it the more it made sense. They’re big and have a good infrastructure. They call their shared plans 4GH, which basically means your site is replicated across multiple servers in case one goes down. (The idea of hosting a site like this on a dedicated server doesn’t make sense any more.) They have 24/7 support. I also have a dedicated account manager for my domains. So if something goes wrong, I know I can reach someone who will help.

Honestly, the only reason I found to not go with GoDaddy was price. It’s too low. I generally wouldn’t feel comfortable trusting my site to a $10/month hosting plan.

Making the switch

I’m going to be honest: switching hosts is a big pain. There are some solutions out there that apparently make porting WordPress easier. But we’re talking about over 5,000 posts, 3,500 files (images, pdfs, etc), and lots of database tables. It’s not something to do except out of necessity.

I use WordPress’s own solution for backups, VaultPress, which made it a little be easier. Unfortunately VaultPress does not yet help you port from one host to another (they say they’re working on it), but I was able to transfer the site using a VaultPress backup.

Then there’s the nameserver switch and the time it takes that to resolve across the internet. That resulted in about 24 hours of “dead” time in which the site loaded fine but I didn’t want to post.

Results

I’m not going to pass judgment on GoDaddy hosting after just a couple weeks. But so far, so good. The site loads faster than on my previous host, and that’s without making any changes. And I know that if I do need support, it will be easy to contact someone at the company.

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Oversee.net hires GM for $40M+ travel vertical

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:36:24 +0000

Oversee.net hires GM from online travel industry to run its travel network.

Oversee.net has hired Raj Beri as General Manager of its travel vertical, the company announced today. Beri was previously Director and COO of IgoUgo, a travel site owned by Travelocity.

The travel vertical is part of Oversee.net’s “vertical markets” business that includes fully developed web sites. Oversee.net is best known to domainers for its DomainSponsor domain parking service.

Oversee.net’s travel properties include LowFares.com, FareSpotter.net, AboutAirportParking.com and AirportParking.com. These are big sites; LowFares.com has a US Quantcast rank of 1,492 and FareSpotter.net is ranked 2,973.

So just how big is Oversee.net’s travel vertical? According to Beri’s LinkedIn profile, it’s a $40MM+ business.

Other vertical markets at Oversee.net include consumer finance (CreditCards.org, IdentityTheft.com) and shopping (ShopWiki.com).

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Review: Twitter self service advertising tool

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:54:44 +0000

A great way to boost your social presence, but light on analytics.

I have a confession to make: I’ve been buying Twitter followers. 87 of them to date.

It all started when I saw a promotional tweet from American Express offering $100 in Twitter advertising credits to small business owners that wanted to try out Twitter’s new self-serve tool. Never one to turn down free advertising, I followed Amex and responded to the offer.

Twitter’s self serve advertising tool offers two ways to boost your social presence: Promoted Accounts (pay-per-follower) and Promoted Tweets (pay-per-click).

With Promoted Accounts, Twitter features your account under the “Who to Follow” section. You pay each time someone follows you, but only if they follow you because you showed up as a Promoted Account.

Here’s how Twitter support described it to me:

You are only charged when someone clicks the Follow button from the Ad itself. Your Promoted Account will appear in the ‘Who to Follow’ section, and if someone follows you from this location, you will be charged.

If a user finds you by other means, or if your account is displayed in ‘Who to Follow’, but not as an Ad, you won’t be charged for Follows.

I guess the big question is if Twitter highlights you as a promoted account in “Who to Follow” when your account would have shown up anyway. That would mean you’re paying for followers you could have gotten anyway.

Stats are quite limited, too. You can’t see which followers were paid versus free. You can’t change the date range of your stats, either. Basically, this is what you get:

At a minimum of 50 cents per follower, Promoted Accounts makes sense for some types of Twitter users. Frankly, it would even be worth it to me if it attracted good followers. But I don’t know who I’m paying for and who is following me organically, so it’s hard to evaluate the results.

The other advertising option is the Promoted Tweet. You’ve undoubtedly seen promoted tweets in your twitter stream from time to time.

These are pay-per-click. But here’s the rub: advertisers don’t get to pick which of their tweets get promoted. Instead, Twitter picks “5 of your most engaging, recent Tweets”. You have the option to block tweets from the list, but this requires quite a bit of management.

It’s not a problem for companies trying to promote their products if they don’t also tweet about other things. In my case, I frequently tweet links to other interesting domain articles. I don’t want to pay 50 cents per click to send traffic to these other sites.

I think Twitter advertising will be a gold mine for certain companies. I’ll continue to play around with it as well, but until Twitter offers more analytics it will be difficult to determine an ROI.

In the mean time, feel free to follow me (for free) @DomainNameWire

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Transpact drops escrow fees on U.S. dollar transactions (and it’s really cheap)

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:53:41 +0000

Escrow company’s already low fees drop for customers transacting in U.S. dollars.

I know a couple things about Transpact: a handful of readers have used it for domain name escrow and its services are ridiculously inexpensive.

Today I got an email from the company about a pricing change for U.S. dollar transactions.

Transactions up to $2,500 are now $9.99 per party per transaction with a $15 payment fee for any U.S. dollar disbursement over $100. So basically any transaction up to $2,500 in U.S. dollars is about $35.

Previously is was $24.99 per party.

That’s a seriously low fee. But it’s prices are even more out of line with industry norms for big dollar transactions. There are no percentage fees. There’s just a “large payment” surcharge.

For example, an $18,000 transaction would have the same $9.99 per party fee, plus the $15 payment fee, plus a $14.72 large fee surcharge. So that’s only $49.70.

Euro and Pound transactions remain cheaper. Transpact says this is because making a payment in Europe in Euros up to â‚¬50,000 is effectively free by EU law.

Given the somewhat complex pricing structure, it would be nice if the site had a fee calculator built in.

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Escrow.com taps in to DomainTools API

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:59:30 +0000

Escrow.com uses DomainTools’ API for faster and better escrow processing.

Escrow.com has integrated DomainTools into its security and process systems using its API, the two companies announced today.

DomainTools announced the formal release its API last July. Escrow.com’s integration, where it can tap into DomainTools database of whois records and other domain data, is a great example of how this can be leveraged:

â€œPrior to partnering with DomainTools and leveraging their API suite, the process of verifying DNS, registrar and Whois record information was manual and time consuming,â€ says Jason Whitlow, Chief Technology Officer, Escrow.com. â€œBy automating that process with comprehensive, accurate data from DomainTools, Escrow.com is now able to verify data more quickly while providing a quicker, more seamless experience for customers. DomainTools has become an integral part of our domain escrow process. Weâ€™re even leveraging DomainToolsâ€™ data in other business operations to validate accuracy of information.â€

The DomainTools API can be used by individual domainers, domain businesses, corporate intellectual property departments, etc.

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DomainTools is “most valuable” tool for research and domain management

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:00:26 +0000

Survey respondents vote for best domain tools…and choose the aptly named DomainTools.

DomainTools is the most valuable tool in the domain business for research and management, according to a survey of over 1,000 people in this year’s Domain Name Wire survey.

Survey takers were asked “Which software or hosted application is most valuable to your domain name business for research and management?”

28% of respondents selected DomainTools. That’s more than double the next highest entry on the list.

Here are the top five responses:

1. DomainTools 28%
2. FreshDrop 12%
3. DomainResearchTool 10%
4. Estibot 10%
5. Wordtracker 10%

Last year DomainTools was also ranked highest, although it took a larger share of the vote.

You can read more results from the Domain Name Wire survey here.

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