Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

So a year ago hostgator forced us to change dedicated servers. That story was documented then. Over time we have been working to move our websites to new hosting companies. So far all of that has gone well. We still have some sites hosted on hostgator.

Tonight I needed to get access to my WHM. I have been on the phone with Host Gator for 22 minutes, and they have been unable to change my password to give me access to my server.

This is no exaggeration, about the 6th time in the past year we have had a similar conversation with them.

They are very nice and apologetic, but somehow can not get the most basic function of the server, the ability to log in and out of it, to work.

Really the only reason I am writing this, is a hope that someone there will finally take enough responsibility to fix this for us.

It will still be some months before we are finished migrating all of our sites off of hostgator.

They have with no exaggeration caused me an extra 40 or more hours of work this past year, all because of the forced server migration when I was traveling, while begging them not to do it.

We have been using them the past months to track all of our sites.

You pop in the domain name and keywords, and ka-blam! They track all the rankings.

They have just done a perfect job in every way.

They just f-ing rock.

Go buy their stuff. Now.

I own 290 domain names.

That means I am spending almost $3,000 per year just to hang onto these.

Very few of these are developed yet.

Quite a few of them are variants of my name, and family members name.
(I highly recommend you buy those all up while you have the chance and no one is attacking you.)

All of them have some idea or plan behind them of what they are to become.

About every month or two I get a request in the mail of someone wanting to buy a domain name.

Usually the person has no idea what the domain is really worth.

If it is an exact match domain, like one of my cityname followed by the word chiropractic, such as BeverlyHillsChiropractic.com (which I don’t own), it can easily make the owner tens of thousands of dollars per year extra or even a hundred thousand dollars per year extra if they know what to do with it. Often people offer me a few hundred dollars for these domains, and I politely explain what can be done with it and the value.

It is funny, because I bought SanDiegoChiropractic.com for $500 a few years ago which could be very valuable to me, when I finally develop it properly.

A lot of my domain names are simply brandable domains that I bought for one idea or another. One of my favorites is roadfish.com

This spring I got one of these anonymous requests to purchase urbid.com

I had thought the name was very clever, but I did not own yourbid.com which I thought would make a good pair. I figured one day whoever owned yourbid.com would make me an offer on urbid.com so they could complete the pair.

When the offer came in, I believe the were offering me something like $500. An offer that high to me means the person is serious about buying it. I figured they must be the owners of yourbid.com

I put the word out that I needed the advice of a good domain appraiser. I believe it was Lauren Vacaerllo, genius SEO and internet marketer who got me in touch with a domainer. It is amazing how many great referrals she gets me. The domainer said something like, sell it quick at $500.

So I countered with $10,000. I didn’t think they would take it, but figured I could always come back down to $500 if needed. I didn’t need the money at the moment, and was just enjoying the game.

I get the word back from godaddy who was the go between, and I get a story that $5,000 is as far as they can go, and even that was pushing it.

I politely agreed to $5,000 and we put it into escrow.

I have often asked how to value a domain, and have heard many others ask the same question. The answer I hear the experts say is whatever the market can bear, often determined by one individuals value of the domain.

In this case the guys who bought it valued it at $5,000, but it could have just as easily sold for $10,000 or $500, or not at all. In fact I still have never gotten an offer for roadfish.com and it is one of my favorite domains of all.