This blog now requires registration to comment. I tried to be relaxed about this and go with the flow, but ever since this blog ended up on a few dozen “dofollow” lists, I’ve been getting hammered by spam bots and paid to comment people on a daily basis. The techniques are getting so sophisticated that is very difficult to tell what is a real, genuine comment or somebody just getting paid to post some general giberish that could apply to almost anything.

Even with using advanced spam detection and prevention tools at both the server and software level, I’m still deleting hundreds of spam comments every day. This seems to be the norm for many bloggers these days. Well, I’ve had enough of it. These spammers are taking away the time I could be investing in conversations with users that actually matter to me. So, in order to further cut down on the “noise” here, I’ve decided to require registration to post comments. I may extend this policy to use a service such as OpenID, but even that can be abused easily enough. I’ll look into this more thoroughly in the next few weeks and announce a final comment policy for this blog.

For those of you that are human and actually contribute to the conversations here, THANK YOU! I love talking with real people and building valuable relationships. For taking the time to register and leave a genuinely useful comment, you get no nofollow on your links. I’m even going to go further and trim the number of outgoing links on this site to add more weight to your links. For spammers, you get nadda!

It’s a new year and I’ve got some big goals for this year, both for this site and my other sites. Expect to see some major changes around here in the very near future.

Earlier today, my good friend Dave Harry (aka: theGypsy) pointed out a post on his blog that set me back on my heels. A post that exhibits genuine generosity without expectation of return. That post being Project Jump Start 09. This concept was originally started by one DazzlinDonna. See her original post at Project Jump Start ‘09 – DD’s Mini-Stimulus Plan.

Call it “Paying it Forward”, call it smart marketing, call it whatever you want. This concept is cool! For the lazy among us (pst… I’m one too), the basic jist is that Donna, Dave and a few other notable names in the industry have decided to pony up $25 as well as several hundred $$$ in bonuses to 12 people in 2009. That’s one lucky person per month who will be given a bevy of bounty to start their dream business online!

The 2 aforementioned people already delved into the details of the program well enough that I think you should read what they wrote. Details of how it works is not the point of my post. I wanted to write here for two main reasons.

1. To spread the knowledge of this great program to those who might not have learned about it otherwise.
2. To offer to throw in some more goodies into the pot.

That’s right. I’m going to sweeten the pot even more by offering some free training and support. The goal of $150 cash per person has been reached, and I don’t think another $25 will make that much difference. However, 5 hours of professional training and/or support can make a huge difference. Here’s what I posted on Dave’s blog.

I’d like to take up this challenge and offer 5 hours technical training and/or support in any or all of the 5 following topics:

* Systems Administration
* Systems Integration
* Usability/Accessibility
* Standards Compliant Design
* Building Filet Mignon Sites on a Cheeseburger Budget

Training and support will be provided through Internet-based whiteboards, chat, help desk and Skype.

That’s a good bit more than $25 cash can buy. When I got started out, it took quite a few years and thousands of hard earned dollars to master these topics. For 12 people, I’m willing to impart a very dense chunk of what I’ve learned and I’m willing to help you get started.

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about starting your own dream business online, this is the perfect opportunity to get started risk free. I sincerely wish someone would have been offering something like this back when I got started out.

Side benefit: In connecting with the professionals who will be mentoring you, you’re going to be exposing yourself to people “in the know”. These are people who know people, if you catch what I’m saying. If you want to get a serious leg up on the competition, you need to know the right people in the right places. More importantly, you need to have solid business relationships with people who you can trust and who want to help you succeed. Beyond cash and bonuses, you have the opportunity here to build such relationships. This is, by far, the most valuable part of this project. Spend this capital wisely!

I look forward to working with the 12 individuals who will benefit from this project! Please do show love to all those who are offering their time, money and resources to help these individuals.

My motto for this year is very appropriate here: 2009 is Our Year to Shine!

As many of you may have noticed, I moved my site back over to the 1and1 servers a while back. This was due to my VPS not working properly and that it was under constant attack. I’ve since worked with the wonderful people at Future Hosting and I now have my VPS reprovisioned and running much more efficiently. Now that my VPS is running like it is suppose to, I’m going to be moving this site, as well as a few of my other sites, back over to that sever. The main reason for this is that the hosting package I have with 1and1 is good, as far as it goes, but it is a shared hosting package and their database servers are slow. That combination is not a good one for someone who owns several blogs.

This move should be relatively painless, however, I will be closing this site and other affected sites during the migration period. For those who have ISPs that have slow DNS servers, this could cause an outage for up to 72 hours. This is highly unlikely, but still a possibility. I apreciate your patience during this process. Alternative contact methods will be made available if you wish to reach me during the outage.

