Incase you are still not sure what a netbook is, it’s like a mini laptop, reduced keyboard size, very low technical specifications and very, very cheap for what it is. As you might infer from the name, a netbook is designed specifically for browsing the Internet and not too much else.

NetBook Vs Laptop

The black machine in the picture below is my work Laptop, a 15.3″ screen and since the company gave me an unlimited budget, I set it up like a gaming rig which makes it insanely quick (even two years later) but unfortunately it’s bloody heavy and not convenient to cart around. The cute white thing is my netbook, grossly underpowered but I probably use it more than my laptop.

In the photo below you can see some deformation in the top left of the underside of my netbook. I’m not entirely sure what happened but I assume the battery was charging and resting on something circular, which somehow melted it – although I don’t even know how that’s possible….

The reason I wanted one was because they looked really cool and my work laptop is the size and weight of a fridge so it’s not convenient for lugging about except to the office and back.

The thing with netbooks is that they are pretty much all the same in terms of technical spec. They all have the same processor and same amount of memory. The reason for this is that they nearly all run Windows XP and Microsoft, being desperate to get rid of the thing (although not quite as desperate as getting rid of Vista), imposed technical limits on the type of machine XP could be installed on.

For that reason, even now, with Windows 7 out, netbooks are still run on Atom processors with 1 GB of RAM and an Intel Integrated Graphics Accelerator (which is a fancy name for something that doesn’t do too much).

The chief selling point of netbooks are that they are small, light, extremely portable and have a very long battery life – and what traveling businessman or self confessed nerd could say “no” to such a thing!

Back in December 2008, I bought the Asus EeePC 901 (the Eee stands for education because these things were originally designed for kids in poor countries to use) for £250. It had all the usual specs with a 9″ screen and a fantastic 7 hour battery life – that’s about 85% of the time it takes me to get to India!

After a year of using this netbook, I have to say it’s probably my best purchase ever. I knew that it was going to be useful, but bloody hell, I didn’t think it would become like an extension of me.

Even now, after a year, there isn’t one single thing that I would change about it and I use it virtually everyday for several hours. Whether it’s sitting in bed (and writing this blog post), crashed infront of the TV, on an airplane or train, not only does it still have the ability to turn heads, but it’s so damn convenient.

Sidenote: I was coming back from India in October and I had this netbook out, watching movies on it and no fewer than 3 people stopped and asked me about it – it’s that good

The small form factor might put a few people off given that the keys are about 2/3rds the size of a normal keyboard, but unless you have ham fists and podgy fingers you’ll be touchtyping away within hours of using it. To me, the smaller keyboard makes no difference whatso ever – but I have been informed that I have girls hands, a fact that I strenuously deny and put down to unbridled jealousy

I’ve used my netbook to write reports, articles, blog posts, budget reports and keep track of my finances, literally, when it comes to light admin and “office” related tasks, there’s nothing it cant handle.

Watching movies on it is awesome aswell, the Asus EeePC range produces an incredible sound from such a tiny box, I remember a friend conceding that the speakers were louder than their full sized Dell laptop!

However, there are things you can’t do on a netbook that you can on a full sized laptop, chief amongst them are multi-tasking. You definitely can’t have dozens of different applications open and expect to be able to work efficiently. At the most, you will be able to have 2 or 3 different applications open, for example I have Opera (the best browser) and StarOffice (awesome free alternative to MS Office and doesn’t require half the amount of power to run) open right now, but if I opened another app, then I’d start to see some lag.

Naturally, you can’t do photo editing (I can crop photos, like the ones above using GIMP) or play the latest games on it either, although I installed DOS-BOX and got loads of late 90′s / early 2000′s games to run decently enough.

If you are literally going to:

• Browse the Internet
• Chat on Skype / Use IM
• Write documents
• Do things in a spreadsheet
• Watch movies (non-HD)
• Listen / Manage your music
• Manage your photos

Then you seriously wouldn’t go wrong with a Netbook. I can’t imagine how I would cope without it now as it goes with me everywhere! Not only that, but laptop batteries generally get weaker over time, but amazingly, my Asus EeePC 901 has kept going well and I still get 6 1/2 to 7 hours battery life out of it. With WiFi turned on and Internet browsing that does reduce to around 3 to 3 1/2 hours though.

I’ve got an SSD drive which is way more power efficient and quicker than a standard hard drive – XP boot up time is just seconds. The down side is that you have a smaller storage capacity (about 15% compared to a HDD) but the upside is a faster and longer lasting machine.

