Another Way to get Fucked by 1and1

So, here’s the skinny on another way to be on the shit end of 1and1′s stick.

First, sign up at 1and1 for a package. Any package. The URL is 1and1.com; you can find their hosting packages, I’m sure. Oh this one looks good… The Beginner Package: $2/month for six months, then it doubles to $4. Right on, you say, and you sign right up. Great. You’re happily going along when you decide you need another domain. So you order another domain through 1and1′s not great prices, but hey, it’s all together.

Fast forward another ten months. You’ve got a pack of domains running, but you’ve outgrown your 1and1 service. You look at the offerings and decide to go with a HostGator package instead. Since you have multiple domains, check out their “baby” level service. Unlimited domain hosting. Great.

You gently move your sites from 1and1 to HostGator. Everything goes smoothly, and you go ahead and flip the switch, changing the nameservers from the 1and1 ones to the hostgator ones. Now everything’s beautific, you’ve got great service, you’ve got fantastic uptime, hostgator is really coming through for you. You’re ready to stop paying for the hosting at 1and1; you don’t need it, and frankly it wasn’t all that great anyway. You call up their “cancel.1and1.com” instructions, enter your username and password, and … shazam! …

You can’t cancel your package without cancelling the domains!

So now you need to transfer the domains to (hostgator? I prefer namecheap) before you can cancel your account with 1and1. And you’ll probably be billed for another round at 1and1. As an added bonus, your domains will be locked in “updating status” for an indeterminite length of time) if you’ve recently changed something about them. For instance, their nameservers.

Thanks, 1and1. Again.

Written by russ on March 23rd, 2009 with no comments.
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Google Adwords’ Game

Taking time out for a mild rant. I think they’re wrong, but it’s their game and if I want to play with them, I have to follow their rules.

There’s a Commission Junction advertiser advertising a job search guide, the “last job search guide you’ll ever need.” The advertiser is collegerecruiter.com. When you click through the link, it takes you to “trialpay.com” to purchase the book. “Trial Pay” is obviously a payment site (like paypal, right?).

So when I advertised the collegerecruiter.com deal through adwords, I put down the collegerecruiter.com site as the destination page. It’s the honest place where the money would go. However, Google Adwords wants trialpay.com as the destination domain. Which I would be down with, if it were trialpay.com selling the book.

Anyway. I thought it was stupid.

Written by russ on March 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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Don’t be so hasty to remove that subdomain!

I’m working over a site; currently it’s running a bunch of McJiffy sites and getting diddly bupkiss for traffic. The fact that Google Hates It doesn’t help but there’s other sources out there. One of the subdomains is “Rachel Ray.”

Now, I don’t remember why I threw Rachel Ray up there; I suspect I was just tossing it out there because she was a hot search item about a year ago. As I do these subdomains, making them over from McJiffy to “something else,” I’m also evaluating whether or not I should keep the site alive. I mean, I removed britney-spears.portallane.com, didn’t I? And Kim Kardashian?

But looking over my stats, I saw a huge jump for Rachel Ray yesterday. Why? Because she “doesn’t regret those racy photos” and my site popped up on yahoo search for Rachel Ray.

“I think I was 35 at the time [the pictures were taken],” she says. “And I thought about it for a while, and I said, ‘You know what? This magazine has as young as 17-, 18-year-olds in hottie bikinis, and these are all actresses, models, pin-up girls. I don’t belong to any even remote club of theirs.’
“And I thought, ‘If I’m gutsy enough to do this, this is a good thing for everybody. This is the everywoman, here she is.’ And I did it, and it was the most scared I’ve ever been, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’d do it again tomorrow.”

Yup, those FHM photos came back, and they’re still lovely. Since I’m moving the sites over anyway, I threw together a different page, just showing some of those photos and a couple of popular CPA ads. Heck, free traffic; I don’t suspect these visitors would buy eBay stuff but maybe they’ll click on these banners. And yeah, 200 free views in a day aren’t too shabby, in my mind.

So don’t be too hasty to remove old subdomains. If they’re just sitting there, maybe you should leave them alone. What’s the worst that could happen?

Written by russ on March 3rd, 2009 with no comments.
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