The time window to expect an outage of this site is Friday, October 17th 2008 5:00pm GMT -4 thru Sunday, October 19th, 2008. Most will be able to access this, and other affected sites by mid-day Saturday. Thank you again for your patience while I do this migration!

I have a small collection of LLLL.com domains I need to part with due to a recent situation that forced me to move my family. This situation ended up emptying my bank account and now I’m forced to sell off some of the domains I was going to use for future sites. This is a sacrifice sale as I really need the money, so I’m willing to part with these domains for a very reasonable price.

Keep in mind that there are no more LLLL.com (4 letter .com) domains available. Even prior to the sale of the final LLLL.com domains, the domains listed below were estimated at similar values with no traffic, no active site and no monetization.

Back in August, I had the domains valuated again using the Domain Tops automated valuation service. I’ve done a little research and Domain Tops seems to have a good conservative value on these domains, but I trust no automated valuations. Therefore, I went to one of the most respected domainer forums in the domaining industry, NamePros, to get a valuation from the community there. The valuation provided there was more conservative than what Domain Tops listed due to current market factors.

Most of these domains have some branding potential, but I’m not going to fool myself into thinking they’re worth a mint.

LLLL.COM Domain: bwhu.com
Potential Branding Example: Best Web Hosting Upstarts

Based by its characters, DomainTops estimates the domain BWHU.COM to be worth around… $93 USD

NamePros Valuation

BWHU.com- Mid to high $XX, probably closer to mid $XX

LLLL.COM Domain: cjhx.com
Potential Branding Example: CJ Hit eXchange

Based by its characters, DomainTops estimates the domain CJHX.COM to be worth around… $91 USD

NamePros Valuation

CJHX.com- Low to mid $XX, probably around $30

LLLL.COM Domain: cywm.com
Potential Branding Example: CY Window Manager

Based by its characters, DomainTops estimates the domain CYWM.COM to be worth around… $91 USD

NamePros Valuation

CYWM.com- Mid to high $XX, around $65 maybe…

LLLL.COM Domain: osqc.com
Potential Branding Example: Open Source Quality Control

Based by its characters, DomainTops estimates the domain OSQC.COM to be worth around… $119 USD

NamePros Valuation

OSQC.com- Around $25-40 right now

LLLL.COM Domain: qsvn.com
Potential Branding Example: Q [Quality] SVN

Based by its characters, DomainTops estimates the domain QSVN.COM to be worth around… $67 USD

NamePros Valuation

QSVN.com- Around $30

LLLL.COM Domain: svxw.com
Potential Branding Example: SVX [Subaru SVX] World

Based by its characters, DomainTops estimates the domain SVXW.COM to be worth around… $87 USD

NamePros Valuation

SVXW.com- Around $20-30

Since this is a sacrifice sale, I’m not going to set any hard numbers on these domains. Instead, I’m willing to entertain reasonable offers that are around the value that was given from the NamePros community. Of course, higher offers are always welcome.

In addition to the above domains, I have the following brandable domains that I am willing to part with, for the right price. If you would like to make an offer on any of the following domains, please contact me directly with your offer. Also, if you are a professional domainer, I am willing to entertain a bulk buyout price for much less than the sum of the individual domains. All serious offers will be considered!

• badboygeek.com
• citprogram.net
• drsmokegood.com
• imgdl.com
• realworldfitness.info (.net & .org Included!)
• topshophop.com (.net & .org Included!)
• toxicvalley.com (.net & .org Included!)

I really hate to do this as it means swallowing my pride, but things are a rough until finances settle down again. If you are not interested in purchasing a domain, but you want to say “Thank You” for the information I’ve provided on this blog, please consider making a donation.

In between unpacking boxes (yes, I’m moving right now) and cooking dinner for the family, I wanted to put up a quick post to let everyone know that yes, I am here. Yes, I have read your comments. No, I’m not ignoring you. Finally, yes, I will be returning to blogging.

In fact, I wanted to take this opportunity to announce that I am officially going full-time with Blogging by the beginning of October. By this coming weekend, you will start to see more posts on this blog.

For those who are observant and have noticed some changes in my MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog profiles, I’ve already been quite busy with rolling out a couple niche blogs and getting them off the ground. This has been my primary focus for the last few months. Once I get finished with what I need to do on those sites (by Oct. 1st), I will be launching 2 More blogs.

One of the new blogs, which will announced here, will focus on fitness training for the average guy using average equipment, working around hectic schedules and dealing with all the trials that 25-35 year old working, family men face daily. My neighbor (27 yr old) and I (31 yr old) are the willing victims and co-authors who will be posting our journey’s, successes and failures as we document going from dough boys to ripped muscle men over the next year. The other blog is adult in nature and this will be the only public mention of it you will hear from me.

More will be revealed later as to why I disappeared and what all has been going on behind the scenes, but for now, this work-at-home dad needs to get some food on the table and get back to unpacking.