Even if you need to do more taxing things, then obviously a more powerful laptop is required, but you can’t rule out a netbook, simply because it is so portable.

I love it when I’m on a plane or train and people get out ridiculously large laptops (like my work one) that weigh a tonne, and simply use it to watch a film or write a Word document. I get out this tiny little thing (the netbook!), which can be shoved in the top of your rucksack and proceed to do everything that people with laptops are doing – and I can’t help but stifle a smirk when their battery gives up after a couple of hours and I still have another 4 hours left!

I can get a train to the airport, and use my netbook, sit in the departure lounge, using the netbook, get on the plane and use the netbook and there will still be a couple of hours of battery left at the end of the journey!

Beware of Cheap Laptops

Some people I know have said they don’t see the point of buying a small netbook for £300 when you can get a full sized ‘proper’ laptop from just £399 now.

This is something that catches most tech illiterates out, the cheap computers are going to be not much better than a netbook. For a start, they run Windows 7 now, which is very resource intensive, and the cheap laptops provide you with just enough power to run Windows 7 and very little else.

Cheap £399 laptops is why Windows gets a bad name for being slow, clunky and unstable – the hardware it runs on is barely enough to support it…but I feel that is a rant for another day

Don’t buy a cheap laptop, especially not from a supermarket!

Future of Netbooks

I got the Asus EeePC 901 from my current favourite online retailer, eBuyer. I’ve generally found them to be cheaper than elsewhere, especially the ripoff merchants also known as supermarkets. It has a 9″ screen which has a resolution up to 1024×768 which I’ve found to be perfect for everything and have never wished that it could have a bigger one (steady!).

Unfortunately, it seems that that the trend is leaning towards larger screens and I’m not sure if you can even get a 9″ one anymore. The smallest that Asus do are now 10″, I’m not too sure how much that affects the size of the netbook though as I haven’t seen one, but if I find a 9″ one to be perfect, I’m sure 10″ is going to be fine.

With the onset of Windows 7 which has a version specifically built for low powered computers, the technical restraints have largely been removed, meaning that netbooks can become more powerful, while retaining their portability and convenience. However, a more powerful system is likely to come at the expense of a reduced battery life, and how can you smirk at people when your netbook only lasts for one hour more than their laptops?!

The next logical evolution in netbooks is to take their portability to the next level and bring in 3G cards where you can pop in a sim and access the Internet just like you do on your phone, and with the introduction of the new Nokia Booklet (I think it will be next on my list of things to buy – once they’ve upped the power and specs of course!), this will just be around the corner.

I’m sure they could make netbooks a whole lot more powerful than they currently are, but to be honest, there is absolutely no need, it already does everything 90% of computer users will require anyway.

Netbook Buying Tips

If you are going to buy a netbook, here’s some things to consider:

• Virtually all netbooks have the same hardware meaning there is very little difference in terms of performance
• The cheaper netbooks have smaller batteries, so one of the deciding factors should be the battery life – do your research!
• If you go for a setup that’s different to the Atom N270 / 1GB RAM / WinXP be aware that the battery life will be significantly reduced
• I’m more than pleased with my 9″ netbook, if you go for anything larger, you may lose some of that portability
• Storage space or performance and long life. If you need storage, get one with a traditional hard drive. If you want performance and long life, choose an SSD. I put backup everything on an external hard drive anyway.
• Shop online rather than offline, it’s always cheaper

Well, I hope you found that informative and helps you decide whether a netbook might be for you. Thanks to Tom and William for inspiring me to write this thoroughly nerdy post!

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I remember how myself and my younger brother and sister were decidely unimpressed with our parents for forcing us to go and watch such a thing. A trip to London was supposed to be a fun thing, we could have done something really exciting and gone to the science museum! But no, we went to see people on roller skates and boy did we let our displeasure be known!

Since that time (last year ), I’m pleased to say I’ve grown up a little and do love a good musical. Having lived in London for close to six years, I got to see quite a few, but not as many as I probably would have liked.

I’m scratching around my head to try and recall all the shows I’ve been too, which is no easy feat when your head is so fuzzy from a hangover and complete lack of sleep.

So here goes…Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Blues Brothers, We Will Rock You, Chicago, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I still knew all the words), Mama Mia, oh, and let us not forget the magic of Star Light Express

Chicago is the story of illicit affairs, murder, booze, corruption and violence. It’s sexy, raunchy and suggestive.

Chennai is a city of strong morals, family values and could be considered one of the most conservative cities in and already conservative country. With the obvious exception of corruption, it’s worlds away from the Chicago musical, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard that they were going to stage the play here – there was no way I could miss it!

