Friday, February 6: Out of the sudden, the blog went down and instead of the usual content, it showed something completely different. Of course, the first reaction was to check what happened, to see if we got hacked or something. We were really surprised and pissed to see that the domain name has been transferred to GoDaddy and the registration info changed (only minor changes, so we suspect it’s an automated service). Then we contacted Namecheap to find out what happened and to solve this issue. Because they have no phone number listed on their website, we had to send them an e-mail and half an hour (and a few angry tweets) later, we got a reply from them, saying that the issue has been forwarded to eNom (Namecheap is a reseller for them) and that the dispute is now between eNom and GoDaddy and they’re sorry, but this matters usually take quite some time to solve. You can imagine we were really ‘thrilled’ to hear that. I also contacted GoDaddy by email and was adviced to send an email to my situation to one of their departments.

Since the domain name was hijacked on Friday afternoon, nothing happened until Monday when we decided to start making some phone calls. First we called eNom. A pretty rude lady checked the domain and said that, since the domain has been transferred to GoDaddy, they’re the ones we should talk to. I said that I spoke with Namecheap and that they said the dispute is now between eNom and GoDaddy, but that didn’t matter, she said I should talk to GoDaddy. I mean, it’s not like it’s their responsability. And with me already being really angry, the last thing I wanted to hear is eNom not giving a shit about my domain name.

So, the next thing I did was call GoDaddy. After about 30 or 40 minutes spent over the phone with them, I was advised to do two things. Fill out a form and send it to the Change Account department and contact their fraud department. Neither of these two departments had phone numbers so I had to send them emails. The Change Account department replied quite fast, but said they can’t help and advised to send an email to a Transfer Dispute department. So, basically, I’ve sent about seven or eight emails to different GoDaddy departments. Oh, and I also got a reply from the email sent on Friday, in which I was being told that it seems I’m currently dealing with this situation with my registrar, eNom, so I should continue doing that. Whatever that means. However, that’s a good thing and it means that eNom started the dispute for my domain.

Now it’s Wednesday and I still haven’t got any replies from GoDaddy or NameCheap. Meanwhile, I considered my options and I will probably move all the content to one of the domain names I own but haven’t used, until I get Autounleashed back. I don’t want to think about how long this will take (I’m hoping it won’t be a couple of months), but you can imagine that the longer it takes, the more devastating the effects for the blog will be. First of all, Google will probably screw me soon, starting to remove me from the search results pages. Seconds of all, I’d like to thank my advertisers, who were really supportive and, after I send them email to tell them about the situation, they replied that this won’t affect our current deals and told me to let them know once the issue is solved so we can proceed with our contracts (of course, I will have to repay their loialty with some free advertising, but it won’t matter, as long as I get my domain back). But, unfortunately, I also have a large share of my revenues from Adsense and CPM networks. And no traffic means…yes…no money.

That’s about it for now, I will update this post as soon as I get news from either of the registrars.

Update 1 (Thursday, February 12) Today I got a reply from Namecheap, saying that they’re currently handling this situation, and now are waiting for a response from GoDaddy. They also said they’ll keep me updated once something new happends. Not really helpful, but at least they answered. However, I also did some reasearch and found a quite similar case, that happened last summer to SolidHost. They got their domain name back in about three weeks, after starting a lawsuit agains NameCheap and eNom. And that’s not comforting at all. I’m gonna wait a few more days and see how things evolve and if I don’t get any good news, I guess I’m really going to start taking into consideration legal actions against the registrars.

Update 2 (Thursday, February 17) Unbelievable, it’s been 11 days and still no email reply from eNom. I called them again today and, after waiting about 20 minutes to get my phone call taken by one of their reps, I was told that all I can do now is wait, and that “this things can take months”. We’ll see if a lawsuit will speed things up a little. Meanwhile, tomorrow we’ll start moving the blog to another domain, because this seems to be the best we can do for now. Damn, this is really starting to get frustrating!

It looks like the advertising industry, especially the online one, will be one of the healthiest industry, during this recession (link)

Svetlana Gladkova from Profy did a study of how the advertising industry handled the Grand Depresson in the ’30s. And what she found out is pretty promising. It looks like advertising was doing way better than the other industries. The explanation for this is quite simple: companies still invest large amounts of money into advertising, because it’s the best way to make consumers believe everything is going great at the company. Like Svetlana says, not everyone looks at the stock market to see how a company is doing, but instead, if they see more money put into advertising, they assume everything’s ok. And it actually looks like forward-thinking companies that didn’t cut their advertising budget in the ’30s were the ones that thrived.

Chris Crum from SmallBusinessNewz reports that the online advertising market is up 15.2% in the United States and 21% in the United Kingdom. And things look good for the industry, because if companies will cut some of their advertising budget, it will be from traditional advertising. Online advertising has the main advantage of offering easier measurable conversion rates.

