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I have mentioned in the past that I seem to have an addiction to purchasing new domain names.  Although I went through a short period of time where I had halted any further new purchases, it got going again over the last few months and I’ve been buying them left and right.

Many domain names that I own get left to expire,  I cannot afford to keep up with the renewals of 75 domain names and I have been trying to focus on which I should be keeping, which should be sold and which I should just allow to expire when the renewal is due.

With this, I recently sold two domain names for sub £100 which I am happy about.  They were domains that I wouldn’t have ever found time to develop and I believe they have both gone to better homes.  The domains were:

1. www.pokerflop.co.uk
2. www.caketoppers.org.uk

I have also recently managed to purchase a couple of new domains that I am happy with and will be looking to develop them in the near future:

1. www.calculatevat.co.uk
2. www.extrapennies.co.uk

and I have one domain that is currently in Escrow (should be in my hands early this week) that I am really excited about.  It’s a five letter domain with a .me extension.  I understand that .me isn’t generally that popular, but this domain would work extremely well for a website I have been thinking about for a while and I hope that this goes through smoothly.  I’ll update this post with more information about the domain once it is in my possession.  If you follow me on Twitter, then you’ll likely find out sooner!

What are your experiences with buying and selling domain names?  Have you got a long list of domains that you own but just don’t have the time (or money) to develop them?

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I am a big cinema fan and will go and watch a new release pretty much every Friday.  Whenever I am at home, no matter what I’m doing around the house, it is likely that I will be watching a film.  In fact, as I type this post I am watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) – I saw it at the cinema and I now have it on DVD.

When given the opportunity to take a three month film rental trail at Cinema Paradiso in exchange for a review on this blog, I couldn’t refuse.  I was given a three month rental in exchange for a review, this post is based solely on my own opinion and is in no way influenced by the gift of the trial.

In the past I have been a member of LoveFilm.com (known as LF from here), a rival film rental company to Cinema Paradiso (known from here as CP).  Throughout this review I will be comparing my experiences with both to give you a better idea of the quality of service provided.

At first glance, the CP website design does look rather old fashioned, it would probably benefit from a bit of a facelift.  I also kept trying to visit http://cinemaparadiso.com which looks to be being squatted on at the moment.  If they could get their hands on the .com domain, it would benefit them greatly.

When it comes to movie selection I found CP to have a much broader selection and was able to obtain obscure titles such as F*ck (2005) and Who Killed the Electric Car (2006).  These films didn’t even show up when I searched for them at LoveFilm.

I also managed to get myself several new releases during the trial period, it may be because they have smaller member numbers than other services but this was defiantly something that was a big bonus of this service.

With any online DVD rental service, you manage the films you want to receive via a list that you create on the website.  This was one place that, for me, CP worked so much better.  At LF you can choose to set each film on your list to High, Medium or Low priority.  With a list over 50 titles in size, I found that this gave me very little control over what film I was going to receive next.  If none of my ‘high priority’ titles were available, I would be sent one of 30+ films from my ‘medium priority’ list.  CP on the other hand, allows you to order all of the films by priority and they made it very easy to swap these titles about and add any new release films to the top of my list.

The last thing I wanted to discuss was the delivery times.  If I was to post a DVD back to LF, I wouldn’t generally get my next rental until Friday of the same week (if I was extremely lucky) whereas CP would send me a DVD straight back and sometimes I was able to receive my next DVD, watch it and then return it again by Friday of the same week.

I’m not currently a member of any online DVD rental service and did cancel my CP subscription once the free trial was over.  This wasn’t a reflection of their service, I was very impressed by it, however in recent times my disposable income has dropped significantly whilst I save for my first property and so film rentals have had to be one of the first things that I cancelled and removed from my monthly outgoings.  If I was to resume an online DVD rental service again, I would certainly choose Cinema Paradiso.

You can sign up for your own 14 day free trial at Cinema Paradiso and memberships start at just £4.89 per month.

I was recently given the opportunity to review a SIGG water bottle for this blog.  Although I received the water bottle from PureKit for free, this doesn’t affect the review and I will be honest about my thoughts within this review.

The water bottle that I recieved was a 1.5 litre SIGG water bottle in dark blue.  Built using a single piece of impact extruded aluminium with no seams, the product is incredibly hard-wearing and is one of the most durable water bottles on the market.

Having a 1.5 litre capacity this water bottle holds enough to keep you hydrated for long hikes and camping trips.  I’ll be taking mine when going mountain biking as a backup to the bladder built into my bag.

The bottle itself is very lightweight, which makes it easy to carry around and unlike disposable plastic bottles there are a number of nice features that are better for your health and the quality of the product you store within it:

• Hygienically coated inside to help alleviate contamination of contents
• The internal coating is resistant to fruit acids and isotonic drinks to help prevent decaying
• An inside taste-neutral coating means that your drink tastes how it is supposed to

If you were looking for a replacement for those crappy plastic bottles you have been using, I would highly recommend a SIGG water bottle.  Thanks again to Pure Kit for sending me a bottle to try for myself!