In the West End, the characters are clad in revealing lingerie throughout the entire show, I was really keen to find out how they were going to handle it in front of a more conservative audience.

First off, this was an Am-Dram production, people, mostly college students, giving up their free time to practice for three months, so I really can’t compare it to the West End version.

Naturally they cut a lot of the more raunchy stuff from the story line, although I was a little bit surprised when a bed appeared on the stage!

The cast started off pretty nervously, hardly surprising considering there were probably around 1,000 people in the auditorium (which was really nice and even had reclining seats!). A friend who was with me felt that they didn’t quite have the stage presence, but I think that was also combined with poor acoustics towards the back of the theatre – it was sometimes quite hard to hear what the actors were saying.

The director swapped suggestive lingerie for more appropriate dresses and skirts. The actors swapped Indian accents for a mixture of Indian and American – some actors did fairly well, some should have stuck with their Indian accents

After the interval, I think the cast really settled in to the show, because the performances were markedly improved, there seemed to be a lot more confidence, although they still looked a little bit uncomfortable dancing along to the jazz songs.

One area which I felt let the show down a bit was the stage. They had built up a multi-level wooden stage and it creaked and groaned as actors walked across it and it was fairly distracting hearing all the foot scuffing noises as the cast danced and sung their way through the numbers.

All in all, it was a fairly good amateur production, if they had some commanding leads it could have been improved, and I’m sure if the budget allowed they would have improved the stage area. But the singing was good, the dancing was enjoyable to watch and the acting was reasonable. It was £4 very well spent

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That’s until I found out the play was about women empowerment.

I then looked forward to it with a certain amount of dread, convinced I would come out at the end of it hating myself for being a guy.

I’ve never seen any amateur productions before, so didn’t really know what to expect. The play itself was being done on an all girls campus, and I want to put these vicious rumours to rest right now that the only reason I went was to go and pick up girls from the all girls college. It wasn’t. Honest.

The play was called Black, Blue and Other Hues (an ominous title for a womens empowerment play!). It was split in to 6 mini plays which tell different stories about different women.

When it started, an old lady gave an introduction. There were all kinds of technical problems, and we even had the old classic:

“hello? hello? HELLO? Is this thing on? Can you hear me? Hello”

So once the microphones were sorted out, the lights turned off (and on, and off again) she proceeded to speak a lot, without (I felt) saying very much.

I have to say at this point, I enjoyed the play more than I thought I would. It wasn’t as feminist and ‘girl power’ as I thought it was going to be. They’d put a lot of effort in to the script and learning the lines.

Apparently they had been rehearsing for the last 3 months, and I think it paid off.

Of the 6 plays, the one I enjoyed the most was about an old Indian Mum going to visit her son in London. It was played out by a single actor and lasted about 30 minutes – I have no idea how she remembered all those lines! It was fairly funny in places and really well acted.

Some of the other plays went right over my head. I think it was mostly because some of the actors had very strong Indian accents (year is pronounced yer, wallet is prounced walelet) and spoke pretty quickly so I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

There was one play where I had no idea what was going on and seemed to go on for a lifetime. A lady saw invisible snakes (or something), a guy blows himself up with a bomb, a suicide and a person reflecting on her life. Apparently that was the play that got the best reviews. oops!

By the end of the play I was clock watching a little bit. My concentration levels couldn’t cut through the accent and I was a little bit relieved when it finally ended.

In all, I didn’t quite get how it was about women empowerment, but rather women in different situations.

The best part was, I didn’t come out hating myself for being a guy!

What ever will I do next on my cultured journey?

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3. The Two Indias and Generalizations

Well, this is not exactly a review, more my thoughts on the movie which I saw the other day. Crammed around a little laptop.

In the west, the movie seems to have had an overwhelming response. Loads of awards, nominated for oscars…all sorts. In India, the reception has been, umm, a little different and possibly less than positive.

About the movie, it’s a good film, well made. It’s not a hollywood meets bollywood film. It’s a hollywood (or is it British) film set in India. The production value is western and the editing is western.

In some places the film is completely unrealistic. For example at one point the two kids are on a train and they get knocked off…rather conveniently just outside the Taj Mahal. A western film in India without showing the Taj Mahal is like a scene in Paris without the Eiffel Tower or a scene in New York without the statue of liberty.

So anyway, yeah, the Taj Mahal makes a guest appearance.