So, it looks like car blogs won’t be affected by the economic crisis as much as other industries, and we really hope everything’s gonna be allright.

“The good news is that we saw large gains from brand advertisers including Anheuser-Busch, Unilever, Toyota and General Motors, among others, which bodes well for the future,” said Jon Gibs, Nielsen Online’s vice president, media analytics.

In the past, I’ve heard some people saying that with the automotive industy going downhill, less money will be spent into online advertising, but apparently it’s the other way around, the big companies realizing that one of the best ways to keep on track is to invest more in advertising. What can I say, except that it’s great news for all of us car blog owners, and especially for our wallets.

MediaPost (Via Marketing Pilgrim)

Anyways, I saw some stories showing up about a possible Digg conspiracy. I think that’s BS. Voting scripts are for lazy ass users, not for serious ones and, to me, it’s obvious that if you’re using one of these, you’re only interested in profiting from Digg and bring no real value to the community.

I’m not a Kevin Rose fan, but this time I’m with Digg. I mean, how can I work a few hours everyday checking out stories and you want to vote 3 times more than me in just a few minutes? It’s just not fair. And, though I never had any experience with it and I’ve heard that Digg support is extremely slow, I really think that accounts banned by mistake will be reinstated. If not, then I’m sure they did something wrong.

So, like I said, it takes a lot of hard work to start getting results, and you need to analyze whether it’s worth it or not at a certain point. And here’s one of the best posts I’ve read, about the Skellie for Problogger. I advise you to give it a read, because it will give you a more clear picture of the social media environment.

About three weeks ago, all of the sudden, when I tried to login into my account, I got the message “Error! We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it.” I’ve sent them three or four emails and no reply so far. I’ve had other problems in the past, took them a little while before answering, but it’s never been three weeks.

Like I said, Adsense, with all its features, is a great program, almost perfect for small to large publishers, but when it comes to customer support, it really sucks.

Thanks a lot for the prize, John!

Besides Auto Unleashed (who doesn’t need a facelift right now), some of my other blogs (AutoMotoGadgets, Everything below $29.99 and even this one, Blogged in Traffic) will be very happy about this Though the package allows me to use the Citrus theme on unlimited blogs, I’ll probably only use it for one or two (where it fits better), haven’t decided yet which ones, but will do it soon.

The beauty of blogging is that, by its nature, it allows you to network very easily with other blog owners in your domain and create a relationship with them. Yeah, I know, the first question you might ask yourself is “Why would I want to comment on my competitor’s blog?”. Well, first of all, I wouldn’t say that commenting on other similar blogs is helping your competition, but instead is giving mutual benefits to both blogs (yours and the one you’re commenting on), because, let’s face it, the car audience is so large and there’s roomo for everyone. And it also allows you to create a relationship with other blogs in the car niche, relationship that could help you a lot in the future. Not to mention that it’s easier for someone else to notice you after you commented on their posts, which increases the chances that they’ll subscribe to your blog and maybe give you one or more links in the future (if you have quality content, of course).

So, where to comment?

I see a lot of novice bloggers going straight up to the big blogs in the niche and start commenting there. If you ask me, that’s a big mistake. First of all, if you take a look at the big car blogs, like Autoblog or Jalopnik, you’ll notice that their comment system is not like the one you’re used to on most blogs. First you have to create an account and only after that you’ll be able to comment. So, no link for you. Yeah, I know, usually the comment name links are rel=”nofollow”, so worthless for SEO, but saying interesting stuff will make people click on it and maybe they’ll like your blog and also subscribe to it. Though there are only a few that do that, usually they’re valuable, because they’re genuinely interested in the domain (and who knows, they might be other bloggers).

But the biggest problems about commenting on the big blogs is that there are close to zero chances of the blogger noticing you. If you look, you’ll see that the big blogs get tens, maybe hundreds of comments for each post, which makes you almost invisible.

Instead, you really should focus on commenting on smaller blogs. I’m not talking about commenting on every blog out there, but instead choose about 5 or 6 medium blogs and comment frequently. Because they get a smaller number of comments, you’ll be noticed for sure, so it’s only up to you to make and keep the blogger interested in you. Also, it will be easier for you to push some stories to the blogger, without sounding like a spammer. Auto Unleashed, eGMCarTech, Carscoop or BMWBlog are only a few examples. Usually, these medium blogs are being followed by the big blogs, so this will also increase your chances of getting a link from Autoblog or Jalopnik.

How to comment?

First of all, read the posts carefully and choose only the ones that you find interesting and where you really have something to say. No one will care about you if you start dropping comments like “Thanks for the news”, “Didn’t know that”, “That’s great” or “Oh, that’s cool”. No! Write a comment that brings something valuable to the conversation, or something funny, or anything that will make you stand out of the crowd. And don’t drop only one or two comments and then just wait for the links to rain on you. You should do that frequently and you’ll definitely see results. Maybe not in one day, week or month, but trust me, you’ll see the results.

