How Peter Askew Sold Brevard.com

Elliot Silver
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Peter Askew is a domain investor who I admire because of his knack for website and business development on nice domain names. Earlier this year, I wrote about his VidaliaOnions.com business, and I also wrote about the launch of BirthdayParties.com. In addition to these lines of business, Peter also found time to build and launch Brevard.com, a geodomain with a focus on the town of Brevard, North Carolina.

This afternoon, Peter shared the story of how he built, launched, and ultimately sold Brevard.com. Peter’s story was shared in a series of tweets, and it’s a pretty quick read.

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Trying Out GoDaddy WordPress Premium Support (WPPS)

Elliot Silver
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GoDaddy recently launched a new service called WordPress Premium Support. From what I understand, customers who use the service can have GoDaddy’s WordPress support team resolve a variety of issues related to their WordPress-based websites. They are also able to add various forms of functionality to existing websites. I just signed up for the Basic Subscription plan ($79.99/month) to fix some issues and make updates to my website.

As you may have noticed last Friday, DomainInvesting.com was not accessible for part of the day. I attempted to update one of my plugins, and for some unknown reason, it basically caused the website to crash. Everything below the header was missing. Even after I deactivated the plugin, my site was still unavailable. My guess is that it failed because I had waited a long time to update this one particular plugin. Luckily, GoDaddy’s support team was able to use a backup of my website to restore it with minimal loss (a few comments and a couple of articles).

On Monday, I decided to sign up for GoDaddy’s WordPress Premium Support program to give it a shot. I still need to have that plugin updated correctly, and I am hopeful the support team will be able to troubleshoot the issue and get the plugin updated and functioning correctly. I also need to have the Subscribe to Comments plugin updated and implemented like I had it before. When the subscribe box disappeared, I deactivated the plugin and have not reactivated it.

I am using GoDaddy for two reasons:

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Cannabis Cup: Ganjapreneur Interviews NORML Founder Keith Stroup

Elliot Silver
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One of the potential pitfalls domain investors tend to have when they shift to development is a lack of active involvement in the vertical where their website operates. With my own websites, I have tried to get involved in the spaces my sites operate. I recently wrote about Ganjapreneur.com, and I want to share an example about how they are becoming involved in the cannabis space, beyond the website.

Andrew Rosener, the CEO of Media Options and the Founder & CEO of Ganjapreneur.com,  recently attended the 2015 Denver Cannabis Cup, an event billed as “the world’s leading marijuana trade show.” The event plays host to vendors who sell a wide variety of cannabis related products and services. There are also trade organizations, cannabis users, and a variety of marijuana legalization advocates in attendance. The purpose of Andrew’s attendance was to generate awareness for his Ganjapreneur.com brand.

While at the event, Andrew was

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Howard Lefkowitz Shares Insight About His New Company

Elliot Silver
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Howard Lefkowitz is something of an icon in Las Vegas. As the former CEO of Vegas.com, Lefkowitz has tremendous experience building and managing a great brand, and he has a massive rolodex of contacts in Las Vegas and in the travel industry.

While attending  NamesCon, I had the opportunity to have dinner with Lefkowitz, and we chatted about his new company, One Degree World. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of this travel technology company is that it  is in the process of launching quite a few websites on new gTLD domain names, such as Vegas.Ninja  and Paris.Buzz. During the conference, it was also announce that One Degree World agreed to buy Vegas.Club for $100,000.

Following NamesCon, I was in touch  with Lefkowitz and asked him several questions about his new company. Lefkowitz answered my questions, which I have shared below.

My opinion is that the new gTLD domain names need

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5 Keys to Running a Successful Blog

Elliot Silver
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It’s difficult for me to believe, but I have been blogging for almost 8 years. I started this blog in the Summer of 2007 (under the Elliot’s Blog moniker), and I have published nearly 5,000 articles in that time. Based on traffic, revenue, and even longevity, I would consider this to be a fairly successful blog.

There are many people who would like to turn a blog into a business, and I thought I would share 5 things that I think helped this blog become successful. Of course, you are welcome to share your thoughts about this, as well as more general thoughts about what makes a blog successful.

When you’re finished reading this you should check out  Heidi Cohen’s blog  for some great advice on publishing a blog. Heidi was a professor of mine at NYU, and I think you will benefit from reading her blog. There are quite a few articles about blogging with some valuable tips.

5 key factors that I believe have made this blog successful:

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WordPress Plugin Request: Shadow Ban Comments

Elliot Silver
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15

On occasion, I will think of a neat plugin that can be used for one of my websites that uses WordPress, and when I search for the idea, I usually find an existing plugin to use. Last week, I thought of a plugin idea, and I could not find one available, so I thought I would blog about the idea.

On websites like Reddit, they have what are called “shadow bans.” In short, a shadowban is a type of ban that the banned user isn’t aware of. The user can continue posting comments and links that appear to be public, but they are only visible to the user.

I thought it would be

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