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.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Free Domain and Hosting from One.com

April 29, 2008 by

If you live in the U.K., Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or India, One.com is currently running a sale whereby you can get a free domain and hosting for the domain for 12 months. If you’re looking into starting a blog or are wanting to start a affiliate site, but don’t want to risk the money to see if it will work, this could be a great deal for you.

I don’t have any experience with One or their hosting, but they do seem to be somewhat reputable. Anyone else have any experience with them? If you’re in the US, I still recommend 1and1 hosting for your domain and hosting needs, but it’s hard to pass up a free domain and hosting if you’re in the above listed countries.

If I was in those countries, here’s what I would do. Go sign up for a domain and hosting. It’s free for 12 months, so you have 12 months to test anything that you want to. Put together a simple site with plenty of content and information on an affiliate offer of your choice. Maybe you use a script like BANS or the YEA mashup. Get the site set up and running. Then take the next 6 months to build links and promote. If you do it right, you could make a pretty good amount of money from it. And maybe it becomes worth it to pay for the hosting and domain after the free 12 months ends. Maybe you don’t make a dime and decide to drop both.

It’s a great way to test out a domain idea with very little risk. You can get your free domain and hosting at one.com.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: ,

And We’re Back

April 24, 2008 by

It’s been a very long day.

If you haven’t visited the site (or tried) today, you probably didn’t notice that we weren’t here. The host transfer that I started way back when finally went through last night at about 10:30 local time. Unlike some people, I am in bed at that time. I didn’t even notice until I got up this morning and checked my email.

So, shiny new host for the site and nothing works. I’ve been playing around with databases and settings and files and seem to have finally gotten things to work. I’m not entirely sure what I did to fix all of it, but it’s going and hopefully will stay that way.

Hopefully, the site will perform quite a bit better now that we’ve got a new host. We’ll see, but I’ve got my fingers crossed. *I should note that I’m already seeing major improvements on the admin side.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we made the move from Godaddy to 1and1.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , ,

How Many Neighbors Do You Have?

January 28, 2008 by

I found out that I have about 600 neighbors.  No, I don’t live in a major apartment building.  I’m talking about the server that I host this site on.   Thanks to a post by Max at ZedoMax, I found a site called myIPneighbors.com.  It’s a reverse IP domain lookup.  Type in your domain and hit enter.  Up comes a list of all the other domains that are hosted on the same domain.  In other words, all the other domains that are being hosted on the same server!

When I punch in this domain, it comes up with 609.  Some of those domains are mine (about 10), but the rest are not.  So, what do you think happens when one of those domains gets dugg?  Or when one of them suddenly becomes very popular because of the video that they posted on YouTube?  Even if my site is getting exactly the same traffic as it did yesterday, it’s going to be exponentially slower.  At the bottom of my old theme, I had the little doodad that would tell me (and you) how many queries were done to the database and how long it took to execute those.  On the old theme, it was about 50 queries and usually less than 10 seconds.  But on occasion, I saw it hit upwards of 45 and 50 seconds and on a few rare occasions, over 1 minute.  Not because my site was seeing an above average load, but because someone else on the same server was.

I hadn’t really given it much though, because at this point, I don’t really want to shell out for a dedicated server.  I figured it had to just be dealt with and go from there.  Well, when I found this site, I got curious.  This site is hosted on a shared server by GoDaddy.  Another of my sites is hosted on 1&1 on a shared server.  How many total sites are hosted on that sever compared to the 609 on the godaddy server?  13.

Maybe it’s time to switch around a little.  Did I mention that with every account through 1&1 you get two free domains?  You never pay for the domain or its renewal as long as you have the hosting account on 1&1.  Of course, to take advantage of that, you have to have a hosting account, so you’ll be paying extra to get just the domains.

I also noticed another interesting use of myIPneighbors.com.  If you want to know what some of your competitors are doing, look up their domain.  If they have a dedicated server, then the resulting list is most likely the other sites that they are working on.

So, how many neighbors does your site have?

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , , ,