It’s crazy to realize the Internet is a little over 30 years old. Although I date myself when saying I remember life before the Internet and email, the invention of the Internet has forever transfigured how we live life and do business.

In some ways, the Internet has brought us together. In other ways, not so much.

Mobile-friendly websites have been the talk of the town for some time now.

In fact, Stone Temple reports that mobile usage jumped from 57% in 2016 to 63% in 2017, while desktop usage is steadily declining year-over-year, going from 43% in 2016 to 37% in 2017.

And if those numbers hold true, we’re only months away from discovering that over 70% of internet users likely favor their mobile devices when viewing websites.

So, what does all this mean for your website?

Recently, a customer contacted me inquiring about steps they should take to improve their website speed.

This customer was adamant that their website ranking was greatly suffering because of it. While I agree with their assessment, let me be clear that ranking on page one of Google or any other search engine was not solely because of website performance or lack of.

Website performance is a factor, but not in this customer’s case. In fact, this customer’s overall website performance and SEO health put their competition to shame upon further review of keyword ranking, backlink profile, and domain authority.

Nevertheless, I discussed and walked the customer through a step-by-step process for what to check for to determine how to improve website performance, checking the following:

No sooner than a person is introduced to domain investing, affectionately known as “domaining” by domain investors as known as “domainers”, that they soon encounter the ramifications of legally transacting payment and agreement of domains.

Most new investors, a few old ones too, blindly play the payment roulette game when using PayPal or a non-secure payment method when transacting payment and agreement of domains.

Individuals soon come to find out they robbed themselves blind from receiving payment as well as losing their domain in the most horrific cases due to payment clawback, chargeback or disputed credit card payment by purchaser. 

It’s been one week since I boarded a plane from Orlando heading back to good ole’ Austin, Texas.

I thought I’d take a moment to share a few thoughts and interactions from my MERGE! 2018 experience.

As the 2nd Annual MERGE! comes to a conclusion in it’s final day, there were many sessions, keynotes and connections to be had and made from Day One, Day Two and Day Three.

Conferences like MERGE! tend to move at a lightening speed in person while it can be perceived as a long time when seeing the outlay of time on paper.

Nevertheless, the final day of MERGE! kicked off with a pasties breakfast bar and keynote from Stefan Pretty, CEO Subbly.co, entitled “Bootstrappers do it better”.

Although many points were about about bootstrapping, one of the key takeaways from Stefan’s presentation was how bootstrappers should constantly ask the following 4 questions at every twist and turn in their journey:

While settling down and preparing for the next day, I took a quick break to visit Domaining.com to discover any breaking domain industry news.

If you’re unfamiliar with Domaining.com, it’s a curation of publishers and bloggers that produce newsworthy content regarding the domain industry news.

In fact, you’ll likely find a few articles written by yours truly as a contributing writer for TheDomains.com and DomainNameWire.com.

Nevertheless, always checking at the top of the morning and again at midday, there was not much news that had taken place over the course of the day.

However, there was an article written by Morgan Linton — There is a new domaining blog in town – welcome NZ Domainer — that caught my eye.