The next unrealistic part is the little kid, who skipped school and never made any indication before that he could speak English, suddenly develops a well spoken middle class English accent.

The film is a bit gruesome in places, just like much of Danny Boyles’ work. Who can forget the baby scene in Trainspotting or the thumbs in the eye sockets in 28 Days Later.

In India, the film has been criticised because it shows ‘poor people’ – and if you hadn’t heard already, there are no poor people in India – especially if you are from the wealthy or upper middle classes! You can drive around all day and not see any poor people (I could write at length on this topic!)

There is a little dance at the end of the film which is a nod to bollywood, but let’s be fair, the dance scene isn’t a tiny little patch on any bollywood film.

Overall, the movie gets about 7/10.

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However, that all changed this morning when I received a text message from GameMobile.co.uk informing me that my recent review of the Lemmings Return game for mobile phones had won the monthly contest and my prize was a free game. Yeah, ok, the games are only worth £3.99 each, but it’s a start. Maybe I can review the free game I get and win the July review contest and get another free mobile game. I’m thinking the new monopoly game.

If you like playing games on your mobile (or if you are so bored on your daily commute to and from work) then check out GameMobile.co.uk for hundreds of games for your phone. They even have some freebie games like Snake and Doom.

So I guess you are probably wondering what amazing piece of literally I penned to win the monthly review competition. Well wonder no more, I’ve added it below:

If you are wondering if lemmings on your mobile can recreate the experience you had on your amiga then fear not – it’s a like for like clone of the classic lemmings game. The graphics, music, skills, gameplay etc are all the same.

I would also have liked to see some more levels, but it’s game size is one of the restrictions of mobile games. If you are looking for a game that can keep you entertained for more than 5 minutes then lemmings is well worth the money.

What an inspiring review! I should become a full time critic.

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1. The Winner

I am developing my own ideas and have just had a project done for me on Scriptlance which aims to further these ideas. They basically revolve around blogs, forums and Web 2.0 sites like Technorati, Delicious and Squidoo.

So, this morning when an email arrived in my inbox from Gary Ambrose (a self confessed non-blogger) announcing a new product by Rob Benwell called Blogging To The Bank it naturally piqued my interest. Any other time I probably would have past, but since I was actively looking into blogs and making money from them the timing couldn’t have been better!

I scanned through the sales page as most people do (check the headline, what does the product do, check the benefits, check the bonuses and finally check the price) and decided that it was probably worth the $47 asking price – he probably could have easily have sold it for $67, but that would have put me off).

So I paid up and downloaded it, and this is what I thought of Blogging To The Bank 2.0…

Overview

Pros

• Concise and meaty ebook with no filler
• Tells you what is no longer working in the blog world
• How to find the best products on clickbank to promote
• Decent keyword research analysis
• Some great tips on really useful plugins for WordPress
• Where to get the best content from
• The four types of content you must put on your blog
• Excellent information on visitor optimization and SEO
• How to use a mailing list to add more to your bottom line
• Where to place your ads
• Fantastic section on promoting your blog
• Extremely useful section on using Web 2.0 site to promote your blogs
• Outsourcing and automating your blog empire
• Bargain price for the information you are getting

Cons

• Could do with some more case studies that shows you a blog Rob has set up from start to finish
• Could provide some example sites that he has done
• Could have expanded on the mailing list, how to run it, what info to send out, what promotion/free info ratio should you use etc
• As with most things that can make you money, Motivation, Action and Focus is required. Blogging requires time and effort and if you are not motivated enough then you won’t make money from it – this is not a automated set and forget type thing but a proper business opportunity that requires work*
• Some of the resources he recommends costs more money, although he does give some feasible alternatives

* I put this as a ‘Con’ because so many people are looking for the fast buck that I want you to understand that this is not a fast buck solution

Blogging To The Bank 2.0 costs $47 and for the information that it contains is a right bargain in my opinion. I think it could easily have been sold for $67.

Click Here To Buy Blogging To The Bank 2.0 Now

Detailed Review

The ebook is a 61 page document which I was able to breeze through in about an hour. It would probably take longer if you made notes and checked out the websites that he recommends, but to get the jist of what he’s saying I went through it quickly.

Like so many ebooks that have come and gone before promising to reveal some insider secrets only for it to turn out to be the same common knowledge stuff you and everyone else already knew – the guy had just put your thoughts into words – I was half expecting this ebook to be like that.

Fortunately this ebook wasn’t filled with the usual filler crap that a lot of books have nowadays (you know the sort, they claim to be able to make you thousands with adsense and then spend half the book telling you what adsense is and how to set up and account), so there’s no introduction to what a blog is or the history of blogging, it’s straight in to the meaty stuff.

