I don’t own a single .ME ccTLD domain name, and I have no plans to buy one any time in the near future, but I thought the following press release issued by the .ME Registry was interesting. They are partnering with WordPress to offer a URL shortener on the WP.me domain name.

In my opinion, this is a great marketing idea for the registry, because a domain extension’s usage in the market place is what makes consumers aware of its existence, leading consumers to purchase these domain names, which in turn adds value to owners of premium domain names. The more value they have, the more investors and consumers will want to purchase them – making it a win/win for all parties.

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More than 225,000 bloggers will now be directing readers to their latest posts using a .Me domain extension, thanks to a newly announced partnership between the .ME Registry and popular blog creation site, WordPress.com. The agreement led to the creation of WP.Me – the world`s first two-letter .ME domain. WordPress is now offering the domain as a URL shortener…allowing its hosted bloggers to provide abbreviated links to their posts, and making it much easier to promote those links on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“These short links are about 70 percent smaller than the permalinks for a given post,” says Matt Mullenweg, a co-founder of WordPress. “Thanks to our friends at the dot-ME Registry, WordPress is able to offer one of the shortest and most
effective URLs available today.”

According to Mullenweg, WP.Me is different from other URL shorteners in a variety of ways:

* Every blog and post on WordPress.com will now have a WP.Me URL.
* They only work with WordPress.com-hosted URLs.
* The links are permanent and will work as long as WordPress.com is around.
* WP.Me is spam-free because WordPress constantly monitors and removes spam from WP.com.

“Dot-ME embraces and celebrates this kind of innovation,” says Predrag Lesic, Executive Director of the .ME Registry. “In the short time dot-ME has existed, our domain extension has broken many barriers to become so much more than just another ccTLD. WordPress saw the potential of dot-ME and we applaud them for it.”

Visit WordPress.com to learn more about how to get your very own WP.Me URL.

I personally don’t own many domain names that end in Blog.com or News.com, but I think they have considerable value. Just about every industry, hobby, sport, country, city….etc has a blogger or news source that covers the segment. Many people perform searches for “topic blog,” as well as “topic news” to get great information.

A developed site with unique content on one of these types of domain names can lead to big advertising deals and increased traffic. First off, Google loves blogs, news, and other websites that have frequent updates and new content added regularly. When you have a blogging platform (such as WordPress) installed on a site that ends in Blog.com or News.com, Google and Yahoo are given two big hints about what will be seen on the site, and by all indication, will rank them well.

So these names clearly have value, but they can be difficult to sell at a premium price. The difficult thing about selling these domain names – especially Blog.com domain names – is that many people begin to blog for the love of the topic rather than to make money. These people don’t necessarily start their blog site to earn a living, and therefore can’t justify paying significant money for these valuable domain names. However, if you can convince them of their ability to make money from writing about their passion, it can help you raise the price when they inquire.

One way to increase the value of your domain sale is to ask a person who inquires what he has planned for the site. Probe further and ask about the topic and the amount of traffic he hopes to receive. Do a bit of research and see who is advertising in that vertical and remind the blogger that if he owns the category defining domain name, he is already ahead of the game. With his traffic goals and the key domain name, he can command more advertising revenue, which will defray the cost of the domain name. You might also research more and show him affiliate programs in that vertical allowing him to make money.

Remind him that you have the best domain name for his blog, and while the cost might be high up front, it will pay dividends in the future. You can also offer him a lease to own deal, allowing him to build his website on the domain name you ultimately control. This will allow him to slowly build his base at a fair cost, while still providing the opportunity for a buy out down the road. Of course you need to be cautious about lease deals, but they can and do work.

Below are some good Blog.com and News.com domain names that are for sale (some premium and some drops) – I do not own them:

AstronomyBlog.com
BermudaBlog.com
CapeCodBlog.com
DadBlog.com
HeadhunterBlog.com
LacrosseBlog.com
LaptopBlog.com
MatchmakingBlog.com (IMO, this is a great deal because of the high value dating leads)
NursingBlog.com

AcupunctureNews.com
AnthropologyNews.com
BeerNews.com
BritishNews.com
CosmeticSurgeryNews.com
EconomicNews.com
FarmingNews.com
GeneticsNews.com
InvestorsNews.com
ObstetricsNews.com
TeachingNews.com

I was having a few problems on the back-end of my blog for a couple of weeks. I assumed it was because I recently updated my blog to WP 2.8, and although I was kicking myself for upgrading, there wasn’t much I could do. After a couple of weeks, I was faced with other random problems, and it began to get more than annoying.

After my designer was unable to access the admin panel of my blog, and I couldn’t even access it unless I was on my personal laptop, I began to worry. What if my laptop suddenly lost access, too, and I was blocked from my own blog. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but I was lucky to have the help of Kevin Leto, who taught me a trick.

While I had assumed my problems stemmed from a faulty WordPress upgrade, Kevin wasn’t convinced. He had me go into the appearance section of the WordPress dashboard and select the default theme temporarily. Once I did so, all of the problems disappeared, allowing him to determine that the fault was in my current theme coding rather than WordPress.

Once Kevin isolated the problem, he was able to search through my files to find a really small error that was throwing off a lot of back-end functionality and he quickly rectified the error.

If you use WordPress and encounter problems and errors, switch it to the default theme and try to replicate your errors. If the errors disappear, the problem is in your theme – not in WordPress.