Before Christmas, Blacknight had a sale on their ‘.ie’ domain names.
I’ve never bought one of these domains before for two reasons - 1) They’re very expensive compared to other domain extensions and 2) In typical Irish fashion, there’s apparently a load of hassle involved in obtaining one.
I couldn’t pass up this sale and had to buy one. So I went for walsho.ie - mainly to find out if there really is a lot of hassle involved.
Bought it, and thought I had it sorted.
Alas, I did not.
I had to send a signed letter to them, outlining my claim to the domain, and what my intentions were for it.
A signed letter.
Meaning I had to type it, print it, sign it, scan it and then send it.
I had no idea what to write either, and it’s hard to take it seriously when I’m justifying my claim to own “walsho.ie”.
So here is my letter to the good people of Blacknight (they are very efficient I must say, I’m not knocking them with this post).
“Claim to Walsho.ie
Dear Sir/Madam,
I write this to outline my claim to the domain name “walsho.ie”.
Currently I own the domains “walsho.net” and “walsho.com” which are used for my own personal blog, which I have been running since July 2007. You’ve probably heard of me, I’m kind of a big deal.
I wish to add “walsho.ie” to my repertoire of domains for my blog, as I feel it is essential that I obtain the Irish domain extension, especially because my website’s tagline reads “The Blog of an Irish Hero”. I’m a patriotic man you see. What sort of Irish Hero would I be if I didn’t even bother getting a paltry “.ie” domain extension? Not a very good one I’ll tell you.
You may be wondering where the name “walsho” came from. Well, I’ll be happy to explain. Very happy indeed.
You see, my surname is Walsh. Now, if you add a crafty little “o” to that, you have “walsho”. Pretty sneaky, I know. But the name first arose in my mid-teens. I find that in casual conversation, sometimes addressing someone with a single-syllabled name doesn’t quite fit the bill. Just doesn’t cut the mustard. My forename is Mark, so that doesn’t work either. And so, we had “walsho”. A few mavericks tested the waters with “Walshie” but it never caught on. I’m glad. It’s a bit effeminate. And as I’m sure you know, I am a mountain of a man, bursting with testosterone and masculinity.
People began to use this as a nickname for me. They’d say things like, “Hey, Walsho, c’mere a minute” or “Oh Walsho, you da man!” or “Stop that Walsho, you’re hurting me”. You get the jist. Wait, is it “jist” or “gist”? I never know. It’s hard to find answer online, since the word is slang, I suppose.
Admittedly I have never enjoyed it when women I’ve been intimate with have called me Walsho. Perhaps if she was being tongue-in-cheek, that’d be grand y’know, but in general I don’t like it. Nicknames are more for your mates really aren’t they?
Now, another thing I’d like to mention is th- Hold on a sec. A song just came on iTunes that I don’t really want to listen to. I’ve got it on shuffle like. Be right back.
Okay, where was I?
Oh, nevermind.
I’d like very much if you could let me have the domain. I have signed below, as requested. I shall hope you won’t be flogging that signature on eBay for a small fortune, you little rascals.”
For those who wish to see the signed pdf version, click here. Note that I could only find a thick marker to sign it with at the time.
I received a prompt response this morning:
“Dear Registrant,
Thank you very much for your application for the registration of the domain name: walsho.ie
This has been accepted”
Cheers lads.
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Posted on 7 January '10 by Mark, under Business, For The Lolz. 5 Comments.
It’s been a while since this site has seen me talk about my websites and all that. I’m going to go back to it, just for this one post.
I’ve recently set up a new site - Today I Lol’d. It uses the same script as the very popular FMyLife. I think it’s pretty obvious what the site’s all about, once you take a look.
Users submit stories, other users vote or comment on the stories. Everyone has some lolz.
So why blog about it?
I want you to help me promote it. I spent whatever money I had on my recent interrailing trip, so have zero cash to spend on promoting the site.
