2Fish 4Business

If your business has a website, your domain name is one of your most critical assets. It may be tied to your own name (CarolLoganNewbill.com) or it may be tied to your business name (2FishWeb.com). Either way, it’s critical that you own it, with your name (or company’s name) as the Registrant.

To check on the ownership of your domain name, go to Domain Tools and type the domain name into the search box. You will see the registration information of record, as in this example.

You or your business should always be listed at the top as Registrant. It’s perfectly ok if the hosting company is listed under Administrative or Technical Contact — the Registrant is the actual owner and the one who controls what happens to the name. The Billing Contact should be the person or entity that actually pays the domain renewal fees each year. This might be you or it might be your hosting company. Either is fine.

Many hosting companies offer a “free” domain name as part of your hosting package, but there can be a catch.

Now look at this WhoIs information. This is a real domain registration, a domain name that is the name of a real quilt artist. I’ve changed it here to “FamousQuilter.com” for the sake of anonymity.

This artist signed up for web hosting from a large hosting provider which offers a free domain name included with the cost of their inexpensive shared webhosting. After some period of time she became dissatisfied with the hosting account and changed hosts, only to realize that the original hosting company owned her domain name. Her own personal name, and they owned it. Nor would they consider releasing it to her for any amount of money.

She eventually registered “FamousQuilter.net” and set up her new website under that name, but the first hosting company still controls the .com version. Legal recourse is possible but very expensive; the artist must first file a legal trademark for her own name and then, if trademark protection is granted, file a dispute with ICANN concerning the improper use of her trademark. These two actions would cost a minimum of $2,500 and could require several years for resolution.

Note well the annotations I’ve circled in red: “Client Update Prohibited” and “Client Transfer Prohibited.” The artist has no control over her own personal name, and she can’t do anything about it without legal action and much expense.

Not all webhosting companies will hold your domain name hostage.

Many web hosts will offer to register a domain name in your name as a service or as part of a webhosting package. With some hosts, transferring your name to your own account is easy if you later decide to change web hosts; with others it’s a bit more hassle. However, if your name is listed as Registrant, you have final control over the account. And if someone else is managing your domain name(s), you generally don’t need to worry about renewals and other behind-the-scenes minutiae. It’s included in your monthly or annual hosting fees.

Make sure that your webhost offers registration in your own name if you choose to register through them.

How much does a domain name cost, if you register it yourself?

Domain name registrars are permitted to set their own rates by ICANN, the international entity which oversees all domain name registrations worldwide. Here is a sampling of current registration costs for .com domain name from several major companies (all rates are for one year; discounts often available for multi-year registrations):

- GoDaddy $10.69
- DotEarth $25.00
- EnomCentral.com $34.00
- Network Solutions $34.99
- Register.com $35.00

Note that rates for all registrars are increasing on July 1 of 2010, by order of ICANN.

How much is your business name — and your personal name as an artist — worth? Make sure that, whoever registers your domain name, you are listed as the owner/Registrant.

Don’t make a costly mistake in order to save a few dollars at the beginning.

Early in June an interesting brouhaha happened on one of the email lists to which I belong.

A talented writer and artist created a long, detailed blog postabout creating stamps for decorating fabric. Many people praised it and several asked her to release it in e-book form so they could download and keep a copy. Agreeing that it was a terrific idea, she published it as a Kindle book available from Amazon. She immediately found herself in the midst of a storm of controversy.

Some readers felt that she had no right to charge for the information that she had previously given away for free. One even went so far as to say that she now felt morally justified in “stealing” the material by copying and printing off the blog post. Others howled because they did not own a Kindle and thought they would have to buy a $250 reader device to download the book. Others howled because the Kindle is black-and-white only and the photographs that accompanied the article were in color. It’s also not possible to print from the Kindle, so the reader has no opportunity to create a hard copy for future reference.

Her readers were probably expecting a PDF ebook. Amazon ebooks are very easy to create and publish – just upload an HTML-encoded file (in which format the blog post already existed). Links remain links within the Kindle file. Creating a PDF ebook requires a bit more expertise from the author but would probably be worth it to the readers.

The author’s failure here lay in not educating her audience prior to releasing her product for sale. Kindle software which supports color images is available for PC/Mac, iPad, and iPhone, free from Amazon. No reading device is required. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem you can print from the Kindle software either.)

Until this little whirlwind occurred, I was not aware of the Amazon Kindle option for publishing ebooks. Creating both a Kindle version and a PDF version that could be sold directly seems to me to be a great pair of options for producing and distributing information products. Do both!

What about the free-vs-pay controversy?

Of course the author is entitled to charge for her work. The Amazon ebook sells for $2.99 and her royalty is about $1.00 per copy. Hardly highway robbery.

My suggestion would have been, once there was obvious interest in the information, to create both a PDF and the Kindle e-book, add a post to the blog about how to purchase them, and then take down the original post.

Those who howled about “no right to charge for it” would of course still howl. Most readers, I think, would have been very happy to pay a small amount to have it formatted and ready to print out without having to copy and paste from quirky blog software.

All it takes is a little education.

One piece of advice you’ll see over and over again (yes, from me too) is to engage your audience with blog posts, newsletters, email, Twitter and Facebook. This means writing in such a way that your ideas are communicated clearly to your readers.

(Puts on hat of Mrs. Spurlock, fifth-grade English teacher)

Grammar counts!

I followed a link this morning to a blog post that looked interesting, on the subject of making your WordPress installation hacker-proof. The first two sentences read:

Today there is more and more security breaches than ever before. Web browsers seems to fall behind faster than they can spell to themselves and this really makes an online business or venture quite hard work.

Web browsers spell to themselves? Who knew?

