Here are the main reasons:

1) I kept getting random automatic charges from GoDaddy that were never explained. The amounts were always different, and I never received an invoice, receipt, or explanation of the charges.

2) Namecheap is less expensive. I always put privacy on my domains so I do not get spam or other unsolicited forms of contact. GoDaddy charges $10 per year per domain for this service. On Namecheap.com, it is FREE. For me, that’s close to $1000 of savings per year.

So here is exactly how to transfer your domain(s) from GoDaddy to Namecheap:

1) In your GoDaddy account, make sure you have turned off PRIVACY for all the domains you want to transfer. NOTE: It won’t work if you don’t do this. The transfer process will take a few hours and shouldn’t be enough time to compromise your privacy.

2) Also in your GoDaddy account, make sure each domain you want to transfer is “UNLOCKED”.

3) Go to NAMECHEAP.COM, choose “Transfer Domains” and complete the checkout process there.

4) In your GoDaddy account, under “Authorization Code,” choose “Send by Email” for each domain you want to transfer

5) In a few minutes you will receive an email from GoDaddy with an “EPP Code”. Copy that code and go to your Namecheap account, and go to “Transfers in Progress”. Click on the domain name and paste in the EPP Code you got from the email associated with that domain.

6) Wait for an “Approval Email”. In my experience this usually takes about half an hour.

7) When you receive the Approval Email, click on the link towards the bottom of the email to indicate that you approve the transfer.

Click “I Agree” on the page that comes up.

9) Go back to your account at GoDaddy and go to Domain > Pending Transfers. It make take a few minutes to show up, but pretty soon you will see the domain listed in this Pending Transfers area. When you do, check the domain and click on the “Accept/Decline” button, then press “Accept”.

Done! Nothing else to do. In the next few minutes your domain will switch over to Namecheap with no downtime. Your nameservers and other information will automatically be carried over.

You might want to go into your Namecheap account in an hour or so and make sure the WhoIs privacy has been enabled on each domain. If you find that it hasn’t, you can add it yourself or contact their live support and they will do it for you promptly.

Twitter does impose some limitations, and if you exceed them your account can be disabled – temporarily or permanently. You’ll likely get a message that says something like this:

“Sorry Twitter Message: You are unable to Follow User at this time please try later”

Or

“You are unable to follow more people at this time.”

Here’s the info from Twitter about the Twitter follow limits:

“Last year, Twitter imposed reasonable limits to help prevent system and user abuse. (You can read more about that here.) If you hit a Twitter limit, we will tell you by showing an error message in your browser when you try to perform an action. If you’ve hit a limit, it means you’ve exceeded one of these limits:

* 1,000 updates per day
* 1,000 direct messages per day
* 100 API requests per hour
* Follow limit

We do not limit the number of people who can follow you, but we have put limits in place to stop people from aggressively following others. Everyone is allowed to follow 2000 people. After that, follow limits are based on the number of people who are following you. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter, and everyone is subject to follow limits, even high profile and API accounts.”

Twitter Follow Limits

More info about getting more Twitters here.

Recently, I got a new one that’s my favorite. I like it because it’s the most flexible and configurable one of all the ones I’ve tried. It’s very powerful and it works well.

They call it Get More Twitters. Check it out if you’re into Twittering.

Aweber Integration Plugin.

• All in One SEO – Standard. Handles meta tags and titles.
• Google XML Sitemaps. Gotta have a sitemap for Google. This does it automatically.
• Restore Post ID. After you tweak your Permalinks for SEO, the latest version of Wordpress makes it difficult to find out the post ID for your pages and posts. You need these for certain functions, like including or excluding the page from the main navigation. This plugin makes the post ID’s show in the admin interface again. Just makes it easier.
• No Category Base. This makes it so your blog doesn’t have to have a category base like www.myurl.com/category/blog-post.html. Instead, your URL can look like www.myurl.com/blog-post.html.

Other plugins I use often:

• WP-Table-Reloaded. Excellent if you need to display data in tables in your blog.
• WP-Postratings. Great for allowing reader to rate a post 1-4 stars. Looks nice.

Two excellent paid (not free) plugins:

• Caffeinated Content. Automatically creates relevant blog content. Can be good for SEO.
• Ninja Affiliate. Makes it easy to add affiliate links in your blog. Makes the links look nice, easy to manage, and tracks clicks. Also has cloaking ability. Highly recommended.

Also: HTML on Pages puts the “.html” back on your pages and Automatic SEO Links automatically links up certain text to where you’d like it to link, which helps for SEO.

Now, this subject has been covered alot online, but I’m going to talk about what I do when I set up a Wordpress blog since it’s on my mind as I set up this blog today.

The first thing I do is set up Permalinks.  Under settings > Permalinks > Custom Structure, I pretty much always put /%postname%.html

That makes the URL of all your posts look like www.myurl.com/my-subject-matter.html instead of www.myurl.com/?p=123.

Next, I take a couple of minutes and install several key plugins…

What I’ve decided to do is to do some talking about matters related to the business of internet marketing, since that is where I’ve been making my living for the past several years.  I get so many questions about it all the time, and it’s a deep and endless subject.  In the past, I’ve found it difficult to keep blogging on a regular basis, but we’ll see how it goes.