As Rob rightly points out, what worked a year ago doesn’t work now. As with any successful online system, once people find out about it, there will be those that abuse it and the effectiveness is reduced. So, he starts off with what doesn’t work anymore. Pretty useful if you are about to dive into blogging after reading some other ebook that’s 6 months out of date.

You then get given a set of 5 Blogging Commandments that he lays out and should be the basis of your blogs. What it basically says is that the days of auto-generated content is over, and your visitors are savvy enough to pick out good from bad content.

Then comes the bulk of the report…a 9 step plan to researching, creating and promoting your new blog which lays the groundwork for generating money.

keyword research is very important as is choosing the right products to promote. Ben nearly always goes for products on Clickbank and shows you the right way of choosing the best (and most profitable!) products to promote.

Where your blog is hosted is quite important Should you choose that free host like blogger.com, paid hosting or get a dedicated server. I’m personally developing my own ideas on hosting and recommend you check out the DreamHost.com package that lets you host unlimited domains.

Anyway, Blogging To The Bank shows you how to set up your blog using WordPress and recommends some essential plugins that I found really useful and will be implementing on this blog too.

Coming on to content and this is where most people let themselves down by choosing some autogenerated crap or making one or two posts and forgetting about it and never posting again. Ben reveals where he gets all his content from and shows you how to mix up your posts with 4 different types of content to give your blog that ‘natural’ feel.

There is a saying on the internet that content is king. I feel that that phrase has been overused and should be changed to quality content is king. There’s no use sticking up some PLR articles that are poorly worded, are full of junk and have grammatical and spelling errors. The content you put on your blog has to be high quality, engaging and useful to the reader.

The next step is optimizing your blog. A year or so ago this meant SEO, nowadays it means Visitor Optimization. Build a website for visitors and they will keep coming back. Build a site for a search engine and you might catch the visitor once, but if there’s nothing there to engage or teach them something there then they may not come back. Visitor Optimization is the latest buzzword and you should be creating your blogs to target visitors, not search engines.

For example, Rob Benwell reckons that adding a mailing list form to his blogs adds over $100,000 a year to his bottom line, but it’s not enough to just put the form on your site, he shows you how to ensure people are falling over themselves to get on your list. It’s excellent stuff and I’m looking at doing that to help my own profits.

Once your blog is set up, content ready to be added, the site is optimized for visitors and search engines, the next step is to monetize your blog. This is really where the book comes into it’s own (hence being called Blogging To The Bank – it kinda implies that you are setting up the blog to make money). Should you be using AdSense or Affiliate ads? Which one should you give the most prominence to? Where abouts should you place your ads? There’s a fantastic little graphic that shows the best way to layout your blog and where the different ads should go.

The rest of the ebook (the final 26 pages to be precise!) talks about promotion and traffic, because what is a great blog without visitors to read it. Since the amount of money you make is going to be directly related to the number of visitors you can attract to your blog this step can’t be under-estimated.

I’m happy to say that the information on generating free traffic is one of the strongest sections of the ebook and could probably be an ebook in it’s own right. There is information that I have not seen discussed before, including how to generate masses of traffic from the new Web 2.0 sites like Digg and Squidoo. These techniques are not spammy or blackhat in any way. Nor are they short term solutions. They do however require consistancy and focus to get them done. If you avert your attention elsewhere then the promotion efforts will suffer.

In closing, I was really impressed with Blogging To The Bank 2.0. I didn’t read the original version released last year which is a shame, but I have to assume that it was of a similar quality and provided cutting edge information on what was working at the time. Now blogging isn’t for everyone as it does require time and effort, it needs a fixed routine so that you are always posting a blog, researching new niches or promoting existing blogs.

I think the best way to get the most out of this ebook is to focus on one niche first of all, make one blog and concentrate on making that blog earn an average of $XX amount a day (you decide the target). Once that has been done you should begin to develop a routine that can easily be replicated and you can set up another blog. Maybe target setting up one new blog every month.

Blogging To The Bank 2.0 costs $47 and for the information that it contains is a right bargain in my opinion. I think it could easily have been sold for $67.

