Archives for May 2010

Is GDI a Scam?

May 29, 2010 by

Have you heard of GDI?  It’s short for Global Domains International.  At it’s most basic level, it’s a domain registrar and hosting company.  But, underneath that facade is a MLM network.  Here’s how it works.  For $10 a month, you get a .ws domain, hosting and email.  You get 10 emails, hosting and access to a sitebuilder software package.  The package itself is pretty weak compared to some of the more popular hosting/domain packages.  Godaddy gives you 100 emails and 10gb space for $4.99 a month, but no domain included.  Domains are less than $1 a month with them, however, so your total cost is only about $6 a month.  1and1 hosting is 3.99 a month, includes 1 domain, 600 emails, free private registration, and 10gb host space.  In a straight comparison, GDI looks pretty weak.

Where the advantage comes is with the MLM network.  For each person in your downline, you get $1 a month in commissions.  It’s infinite, so you can build your downline as far as you like.  Build it up far enough, and you could end up with a pretty incredible income from it.  With a fully built downline, you would have a fairly maintenance free residual passive income.  The holy grail of income.

Of course, 98% of people who join an MLM network fail in the first year, so think twice if you think it’s easy money.  In fact, it may be something to avoid altogether if you aren’t planning on making use of the domain and hosting as well.

But, is GDI a scam?  No.  Just another MLM network.  A pretty good one if you’re into that sort of thing.  They’ve been around for over 10 years and have built a pretty large network in that time.  And it wouldn’t take too awful much to get to the point where your downline was at least paying your $10 a month for you.  And if you got to that point, you’d be getting free hosting out of the deal.  Any more than that, and you’d be in the profit.  Maybe worth a look.

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Is There a Best Time to Publish a Blog Post?

May 3, 2010 by

Depending on which blog you’re reading at any given time, you will likely read a completely different opinion on when to publish a blog post.  Some will argue that you should post right away in the morning so that you’re front and center when all the coffee drinking, early risers are opening up their morning reading tabs.  Others will say you should post late at night so that you get in front of the “oldest first” queues for those same morning readers.  Others might say you should publish several posts a day for different time zones around the world.  Yet more might say that they only post at the end of the week and over the weekend when the competition is lighter and they can command more attention.

But, this post isn’t about what others might say.  It’s about what I say. (It’s my blog, I can do that.)  And, here’s my take on publishing times.  It’s completely up to you.  Only about half of my posts are, like this one is, published in the future.  The other half are usually published when I finish them, so they are at whatever time of the day that inspiration hit for the day.  Of the ones that I future post, a majority of them are published mid-morning.  For me, that works better.  I find that if I post too early (<10am Central) the traffic is much lighter.  I think this is likely because the post gets buried under all the 8-5 west coast bloggers who are posting stuff right away in the morning.  If I post late at night, it also seems like traffic is lighter.  My theory there is that many people read their blogs and such at work.  (Shhh.  I won’t tell.)  Which is why I don’t like posting on the weekends either.

If I do future post, I tend to post somewhere in the middle of the day.  Somewhere between 10 am and 2 pm is where I usually put them.  And that seems to work quite well for me.  But, results may vary.  You may find that your readers are predominantly east coasters and like to read in the early morning before work.  You may find that your readers are overseas, in which case their schedule will be drastically different from yours and you may want to future post late at night or very early in the morning.

What I’m trying to say is that there is no hard and fast rule about when you should post.  You can’t template your blog to someone else’s blogging experience.  You’ve got to forge your own path and find the methods that work best for you.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to some one else and try what they suggest.  That’s how we all learn.  But, in the end, what you do with your site may be different.

P.S. if you want to read a great post on some blogging rules that are not worth following, check out Lisa Barone’s post on The 5 Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership.

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