This week has been a roller coaster of emotions for me. Full of extreme highs (like 1 million views) AND extreme lows. It started out a few weeks ago. I had clicked on my blog link as usual (I knew I was only a few thousand hits away from the one million mark, which is so exciting), when I could not find my blog. Could. Not. Find it. Nothing came up at the link but a 1-page ad. For a second I thought my entire blog had been deleted. I was shaking. In a tearful panic, and after some frantic searching, I found out my blog was still intact and my posts were all there on blogger, only the domain I had been pointing to for the last year and a half (and every single link to my blog on pinterest or Google search) was broken. At one time at the height of my creamy mac n cheese recipe viral-ness, I was receiving almost 8000 hits a day! Now, with my links broken, just a few hundred. Then I found out some one had bought up my domain name...and wanted money for me to buy it back!
I'm not going to lie. I was heart broken. It felt like extortion. Matter of fact I didn't even come check on my blog or make any new posts since the day this happened. I was so close to 1 million views and now it was so sad to see hardly any daily hits. People are going to be looking for my Mac n cheese recipes and how to make sprinklers out of a 2-liter bottles, and won't be able to find me. In all honesty, it was my fault (and I feel so stupid) for not renewing my domain name early. I had no idea that people were waiting to buy up expired domain names, it's a hard lesson to learn. I am basically "digitally ruined" if I can't get my domain name back. Now here I am, in a bidding war for my own blog domain name, and I feel like it's kind of negotiating with cyber "terrorists". I'm trying to figure out how my small time, little ol' me blog had a big enough of a traffic target for someone to buy my domain name out from under me in an attempt to sell it back to me. I will keep you posted on the negotiations. In the meantime, I have purchased www.clevercraftycookinmama.net and will start to post under that domain for now.
Even after all of that tragedy, I still managed to hit that 1 million views mark this week anyway!!. Which is a cause for celebration!!
That's a ton of people!! I just wanted to say thank you to anyone that has found a good recipe here, a funny mom story, or made a fun craft with their kids. Here is to many more years of blogging hilarity and recipe attempts.
Thank you so much
~Jenn