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As I write this blog post, there are only 49 sleeps until the Think Visibility conference in Leeds, England.

On March 5th, members of the SEO, social media and affiliate marketing communities will be descending on the Alea Casino for two days of fun and networking.

This year there are ten speakers, covering twelve sessions and two parties.  Visitor numbers are limited to 250 and tickets are £125 each.  According to the Think Visibility website:

We try and cover everything we can to enable you to “Make more from your website”, SEO, PPC, Analytics, Conversion Rate Optimisation, Viral Marketing, PR, Usability, Accessibility and much more (we try to swap things around and not cover the same topics twice in a year)

Think Visibility was first brought to my attention by Dan Harrison last year but due to financials, I wasn’t able to commit.  This year I would really like to attend but the financials have been affecting this decision yet again.

The Costs

I estimate that the weekend will cost around £225 before even thinking about food/drink.  I have outlined below the estimated costs involved:

• £150 (inc. VAT) for the Think Visibility Ticket
• £60 for two nights accommodation
• £15 return train ticket

I understand that some people will be spending a lot more to attend, I’m lucky that I don’t live too far from Leeds and could make my way to Leeds after work on Friday if necessary.

The Decision

Walking around Tesco this evening, there was a 40″ Sony Bravia 1080P Wi-Fi enabled TV (*drools*) that had been reduced to £479!  I cannot explain how tempted I was to whip out the credit card there and then and take it home.  I already have a TV (though it is only 26″) so the upgrade is not necessary.  What made me change my mind (and go home without a new TV) was the thought of being able to attend the Think Visibility event, meet lots of new people and learn a thing or two that will help me succeed with my websites.  The knowledge I can gain and the contacts I can make, will no doubt be worth much more than ≈£200.

As soon as I got home, I visited the Think Visibility website and purchased my ticket.  I’ve no doubt I will benefit so much more from this purchase, than that of a bigger TV!

See You There?

Are you attending Think Visibility that weekend?  There’s a few people I know who are going that I’d really like to meet in person.  Let me know if you’re attending.

DarrenSingleton.com has moved to Darren.Me. Any future posts will be submitted there, thanks for everyone who has subscribed, please update your bookmarks and join in the conversation at the new blog!

Earlier today I decided to have a play around with the theme I was using on this blog.  As I do when starting the hunt for anything online, I typed ‘wordpress themes’ into Google.

After browsing through a couple of the websites I remembered that I had purchased a couple of WooThemes in the past but hadn’t put them to use.

This evening, I noticed a tweet from @WooThemes regarding this blog post.  Within the post, Siobhan Ambrose talks about the dangers of using free themes and how many of them contain malicious/unscrupulous code that may inject links into your pages without your knowledge.  In her words:

I don’t advise uploading themes from random websites directly onto your server – you never know what you could catch! There are some nasty diseases out there…..

Keeping your eyes open for exploits like this will ensure that you keep yourself and your readers safe.  Following this advice, I will be checking my blog much more throughly for exploits and will be looking at security measures I can implement to ensure the safety of the visitors.

This blog is now running Canvas by WooThemes and I will be customising the theme over the next few days to get it looking a little bit more personal.

DarrenSingleton.com has moved to Darren.Me. Any future posts will be submitted there, thanks for everyone who has subscribed, please update your bookmarks and join in the conversation at the new blog!

Merry Christmas to all of my readers old and new from around the world.

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, then I want to wish you a happy holidays.

Let’s look on to 2011 with a positive outlook and hit the ground running with everything we want to achieve!

It turns out there is a hidden beat box in Google Translate.  Follow the steps below to hear it for yourself . . .

1. Visit http://translate.google.com
2. Set the translation from German to English
3. Enter the following text in the translation box: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvzk kkkkkk bsch
4. Click ‘listen’

It cracked me up the first time I heard it and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to do something similar with any of the other translations . . .

(I’m not sure of the source because a friend sent me the content in an email. If you do know, please let me know in the comments – thanks)

I was excited last week when I checked my Affiliate Window account, to see that they had paid £36.25 into my bank account via BACS.  This is my first official payment from affiliate marketing and I was really happy to see it arrive.  Affiliate Window have a payment threshold of £25 and it was great to see that I had increased my earnings by a further £11.25 before I was paid.

Majority of the commissions have been earned through my gifts for men blog and the products that are reviewed there.  Leading up to Christmas I will be adding more content to Gifts4Men, to increase search engine traffic and hopefully sales.  It would be great to get the website to a stage where payments are received on a regular basis following an increase in traffic levels.

Have you received a payment from an affiliate network?  How much was your first payment and how did you feel?  I understand £36.25 is extremely small, but it is a start for me and I will be working on building this amount.