Click Here To Buy Blogging To The Bank 2.0 Now

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While browsing the laptops, I came across a Compaq Presario with the following spec:

1. 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor
2. 2 GB RAM
3. 120 GB HDD
4. 256 MB Shared Graphics
5. 15.4″ Widescreen LCD
6. Dual Layer DVD +/- ReWriter
7. Vista Home Premium

All that for just £599 – an absolute bargain. Since I’m still using a beat up old Compaq with a PIII & 256MB RAM I knew that they make good sturdy laptops; which is more than can be said for the Toshiba my friend was using. So eventually after a bit of umming and ahing he took the plunge and bought the new Compaq (and I don’t know how I walked out without one, I was this close | | to getting one myself). He got a right touch on it too, getting £20 knocked off for signing up to their ‘care’ plan – which was free and can be cancelled at any time.

So he gets it home and spends the necessary hour or two installing and setting it up (I want to know, can you really take a Apple Mac out of it’s box and be on the internet in 5 minutes? Is it really that easy?!) we both noticed that it seemed a little…sluggish.

He had installed the latest version of Zone Alarm and Webroot’s Spy Sweeper and removed a lot of the none essential components and software. Even with 2 GB of RAM the system just seemed a little slow – like 1/2 second too slow, just enough to notice it. We timed the start up time and it came to 2 minutes to start up Vista with the ZA and SS installed. By contrast, my crappy old laptop which runs XP professional on a mere 256 MB RAM and hasn’t been tuned up, scanned or defragged in centuries, started up in 1 1/2 minutes.

The situation was even worse for shutting Windows Vista Premium down, it seems to go on for an eternity. This is for a brand new machine with Core 2 Duo and 2 GB RAM remember.

I called up another friend who had just bought a top of the range desktop PC and he said that just running Vista and Norton AV his computer takes up 1 GB of RAM…and that’s when it’s idle! I can’t see how you can buy a machine and run Vista normally with less than 2 GB.

I’ve been seriously considering buying a new laptop, and as I said earlier I was so close to getting one the other day. But after seeing the (non) performance of Vista…I think I’m gonna pass. If I do get one, I will have to find a company that still ships a machine with Windows XP or else I might have to be forced to uninstall Vista and get a copy of XP myself.

Update: I’ve done some further reading and research. It seems that start up and shut down times on Windows Vista that can be timed in milleniums is a common complaint amongst users. Some point to driver problems or software incompatibility.

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Messy & Confused Website

In an attempt to offer every internet service under the sun, the GoDaddy website is mishmash of information. Assume you want to purchase a domain name. You assume they are all $8.95 or lower because that’s what the pretty image above the search box says. You notice some * marks above the prices which usually means there are some terms and conditions involved. After searching on the page you find that the * mark could mean that the domain costs $0.99 or $6.99 or maybe $5.99. It could even mean that there is a $0.22 ICANN fee added to the final cost. Who knows?!

So you type in the domain you want (and maybe get a little confused by the plethora of domain extentions that are available) and choose the .tv extension because your site will be about a TV show.

You click submit and a new page loads. Hang on a minute, it says it’s going to cost you $39.99 for that .tv domain. That wasn’t mentioned on the front page. And what’s this link advising you to buy multiple domains? And look at all the other domain options it’s giving you – an additional 21 domains – some of them not even the same as you entered. Finally, you can locate the Continue button – it’s right at the bottom of the page. Onwards to the next page.

OK, next page, time to enter my payment details? No, you must be kidding, they are still trying to sell you stuff. On this page they are attempting to convince people with little internet knowledge why they must purchase more than one domain or names that are similar to the one they are trying to buy. See the big green box that lets people add the extra domains to their cart? And underneath that in plain text a link to just continue as normal.

We just want our .tv domain, nothing else, so we say no thanks and continue to the checkout.

Awful Domain Management Interface

The only other company I’ve seen that has a worse interface than GoDaddy is DotRegister.com. Since a retarded chimpanze could create a better interface than DotRegister I can’t put my hand on my heart on honestly say GoDaddy’s is worse. However, on a scale of how bad can it be, if DotRegister is a 10, then GoDaddy is a healthy 7. At least the DotRegister interface works in Opera 8.5 – GoDaddy does not.

The finest domain management interface I have come across is from Namecheap. Actually, even RegisterFly had a half decent interface, but that’s pretty academic now.

Over the top prices

GoDaddy is not a cheap service. It might look cheap on the surface but most of these are loss leaders, designed to bring you into the site. Take for example the whois privacy protection service. It simply replaces your contact details with theirs when you do a whois lookup. For this they charge you $8.95 plus the cost of your domain so you end up paying $18+ just to buy a domain. Many other websites give you a whois protection service free of charge.

