I got a call a few weeks ago from a friendly rep at GoDaddy who, according to him, was just checking up on whether or not I was happy with GoDaddy’s services. Since I don’t use them for anything but domain registrations, it’s difficult to find much to complain about so I told him I had no complaints.

He had my account open on his end and ‘noticed’ that I had over 50 domains registered with them. I am pretty sure this is what the call was actually about and he proceeded to attempt to sell me a membership to their ‘Discount Domain Club’ for $89.99 a year. I went immediately on the defensive because I’m not really too keen on random calls from people trying to sell me things, but as he explained the offer, it started to make complete sense.

For an $89.99 yearly membership fee I get to register and renew all of my .com domains for $7.29 per year rather than the usual price of $10.69. At the moment I have 59 domain names so to renew them per year it would have cost me  $630.71 at the regular price and $430.11 at the discount club price. Taking the $89.99 fee into consideration I will have saved $110.61.

Not to sound like a sales rep for the program, but it also gives discounts on other types of domains. New .info domains can be had for $0.89 (for the first year only), .net are 53% off at $5.99 a year and country-specific domains even have small discounts of 10-15%. But wait, there’s more! If you join the program for three years or longer you will save 20%, bringing the yearly fee down to $71.99 and you will get a second set of knives for free!

If you are someone who either already has a lot of domains or plans to at some point soon, do the calculations and see if GoDaddy’s Discount Domain Club will help save you some cash. As a domain hoarder, I wish I would have known about it sooner so I’m just spreading the word to any folks out there who want in on some cheaper domain name action.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I have been a member of the TradeDoubler affiliate network since 2006 when, that year, it earned me a whopping $0. It didn’t do much better the year after and in 2008 it stopped accepting my password for some bizarre reason and I completely forgot about it.

Well I managed to log in today and was amazed to find that the affiliate programs I’ve signed up for through TradeDoubler have actually been producing to the tune of $900 so far in 2009. I haven’t noticed the money because I don’t get any payment emails and the cash is transferred into my UK bank account that I don’t get statements for. It’s been a very nice surprise though!

These sales have come from one of my websites that focuses on a particular type of travel insurance aimed at a specific group. It is a good example of how focusing on a niche, becoming number one in Google for a specific search term, and offering product options for what people are looking for can pay off.

My site offers five insurance products in total. I have two of them running on the TradeDoubler network, one on ClixGalore, and two have their own private affiliate programs. One of these has yet to earn me a cent so I’m going to scrap it.

Affiliate sales are a funny thing and, until I see the first sale, I am rarely convinced that I will be able to sell anything. My website is sort of crappy and I have been meaning to try to set it up better to make sales but keep putting it off. This little accounting discovery has inspired me to make an update of this site a priority. I am happy with the search traffic I get but think I should have more conversions. I’m going to see what I can do to make that happen and keep an eye out for other insurance affiliate programs that will fit into the mix.

I need a change of pace from my futile pursuit of higher Adsense earnings and affiliate sales is where the real money is, so I’m curious to see what a focused effort will produce. I have lots of ideas for how I can improve the site and I will report back in more detail once I put them into action.

I’m curious about how many o you have managed to make affiliate sales work for you. Any tips on how to make a website that sells would be great!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Over the weekend I managed to screw up Firefox. Normally, not an issue… just download it again and voila, all good. Well part of me screwing up Firefox meant that I also managed to screw up my ability to download things.  I couldn’t download it using Internet Explorer because that had long been unusable due to a virus. My Firefox was so messed up that I couldn’t log into any of my Google applications or Twitter and I couldn’t even do searches for flights.

I had long been coping with some serious limitations due to gnarly viruses. To open any programs I had to right click on it and do some fancy stuff; my clock setting was unchangeable and therefore permanently set for some Asian timezone; mysterious windows popped up each time I turned my computer on and who knows what other problems were lurking.

