How many of you have experienced a virus/malware attack on your computer? I would guess that most of us have encountered the maddening moment when you realize that your computer is royally screwed up at least once.

Over time, we learn to actually install protection software and back up our most coveted files (my how we just love to learn the hard way!). I’d like to think my home firewalls and up-to-date software are nearly impenetrable, even protecting all the PCs in my house from poor user judgement. Plus, all my passwords are air-tight: mixed upper/lower case with numbers and symbols and over 8 characters.

But guess what, I never really thought that the server that hosts all of my sites would be maliciously attacked! Which of course, happened over the weekend. Apparently, someone FTP’d into my host and dropped some nasty malware. Not only did it break countless lines of WP code but it also attempted to infect users who went to any of my sites. Oddly, the latter only affected folks who went to freebloghelp.com and not www.freebloghelp.com.

Sure, I have backups of all my posts and an old backup of my entire sites but wow, what a mess it would be if I had to blow the whole thing up and restore everything manually. When I finally had a moment to breathe, I called GoDaddy, my hosting provider.

GoDaddy to the rescue

I was on the phone with GoDaddy’s tech support for less than 30 minutes. In that time, I showed the tech where the issues were, he reproduced the issues, he sent me links on how to resolve the problem, he walked me through the solution step-by-step, and he gave me advice on how to prevent this from happening again in the future. Not bad in half an hour, right?

In short, here’s what we decided to do to correct the problem. Rather than trying to identify, quarantine, and clean the infected areas, we deleted everything I had in my host account. I then simply restored from the back up point of my choice, which ended up being a few days back, just to be extra safe. If you didn’t know this, GoDaddy has backups for the last 30 days for my WP Linux box. Once I did that, my sites were all up and running (albeit from a short time warp) in less than 5 minutes after I hung up the phone.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a hosting provider (or domain registrar), I have been using GoDaddy for years and have been impressed with every part of their service. You can find horror stories for every hosting company online but from my personal experience, I’m proud to say that not only have I benefited from being a GoDaddy customer, but I’ve also been handsomely rewarded for being an affiliate (see my disclosure).

If you’ve ever been hacked, I’d love to hear your story.

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Alright, we all know you must have your own domain to have a successful blog. If you’re not willing to commit under $100 per year for a domain and hosting, then most people won’t commit to you. That’s the bottom line.

Other than using a domain for an existing site, many people don’t realize there are benefits for parking a domain. By ‘parked domain’, I mean you bought a domain but you haven’t really done anything with it.

Reasons to park a new domain

A mature domain will give you a significant head start

Do you have ideas for a new blog or website but you’re not ready to start working on it? Well buy your domain today and just let it sit! I know, you’re thinking if someone snags the one you want, there are other alternative domain names you’re willing to take. Fair enough but that’s not the reason why you need to buy the domain now.

A major part of the Google algorithm includes the age of the site. The longer it’s been existence (in Google’s eyes, containing an index that search engines can find), the better. That means all the SEO advantages, PageRank and other rankings all start from day one.

So even if you’re not planning on really ramping up your site for another 2-3 years, that’s perfectly fine. If you buy your domain today, by the time you’re ready to use it, you just gave yourself a big boost.

A domain with keywords in it can easily be sold

We already know that domain names are being snatched up very fast. Although there are many good ones available, the truly great ones are long gone. I’m sure when you registered for your domain, you saw a good number of domains for sale.

Let’s build from the previous point of having a mature site. There is a huge market for domain names, especially those that have aged a few years. Just check out GoDaddy auctions and you’ll start to see the potential. Domains are being sold every day for thousands of dollars. The ones the have been around will fetch even more. Why? Because when you transfer it, all those benefits of a mature domain goes along with it.

The ones with good keywords in it will typically sell for the most. For instance, freebloghelp.com has decent keywords since people actually search on that phrase. Do a little research and buy a domain with two or three keywords in it. When you put it up for sale, rest assured that the longer it sits, the more attractive it will be.

A parked domain can earn you income

Regardless of whether you decide to keep the mature domain for yourself or sell it to someone else, you can actually earn income while it’s idle. One way is simply using Google AdSense for Domains. This was designed specifically to display ads for parked domains. So, you might as well put some ads on there in case anyone swings by rather than showing a passe construction page or displaying an error message.

If you’ve used keywords in the domain name, you’ve greatly increased your chances of someone landing on your page. This is one way to have the domain name literally pay for itself!

Take advantage of the domain sale

So if you’re ready to buy a domain, click through my GoDaddy domain sale link, you can grab your .com domain for $7.49 per year! Sure it’s only a few dollars shy of their regular $10 price but every little bit helps, right?

Happy domain hunting!

Due to having affiliate links in this article, please read my disclosure.

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OK, I have to ‘fess up — I’m a GoDaddy.com follower. I know I mentioned that I use them to register my domains in my last post but I also use GoDaddy to host every one of my sites, including this one.

I have been working in the tech sector for most of my career and I’m telling you the honest truth, GoDaddy’s customer service is unparalleled in the industry. I swear, I’m not telling you this because I’m an affiliate, but rather because I’m so thrilled with their overall service, I actually enjoy raving about them. I’m not promoting them because someone told me he liked them, I’m telling you because I have wonderful, personal experiences with GoDaddy.

Unless I’m traveling on business, I don’t eat out a lot. [Stay with me on this, I promise this story is relevant.] However, for a while there, before I had kids, my wife and I used to go out to eat with her parents several times a week (I think they ate out 20-25 times a week!). Anyway, her father used to call a manager over about half the time. Almost always, the manager believed he was going to get an earful from an irate customer. Instead, more often than not, he simply wanted to complement the staff and/or the food! It was a nice reminder to me that most people will make a big stink when they’re not happy but won’t make a peep when they are. I have decided to look for the good things and be vocal about them. This is a prime example of that.

P.S. This strategy works really well at the workplace!

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I’ve been a fan of Bob Parsons for a long time. This guy has some crazy candor and I absolutely love it! In addition to GoDaddy.com, I have also used NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com in the past. Not that those other ones are bad but you can’t really go wrong with GoDaddy. Right now, all of my domains are registered through GoDaddy so I can manage all of them in a central location. And of course, because I believe in their products, I am one of their affiliates.

Not only is the cost equal (or less in many cases), their customer service is amazing. As you may have read in one of my posts about switching blogging platforms, I recently brought this blog from blogger.com to a wordpress.org solution. Although the domain was the same, basically all the guts had to be changed. If it wasn’t for the help of their amazing and prompt email support and the one incredible service call, it would’ve been a much more difficult task.

Essentially, for $7-$10 a year, not only do you get your domain name for a year but you get world-class support so you’re not alone. Now that’s a deal if I ever saw one!

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