The servers and hosting from GoDaddy are run on software called Plesk, possibly the worst control panel in the world ever. In keeping with the slow, clunky unintuitive design of the GoDaddy website, plesk takes it to a whole new level.

Customer Support

One thing that GoDaddy does have going for it is the high quality of customer support that it offers. Emails are answered usually within a few hours (even though they state upto 48 hours) and problems are resolved quickly. I’ve never used their telephone support but I’ve heard that they have short waiting times and the staff seem to know what to do and there’s the feeling of they know what they are talking about and your problem will be solved.

I know many people put priority on the level of customer service provided by a company, so perhaps this is why GoDaddy have risen to the number 1 domain registrar. I’m pretty sure it’s got nothing to do with their website, prices and services

Related posts:

1. The Problems With GoDaddy
2. GoDaddy Update: I Am Not Alone!
3. Astrology Will Solve All Your Problems

Given that they have such a massive market share and are the dominant force in domain names, why can’t they provide a half decent service? The website interface is the worst I’ve ever used, the domain managing platform doesn’t work in Opera browser, the usability of their software falls woefully short and that’s all topped off with the worst online shopping cart experience in the world.

If you have any experience with domains and hosting in the past 6 months, you can’t have failed to hear about the astonishing story about RegisterFly.com – at one time claiming to be the 3rd largest domain registrar on the internet. If you haven’t had the misfortune to read about the RegisterFly fiasco, then take 30 minutes to read through some articles on RegisterFlies.com – an unofficial customer complaints site.

To cut a long story short, I had over 160 domains registered with RegisterFly and when the sh!t hit the fan it looked like everyone had lost their domains. Domains were expiring and ICANN (or more commonly known as ICANN’T due to their perceived inability to take any positive action – or any action at all!) were seen to be twidling their thumbs and ENOM taking the perverbial piss by attempting to charge customers up to $180 to get a domain name back.

Throughout this time, as domains were expiring, the registrars were directing all the traffic to holding (domain parking) pages which had various PPC ads on them meaning that they were making good money with domains owned by other people who couldn’t get them back because they couldn’t afford to pay ENOM the $180 re-activation fee or they couldn’t renew through RegisterFly.

Fortunately, in May there were some rumours that a large domain company was in negotiations to buy out the RegisterFly customer database and transfer all the domains to their ownership. I was hoping that the company was going to be Namecheap.com because I have had an excellent experience with them in the 4 or 5 years that I’ve used them. I also knew that their website interface was good, and they weren’t a rip off. I believe that they are a reseller of ENOM domanis as they are not an ICANN accredited registrar.

My heart sank when it was annouced that GoDaddy were the company behind the rumours and sure enough the transfer process started. Now considering my customer details were the same on both my GoDaddy and RegisterFly accounts I had assumed (or hoped) that they would perform a simple check on the registration details for the domains and add them to the account. Not so.

Instead we start a long drawn out process whereby you have to confirm every detail about yourself right up to sending a faxed (I thought only dinosaurs still use faxes) copy of some Government issued photo ID just to get your new customer account number. In my case I had inadvertantly put a company trading name in the registration details of my RegisterFly domains so my first submission was rejected because I had failed to mention my company name (even though it’s not a real company!).

Resubmitting the details with the ficitonal company name and I successfully recieved my new account number. But I still couldn’t login, I had to reset my passwords. Too much hassle, too much fannying around for my liking. As GoDaddy obviously likes to make things as complex and archaic as possible (just look at their mess of a front page GoDaddy.com) the domains are located in two places. One website (DomainsByProxy.com) for all the domains that have whois protection and another website (GoDaddy) for all those domains that don’t have whois protection. To make the process even more messy and confused, if you want to change any details on the domains with whois protection, then you have to do it through your GoDaddy account.

This brings me nicely on to everything that is wrong about GoDaddy

I will post the next part of this story tomorrow

Related posts:

1. The Problems With GoDaddy: Part 2
2. GoDaddy Update: I Am Not Alone!
3. Astrology Will Solve All Your Problems

Now there are some decent freebie tools out there that can help you with optimizing your website. The tools on SEO Chat and iWebTool spring to mind.

There’s also a plethora of paid seo tools available on the internet, choosing the right one is essential for your search engine rankings. Some seo software is quite cheap and others are rediculously expensive. If you are on a budget you need to get one that packs maximum punch for what it costs.

