SkyDomains

This is definitely not the title I had envisioned nor the post that I had planned for this point in time but this is the post I have for you today. I am hoping that in sharing this openly that it might somehow inspire someone in the same condition and let them know that they are not alone. Failure on its own is not bad since what becomes of you after is more important than the failure itself.

This post is a story of my passion and drive for a particular domain and how I have struggled and failed repeatedly to bring it to its full potential. Where do I start, I will try a quick summary of events leading to my latest failure. I purchased Petmemorial(dot)com a couple of years ago in the secondary market. At the time of purchase, all I had was passion and love for animals. (more…)

Going from a free site to an adsense site may not be much of a challenge but going from a free/donations/ adsense site to a product based site is not so easy. As some of you know, my designers and programmers have been working on PetMemorial(dot)com for some time now. Design wise they are 90% done but when it comes to  functionality, we may still have some extensive tweaking to do. Well I took the time this weekend to give the site a face lift. We have often referred to the old site as the functional place holder of the real deal. I think I will call this one the interim place holder of the final site.

What you see now is nothing like what the actual site will look like. This is just me playing around but with a purpose. (more…)

This is a very bold title I must admit but by the time you are done reading this post, you will see why I beleive so and chances are that you will share my believe too. When I started my first Website,
PetHall.com, that was around the  year 2000. There were not many developed websites then. I arrogantly felt that only pets.com was my competitor or inspiration. I poured my all into PetHall.

At its peak, PetHall had free email for subscribers, that is somebody@pethall.com( Yes this was big back then) We had free greeting cards, horoscopes, you name it. PetHall was built to be a portal for pet lovers and they embraced it as such. PetHall also had one very important component, it had a fledging pet classifieds section. I had e-Classifieds Enterprise edition installed (e-Classifieds was the thing then) We were doing so good at the classifieds section that we had a couple of shelters listing stuff there: of course everything was free. I had no clue on how to monetize it then but that is not the reason for this post.

Here is the dilemma, back then I had to hire freelancers every time I wanted to do anything to my site. I did not know how to FTP or do anything then. This would not have been much of a problem if not that every time my host went down, I had to repair or reinstall my classifieds. After moving from host to host trying to find a stable host, I gradually lost all my customers.

This was when I decided that enough was enough. After days o f extensive research, I learnt of this host Called ICDSoft They had a very bold statement about their up-time and reliability but what caught my attention was that they claimed to respond to all Support request within (if I remember correctly) 15 minutes.
You guessed right, instead of signing up I gave them a try. I wrote, ” My name is Frankie I am thinking of signing up but  I am also wondering how long it will take  you guys to get back to me” I hadn’t even left there site yet when my hotmail messenger service (I used hotmail then) popped up and this is what they wrote ” So Frankie how did we do? Let us know if we can be of any service to you” I  wrote back “impressed” I signed up and PetHall has never had a problem since then. Now this is why I signed up with ICDSoft but the reason I have stayed with them and hosted virtually all my sites there until recently is this. When you are new to domaining or not that tech savvy, this peoples support is unprecedented. They have helped me install scripts that they should not even bother with. They have helped me with all sorts of technical issues that they have nothing to do with just because I host with them. As of this writing, the following sites are still hosted with them PetHall.com, SkyDomains.com (yes this blog ) FleaMarketFinds.com, HearingDogs.com and PetMessageBoard.com.

While the links above and below are affiliate links, I put my websites where my mouth or shall I say my keystrokes are. ICDSoft is second to non when it comes to service and if you are a newbie and not too tech savvy, ICDSoft is  your best launching pad.

The Second is like it. HostGator is the choice of most experienced domainers. They have a very attractive price package. You get to host multiple domains on one account. A little tech know how is required. Overall service is pretty good. DNoptimizers.com is hosted by HostGator

Tech support is pretty good at HostGator though they will not bend over backwards for you. For most people the tech support is great but I have been spoilt already by ICDSoft 

Now  you know where I host my sites. Like I already stated, all t he links and banners in this post are affiliate links. I however pledge my believe in this post. I have not been influenced by the affiliate payouts as you can use domain tools to see that PetHall.com has been hosted with ICDSoft for a while now. Like I said, I put my domains where my keystrokes are. After you have checked this sites out, please do not forget that I do not get credit if you do not use the links or banners I have provided in this post.

If this review has been helpful to you please let me know. I plan to do a series of what I call the best in the world which is basically a review of services I use or have used.

I am in a kind of dilemma. I have three  likely domain names for a pet classifieds website. The problem is that I have to set up one of them as a pet classifieds site. Since I do not have the .com for the most likely term searched, which of the following domains will  you use if you were me  and why?

Please note that the industry leader on pet classifieds in google is currently a dot US!

So here are my options:

Candidate 1.) PetClassified (Dot) net

Candidate 2.) PetClassifeds (Dot) org

Candidate 3.) PetClassifiedAds (Dot) com

The most searched term is “Pet Classifieds”

I already have the best possible classifieds software installed at the back end of one of them since a year ago but never activated it.  I will switch if the vote is overwhelmingly against my original pick.

Thanks for your time and opinions.