The entire article was unreadable because of numerous subject-verb number disagreements. Simple homonym problems such as “boarders” when the author meant “borders.” Not to mention the usual suspects of “it’s/its” and “you’re/your.”

I must be fair. Since there was no contact information on the site, I looked up the domain name WhoIs to find out that the site was registered in Sweden. English is obviously not the writer’s first language. On the other hand, if he is writing for an audience who will read in a language not his own, it seems reasonable to have a fluent speaker review and edit the article. This reads like he ran it through Babelfish.

The writer of this blog post failed in his most important task — he did not communicate his ideas clearly. He was so muddly, in fact, that I have made a note not to follow any links to this particular website in the future. It’s just not worth my time to try to puzzle out what he means.

Spelling counts too!

CBS42.com, which really should know better, recently ran a story about former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy and his ongoing battle with the courts over hidden assets.

Attorney for HealthSouth shareholders John Somerville was quoted:

”[The] IRS back in 2003 documented some 300 million dollars worth of property he had and that frankly a lot of it is missing. All the jewelry, 21 carrot diamonds, artwork is missing…”

Although the meaning of the sentence is still clear in this case, the absurdity of the mental image completely stopped this reader’s train of thought.

How many readers are you potentially losing because of unclear writing or poor spelling skills?

In one of my earlier work lives as a quilt book editor, I went to just about every major quilt show and festival held each year. We looked for great examples of quilting art and craft to feature in magazines and books… and like everyone else, we shopped a little while there.

Only a little. Those rumors you heard about my not being able to see out the rear view mirror coming home are completely unfounded. I promise.

Because I was there on business and had to maximize the use of my time, I had to develop an efficient way to see everything and then to whittle down to things I was most interested in. I also have a mild sensory integration dysfunction, which means that I get overwhelmed really easily. I needed to create a checklist to keep myself on target.

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Recently I had an unpleasant experience with a quilting retailer. My personal email address ended up on a list that I did not join. I have never had any business dealings with this company and I suspect my address was harvested from a two-year-old trade show list of attendees.

When I asked politely for her to unsubscribe me because I hadn’t signed up for her list, she replied that I had to go to her website to unsubscribe myself, and then accused me first of lying about not signing up for her list and then of trying to use other peoples’ problems to increase my own web design business.

Obviously this person has some serious customer service issues, but let’s deal only with the email debacle.

Was it Spam?

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Not a friendly way to deal with your customers!

This morning I received a blog post notification email. If you have a WordPress blog or have ever followed someone who does, you know what I mean — you can subscribe to receive an email when an update is posted. It’s a great way to keep up with blogs that you might otherwise forget to check on a regular basis.

Only one problem… I had never even visited this blog, let alone signed up for email notifications.

Make that two problems: The blog owner didn’t provide an unsubscribe link in the email. While this isn’t required by the 2003 CAN-SPAM act that regulates all commercial emails in the US, it is modern standard practice, and people expect to be able to hit the “unsubscribe” button and delete the email.

So I replied to the email with a polite note: “Unsubscribe, please. I have never visited your blog and certainly never signed up for your email notifications.”

To which I received a fairly chilly reply that this person doesn’t subscribe individuals and I should go to the main website page to unsubscribe myself.

This is not my responsibility.

Even if were not required as a matter of law, as a matter of courtesy the site owner should apologize and immediately remove the name from the mailing list.

Oh, but then it got worse. I went to this website to find out that it was using an outdated version of WordPress, known for almost two months to be subject to a serious scripting vulnerability. I notified the site owner that the WordPress installation was unpatched and that the site was possibly being used to send out spam. I received a rather ill-tempered response saying the site was not compromised, and again telling me that I needed to go to it and unsubscribe.

Even if I were interested in this site’s products, they’ve lost me as a customer forever. In addition to which, I’ve now written about it (although without naming the company) and several thousand more people now know about this bad customer management practice.

Be courteous not only to your customers, but to those who might be customers as well. It’s only good business!

UPDATE: I have received one additional email from the company’s spokesperson. I signed my last email with my full name, website address, and “webhosting and web design services” to indicate that I knew what I was talking about. The final email accused me of going out to look for other peoples’ problems in order to build up my own business. Definitely some ill temper going on there. And definitely some customer service problems.

I’m on quite a few newsletter lists. Like most people, I tend to sign up for them and then lose at least some interest in the company. If a newsletter comes in that happens to offer something I am looking for right now, I will probably click on it. Otherwise, I’ll skim the email and delete, which is most of the time.

So this one from American Science & Surplus really caught my eye this morning. (Highlighting added; click to enlarge photo.)

Did I click on that link? You bet I did! I mean, who doesn’t want 25,000 bonus frequent flyer miles if AS&S ever buys a surplus airline?

If I were running this campaign, I would add anyone who clicked to the preferred customer list and just let them all believe that they were in the first 250. I’d have a special landing page that the link goes to, with my very best product deals on sale. Customers have to click on the email link to get the deal — anyone else pays regular price.

Now I have no immediate need for a boxed set of Cosmos DVDs or a robot hamster wheel, two of the items on the sale landing page. But clicking the link got me to their site, where I might find something else I didn’t know I wanted until I saw it on sale, and reminded me again that browsing AS&S is just plain fun. And who doesn’t need a chuckle now and then?

What a great marketing tool!

American Science and Surplus

How can you use information like this in your next customer newsletter?

Yesterday the New York Times published a piece called Networking for the Shy Entrepreneur. It covered the basics: don’t try to sell, be yourself, think of it as “relationship-building” instead of “networking.” Nothing much new there, and nothing that really helps an introverted IT professional when he or she is dragged to the monthly Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Here’s another tip.

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