I personally use a tool called SEO Elite. I came across this tool after being thoroughly fed up with some other software (that shall remain entirely nameless, but if you replaced the ‘S’ in SEO with a ‘C’ you might be close). Doing what all good seo people do when researching a keyword, I went to Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines and typed in seo software and looked which sites were ranked in the top 10 of each. I found that SEO Elite was ranked in the top 5 of all the search engines so it seemed to me that not only did they talk the talk, but they walked the walk too.

Handy Hint: When searching for seo software, check out the rankings on various search engines. If the tool is as good as the company says it is then it should at least control top 10 positions for it’s main keywords on all search engines. If it’s no where to be found on any search engine then you may want to consider a different tool because if it’s not working for them, will it work for you?!

SEO Elite costs $167 which puts it in the mid-price range for these sorts of tools. The number of features and benefits that it packs though means it could sell equally as well with if it was comparably priced to the tools that are in the higher price range.

As we all know (or you will know now if you didn’t already), the best way to get top rankings is to have quality inbound links from sites that are relevant to your own. For example if you were running a website about Cars, a relevant link could come from a site that talks about Bio Fuel. An unrelevant link would be from a site that is about general stocks (although if the site was specifically about stocks in car manufacturers you might have a relevant link).

While you can learn from an ebook how to optimize your website with titles, headers, keyword density and so on it only plays a minor part in increasing your search engine rankings.

Sidenote: If you are looking for a quality ebook on how to optimize your website, download this free seo ebook

What you can’t get from an ebook though and what SEO Elite is built for is finding out where all your sites are ranked for various keywords in all the search engines, finding out which sites are linking to your competitors (so you can email them and get them to link to you too!), checking that link partners are still linking back to you (oh you wouldn’t believe how important this is), and an essential tool, finding possible authority sites – sites that the search engines consider to be the main authority on a particular subject. Getting links from authority sites in your chosen niche is a direct route to search engine domination

But this isn’t only what SEO Elite can do for you. There are tools out there that can do similiar things (albeit not with quite the same finesse as SEO Elite). For example, over on SEOChat they have a free tool that lets you find out where your site is ranked for a certain keyword. However, SEO Elite takes this one step further by letting you track multiple keywords and multiple domains and multiple search engines. It even draws a cool little graph for you so that you can see with a certain amount of satisfaction your hard work paying off as the websites rise in the rankings.

Now it would be very unscrupulous of me to recommend SEO Elite if I had not had any success with it personally. So I have exported a list of all my sites that I have in the top 50 across multiple keywords in multiple search engines. You can view the report here: My Rankings.

As I pointed out earlier, the key to getting to the top of the search engines is quality inbound links. So far the features we’ve looked at on SEO Elite concentrated more on the analysis and reporting side of things, but incredibly, SEO Elite manages to include some pretty nifty tools to help you in getting more of those elusive back links.

There is a feature that will search for sites in your niche that allow you to add your link to their site automatically – all at the click of the button. There’s no HTML, no emailing, no hassle, just point and click to add your site to sometimes hundreds of relevant websites.

Sidenote: Don’t overdo the link submission. If you do too many links in too short a time this will be seen as spamming by the search engines and they may remove your website from their pages!

One of the hottest topics right now in the SEO field is article marketing. Simply put, you write (or have written by a ghostwriter) an article on the subject of your website and you syndicate this article to various directories so that it is picked up by other webmasters to be used on their site on the condition that they retain a link back to you so everyone’s a winner. The theory says that you are getting those essential backlinks to your site and the webmasters are getting quality content for their site. There are various pitfalls to article marketing but that is a different subject. Understand that article marketing is hot and it is working.

SEO Elite includes a feature that will submit your article to dozens of the most important article directories on the internet for maximum exposure – and in keeping with the trademark way this software has of doing things, most of it is at the click of a button. Some standalone article submitters cost $97 on their own: Article Submitter. The only function is to submit articles. With SEO Elite you are not only getting the powerful analysis, reporting, charting and linking tools, you get the inbuilt article submitter as part of the software.

In closing, I’m really satisfied with what SEO Elite has done for me and my business and I’m proud to be able to recommend this software based on my own personal success in using it as you can see from My Rankings.

And it’s not just me that is entirely satisfied, check out this long list of SEO Elite Reviews from dozens of other SEO nerds, marketers, business owners and webmasters that have nothing but praise for this essential tool.

SEO Elite costs $167 and you can purchase it with PayPal or any major credit card through the clickbank payment processing company. It even comes with a solid 90 day money back gurarantee so that if you are not entirely satisfied you can get your money back with no questions asked (the software will be disabled though!).

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1. LinkMetro From The Guys That Bought You SEO Elite
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