Second of all, don’t drop links. Or at least, if you decide to do it, make sure it’s something related to the subject or something that brings new info. Don’t just say “I wrote about this too, check it out here”. That’s a big mistake. Usually you’ll get you comment deleted or, if approved, it won’t get you the blogger’s interest.

Top Commentators plugin

There’s a very interesting plugin, called Top Commentators that allows Wordpress based blogs to display, in the sidebar, a list with their most active commentators. And…this is where it really gets interesting…the links are without the rel=”nofollow” tag, which means search engines will love them and you’ll be rank higher in Google, Yahoo, etc. Unfortunately, though very popular in some blogging areas, in the car domain they’re pretty rare, so if you come across one, make sure you subscribe or bookmark that blog. You’ll notice that we don’t have that on Auto Unleashed, but here on Blogged in Traffic we have it, so feel free to comment

Conclusion

So, the conclusion is that if you didn’t comment on other blogs before, it’s definitely time for you to get started. Because, if done properly, commenting on other blogs can bring huge benefits to you and your car blog.

Some time ago the Thesispremium Wordpress theme was launched and today we have another interesting one. Unique Blog Designs are the guys ‘responsable’ for a lot of blog design, including hot shots like Shoemoney or John Chow and the Citrus theme is available in 6 different colors with pricings starting at $79. There are three packages available:

Single-Use Package - $79
This package allows you to use Citrus Theme on one (1) website or blog. This theme comes pre-installed with the three (3) original flavors - Mandarin Orange, Lemon Lime and Pink Grapefruit.

Multi-Use Package - $99
This package allows you to use Citrus Theme on unlimited websites and blogs. This package also comes with all six (6) color schemes - Mandarin Orange, Lemon Lime, Pink Grapefruit, Blueberry, Tangerine and Rotten Tomato.

Web Developer Package - $149
This package allows you to use Citrus Theme on unlimited website and blogs, as well as develop it for your clients sites. This package comes with all six (6) color schemes - Mandarin Orange, Lemon Lime, Pink Grapefruit, Blueberry, Tangerine and Rotten Tomato. This package also comes with the original Photoshop (.PSD) templates of Citrus Theme.

Can’t really compare it to Thesis, becaus I think they’re very different. It depends a lot on what your blog needs.

Is it worth paying for a premium theme?

Well, it depends. If you have good coding skills (php, css) than you should be able to fully customize a Wordpress theme and you can use the extra money for something else. However, if you don’t, then you really should think about getting one. Considering that custom designs are pretty expensive (can start from $500 and go up to a few thousands bucks), a premium theme might just be the right choice for you. Especially with almost every premium theme out there offering support, which is very important in case your coding skills suck.

Why do I need a custom theme?

Actually, you do! You can always use a free theme (there are hundreds available), but just think about how many times you were surfing on the net and came across a blog with an uncostomized theme. In how many cases you closed the tab in less than 5 seconds? Maybe the content was great, but the fact that the owner didn’t bother to create a customized theme makes me think that he’s really not interested in the blog. Yeah, it’s true that car blog readers are not that tech savy and might not care whether your blog uses a free or premium theme, but remember that it’s just like in real life: there are a lot of great products that don’t get noticed because the package sucks.

And by the way, if you want the chance to win a free $97 ‘Citrus Theme’ package from John Chow, you can head over to his post about the theme, drop a comment there and hope you might get lucky.

So far, from what I’ve seen, the networking part is much weaker than Digg’s. You can’t add friends, share stories with them, etc. But the Buzz’s main attraction is the fact that if the story is good, you could be featured on the front page of Yahoo. Yup, that’s right. You’re site will have a link from the world’s most visited website, according to Alexa.

But are things this easy? Of course not. Don’t imagine that you’ll submit your story to Buzz, get a few friends to vote and then you’ll get thousands of visitors. Here are a few reasons I don’t think the Buzz will work for small publishers. First of all, the service has editors that manually accept or deny the stories, so you’d have to come with a really, really good stroy. Then you have to consider another aspect. When one of their story got front paged, TechCrunch recorded their highest traffic day, but their servers almost snapped. And imagine that TechCrunch doesn’t have a shared hosting account, they have some very powerful servers. Small blogs usually collapse from the Digg effect, which means a few tens of thousands of visitors. Imagine what 800,000 visitors will do to your server.

Probably if they’ll setup a system where they also can send medium traffic, a few thousands visitors, then it will become a pretty powerful traffic source. But until then, I think the Buzz is worthless for small and medium publishers. Of course, I don’t have a clue on how exactly it works now, but everyone is testing right now, so we should have the first important reports soon.