January 23, 2008

Trouble!

First off, when in closing the prior post I state “...and yet 24 cent richer...” I rely on the intelligent reader to grasp that I am actually just $38.76 less in the hole financially. And it does not get better.

Onward. I had a great name for my website.  You will not find it on this page anymore though, because it was so very good that SOMEBODY ELSE IS ALREADY USING IT (or rather, something very close to it.) This is a very good lessen for all web entrepreneurs.

The Tale of My Domain Name Woes:

11:42am

This morning I received an email from a business owner informing me that my website name infringes upon his legal claim to his business name. I am devastated. I have grown quite attached to my domain name. And I cannot believe my sloppiness in that I did not manage to encounter this other business while I was perusing other websites. This company is very well known right in the city where I am located!

 My embarrassment and disappointment aside, I now have to find a new name for my site and then register new domains and rebuild my sites. While the dollar cost is not great (about $12), it does put me further in the hole financially, Yes, now I am $50.76 in the red; and my own lost labor hours are significant enough that I am extremely grateful I did not pay a web designer.

12:00 midnight (January 24)

I have set up my new domain names and have begun rebuilding my blog site. I will rebuild the main site as an “experimental” site at http://www.MyScienceWebsite.com so visitors can watch it as it morphs into something real.. It will remain “experimental” until I have it fully completed. This is my idea so far.

Meanwhile, the other business owner has been extremely cordial with regard to my transgression, but I still feel awful. I am truly quite upset by this turn of events and will spend a whole day and a half in a funk. I make myself keep working though, but it is with no joy.

I feel the same things I think anyone does when being corrected: defensiveness, embarrassment, indignation, embarrassment, self loathing, embarrassment, and so on. The instinct to react defensively is strong. But, I am not in the right. I must remember my ultimate goal and behave as a good business neighbor. And, a positive thing is I have met, in a memorable sort of way, a valuable member of the science education and business community, (right in my very own town!). This could be important later. So, I tell myself that we all make mistakes and I have conducted myself with integrity and dignity. Time to move on. (and write this up in my blog in some sort of interesting way)

• (A word of wisdom about defending the right to use a legally purchased domain name - To those who might think that I am a bit of a pansy for so quickly abandoning my very clever domain name, I say this: I believe one must understand the difference between what is legally defensible, and what is wisely defensible when it comes to using a name that may bear some similarity to that of another business.
       While the name I initially chose is in fact similar to several other like businesses and websites, and the words are ubiquitous enough in our lexicon that I perhaps could have defended my domain name legally; the expense would have been great, not just monetarily, but more importantly in damage to my “good name” and standing in the community. Had the other business owner not been in my town and not been doing business in an arena that also engages my intended audience, both in the real world and on the web, I might have decided to use my original domain name anyway.
       Given my exact circumstances however, and my desire to have a positive image in my physical neighborhood and in the web community, I decided the wise and ethical course of action was to find another name. In the end, I too am a business woman and I decided this was best for my business. I find nothing too flowery about that.
       For those who encounter problems of this nature, take a look at http://www.chillingeffects.org for practical legal information on such issues, but consider carefully the full impact of any action you take. Do not act on emotion.)

A lesson to take from this is that I should have done a business name search at the beginning of my grand enterprise to ensure the reasonable uniqueness and availability of my site name as a business entity. (Here is a link to a site that offers such a service starting at about $200. http://www.legalzoom.com/sem/tmsearchpage.html?WT.srch=1&se=google&q=business+name+search&refcd=GO318091s_business_name_search
&tsacr=GO879757807&gclid=CIC4pKTckpECFRsTawodKEVZPA However, one should shop around and make sure the service is thorough.) I have decided to make the investment to secure my business name once my site is more fully developed. I am not doing it just yet because I may very well come up with a catchier name more well suited to my final web product.

Another lesson: I did something right in marketing. Word did get out about my new site. Maybe it was my husband, who emailed everybody he has ever met a link to my site and a slightly menacing recommendation that they visit it. Maybe it was my Yahoo profile that has a link to my site. I know in fact that it was in part because of links I posted on Yahoo Answers, as these show up on Google along with my site. Also, to be certain that search engines (like Google, Yahoo, etc.) could find my website, I, at every opportunity, listed “key words” on the various other websites that asked for them (web hosts, Google Adsense, other advertisers and so on). I do not yet have even a rudimentary understanding of how all this works, but those are the things that I did. 

As promised in my last post, What is WHOIS? WHOIS is “a tool used to look up information about domain names (such as transact.com.au) on the internet. A whois tool looks in online databases to get information about when a domain name was registered, who owns the name and how to contact the owner.”(ref. http://www.actewagl.com.au/education/Glossary/default.aspx ) To beginning web developers, anytime you are asked to verify your WHOIS information or update keywords, DO IT! This is how search engines find your site.

(My last post also mentions the importance of getting other sites to link to mine.  I'll leave this subject until next time.)

So, now I have to rebuild my website. This is a good time to point out that using a free web hosting service has its drawbacks. I do not have full artistic control over the appearance of my site. And I cannot upload web pages I design myself (yeah right, as if I have suddenly acquired that skill!). And, I do not have access to the full HTML code for the pages I design using the free web host's tools. To say it another way, if one(that would be ME.) has to close one's site, one is SOL and has no option except to build a new site from the ground up. Perhaps those who are more expert know ways around this, but I suspect those who are more in-the-know can afford to pay for web hosting. I have decided that as soon as my website can bring in ten or so dollars a month, I will upgrade to the cheapest paid web hosting.

Until next time,

Margaret Doran
Inexpert, and Now $50.76 in the Red, Web Developer