easyDNS Blog - Tips and Tricks

Running an affiliate program? Don't pay for sales you already had in the bag

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:31:29 -0400

People have tried this on us so many times I figure it must still work in many cases so after the last one I decided to post a brief note about this.

We run an affiliate program via Commission Junction, it pays $20 per new customer acquisition. We also come up first in all major search engines for our own name: "easydns", "easydns.com", "www.easydns.com", and "easyDNS Technologies Inc". Every online business probably comes up first in Google for their own name. (If you don't, you have larger problems and you should probably address those).

Here's what I consider, if not a "black hat" PPC technique, a grey one which we're not interested in because it costs us affiliate commissions on sales we would have gotten without the affiliate ever being involved. Here's how the scam works:
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How to use your own domain name with Google Apps

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:40:09 -0500

Many Ayromlou does it again, publishing another step-by-step tutorial, complete with screen shots on how to use your own domain name on easyDNS with Google Apps..

How to use your domain name with blogger

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:52:35 -0400

Title says it all, easyDNS member Many Ayromlou wrote a clear step-by-step mini-howto today explaining the procedure to get your domain name registered through us working with your blogger.com blog:

http://www.nerdlogger.com/2007/05/how-to-use-custom-dns-name-with-blogger.html

My only comment is Step 6 shouldn't be a few hours' wait, not unless you've already typed your domain name into your browser before you do this and now your local ISP's nameservers have cached your old IP.

But thanks to Many, I'm sure a lot of bloggers interested on using their own domain name with blogger.com will reference this.

Four essential components of Search Engine Optimization

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:02:39 -0500

I've been helping a longtime customer debug getting his website setup with a google sitemap and stealth redirection and he asked me in more general terms if I had any advice for him around search engine optimization.

Here are four essential "must have's" for SEO. Three you can do right now, the fourth is not under your control as much. Before embarking on a concentrated SEO campaign, be sure the first three are in place.

Continue reading "Four essential components of Search Engine Optimization"

Want to reduce email spam to your mail server? Stop using backup spooling

nospam@example.com (Mark Jeftovic) — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:33:57 -0400

It is with regret that we have come to the following conclusion, but here it is: Offsite backup SMTP spoolers and backup mail exchangers have become worse than useless

The problem is spam and the software that delivers it exploiting the weak authentication schemes inherent in the SMTP protocol itself. It used to be an annoyance, then it became a concern, it is now an epidemic and has resulted in the death of the offsite backup MX handler.

What happens is this: spammers try "dictionary attacks" on target domain names, trying to deliver email messages at random usernames at the target domain. The primary mailserver knows which usernames are valid and rejects the rest. The offsite backup MX spooler doesn't know what usernames are valid and what are junk, so it just forwards everything it receives for a domain it is spooling for to the primary MX handler.

Spammers and other malicious parties know this, so they may not even bother trying the primary MX at all, they'll just throw everything at the backup mail spooler which dutifully forwards it all (or tries to) to the primary. It is a dead-easy method of launching a Denial-Of-Service attack as well.

So it is with a heavy heart we have to admit that any utility of having an offsite backup MX handler is in most cases far outweighed by the advantages it hands to spammers and other miscreants.

The good news is this: without a backup mail spooler defined for your domain, originating mail servers simply queue the mail locally for a later retry. So owing to the design of the SMTP protocol, you do not really lose any redundancy when you remove a backup MX spooler from your DNS settings. But you probably cut down on the amount of spam your domain receives through the back door that is the backup MX spooler.