When my Firefox crapped out on me on Sunday I was at the end of the line and cursing viruses and wondering if Mac was the way to go. I know plenty of people who have never had a virus with Mac and know that Dan from Uncornered Market recently made a switch from PC to Mac because of viruses and hasn’t looked back. Plus it seems to me like Mac is the way to go for graphics and video creation and editing. My computer does ok with photos but video makes it die a slow and painful death and, as this is something I would like to get into eventually, my little IBM X41 just isn’t going to cut it.

So I did a little ebay browsing and it seems like Macs can be had for pretty cheap. The problem is once I check out the cheapies, I get all excited about the more expensive options. The problem with the expensive options (besides being expensive) is that I wouldn’t be able to relax if I were travelling with a computer that cost a lot. I love my little IBM because it is so unsexy it hurts and it didn’t cost much. So as long as I have my hard drive in a safe place, I don’t really stress too much about where my computer is.

But it looks like ebay has some affordable Mac options. I like the 13″ screen but I don’t like the wide screen and shiny surface (I rarely watch movies). I have never liked the Mac interface but I think that will just take some getting used to. I love the idea that they aren’t as susceptible to viruses but wonder if they are as invincible as I hope they are.

What do you think? Are Mac the way to go? My IBM has been revived thanks to a nerd and $80 but I am still wondering about Macs.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I have about 50 domains coming up for renewal this month for various cities that I had planned to add to my ‘Stuck in …’ network of sites. I have since decided to scale back my ambitious plan to about 20 cities. I used Google’s keyword tool to find out which cities had the most searches for my target keyword terms and I was able to weed out some poor choices. I decided to focus my efforts on a handful of cities that I think will work best.

These are the ones I’m left with:

• Dubai
• Singapore
• Los Angeles
• Hong Kong
• Toronto
• Vancouver
• Melbourne
• Perth
• Amsterdam
• Montreal
• Brisbane
• Shanghai
• Buenos Aires
• Seoul
• Cape Town
• Rio de Janiero

That’s not including my already existing or work-in-progress sites for:

• London
• Beijing
• Sydney
• New York

I’m not sure if having four cities in Australia and three in Canada is a good idea or not but they’re registered for another year, just in case. I’m also not sure Cape Town and Rio have enough searches to warrent a site, it’s just that I plan on living in both at one point or another so I might as well write a site whenever I get to them.

A friend of mine is interested in putting a Los Angeles site together and here’s what I have in mind. She writes everything, I add everything to the site and do all the behind-the-scenes stuff including pay for hosting (which is essentially free as I have an unlimited account) and the yearly domain name registration (only $10). My friend gets 100% of the Adsense revenue and we split 50/50 on any advertising and affiliate revenue the site generates. We will both work at building links and getting the word out on the site, but I imagine she would be more motivated to do this than me since it’s her only site and the more she does this, the better chance she has of earning money sooner.

She came to mind as a good person to work with because she’s a really good writer, lives in LA and she has also expressed an interest in what I do quite a few times and seems to have made a few steps in the right direction. I think working with her on this will benefit both of us hopefully through some good earnings down the road, it will grow my ‘Stuck in’ network by one city, and she will learn a lot about this industry by doing, rather than reading about doing.

I’m really curious to hear what people think about this idea. Is it something that might be of interest to someone looking to start out in the internet marketing game? Do you think I should be giving away 100% of Adsense or is that too much? Can you think of any problems I might come up against with this strategy? Are partnerships more of a headache than they’re worth? I’m really up in the air about this and would love some advice and thoughts.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hello from Boston! I’m in town visiting a friend before heading home to Canada. I like it here so far… the bars all seem to have about a zillion beers on tap which is always a good thing. Heading out tonight to see the Redsox play at Fenway which has always been a dream of mine so I’m pretty excited. Yes, I am a baseball nerd. (go Blue Jays!)

John over on Jet Set Citizen did an interview with me and I wanted to share the link with everyone.

Next time I check in I will be back at home in Canada. Yay!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!