So think of everything I’ve done for you walsho.net readers. All the entertainment, all the laughs, the tears, the orgasms - everything.
Do whatever you can. Join the site, submit a story, tell a few friends, blog about it, link to it, stumble it, or even follow the twitter page or join the facebook group. Then you could always recommend the facebook page to friends. Digg users can see the submission here. I’d be grateful for anything. Every little helps. And anyway, the site’s good, you’ll enjoy it.
Or just give me lots of money to go promoting*
(*Note : Money will almost certainly be spent on alcohol).
G’wan.
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Posted on 4 August '09 by Mark, under Business, For The Lolz. 2 Comments.
Right, I’ve been working on a few different things, and while I don’t want to give away everything on here, I’ll give a brief rundown of what I’ve been working on online lately.
Current Projects.
Firstly, my there’s WebDesignLucan, which, from the title and website, is quite apparent what I’m doing with that. I’ve earned some income from this, but nothing major yet. Check out the site for full info. For this I’ve ordered some new business cards which are damn good looking (I’d take a picture but my camera is currently on holidays in America with a family member at the moment). This has brought along other projects though, and I’ve already made good contacts from this.
Next, there’s my site about Andrei Arshavin. This guy has made a name for himself in the footballing world lately, so I snapped up the domains AndreiArshavin.org and .info. Currently the site is #11 in google rankings for “Andrei Arshavin” and has been rising well. I hope to get this on the front page within the next day or two (please don’t smite me oh mighty google). I’ve surprised myself with this one, it turns out my SEO skills aren’t completely awful after all. I’m praying he goes to a big club soon, which would make the site more valuable. I still have some perfecting to do on the site, so a little TLC every so often and this could be a success. Currently looking at the site burns my eyes a little bit.
Next up we have YourDebs. This site is seriously wrecking my buzz. I just can’t get any decent work done on it, and if you were to look on it now you’d see some joking things I’ve written on there in the meantime. This site has potential, but will only fulfil it if I actually put in the work, and put in the work soon. When I get this site running, I’ve going to call in some favours from friends who run related sites (I’ve three contacts in total that can definitely be of help, if I catch them on a good day and maintain my irresistible charm)
I have a plan for a similar website, relating to a certain aspect of the Leaving Cert. There is only one other site like this that I can see, and it seems that it hasn’t been updated since the stone age, so I’m excited to start buying domains for that (I’ve four in mind in total) and working on the site.
Irish sports fans will know Padraig Harrington recently won… eh, something. I saw it on the news anyway (I don’t follow golf at all) and decided to pick up the domains PadraigHarrington.org and .info. I haven’t really started working on this (have installed wordpress and found a disgusting golf theme for it) but I will soon. This man supposedly has quite a long career ahead of him, so hopefully it’ll be a decent investment.
While these sites are being developed, money can be scarce, so I’m also writing an ebook to bring in some quick cash to sustain me for a while.
I also want to begin working on WebmasterDiscounts again, as I still believe that with just a few minutes work every day, that site could do well.
These are the main things I’m working on right now, and I apologise that I’ve been quite vague with some things, but I think it’s necessary sometimes. If anyone’s interested in buying any of the domains/sites I’ve mentioned here, feel free to contact me, as some projects are getting ignored right now because I have a good bit on my plate, and I’d prefer to have a few websites running well rather than a lot of websites running like a bunch of pensioners on a hot summers day.
This blog.
As for this blog, I have some little things to do on this. Minor changes and installations, namely :
- Sort a small coding issue (the previous/next entries link does not appear when browsing by category, any help appreciated if it’ll save me floundering around with code. Nerds : I know the piece of code I need, and tried putting it in single.php which I thought would solve it, but it was an epic fail).
- Get myself one of these Twitter things.
- Sort the pages (about, links etc).
- Install some new plugins (particularly want a working “digg” plugin, anyone know of one?).
- Decide on getting rid of some text links (”Featured Sites”).
- Work on some free advertising (RSS directories etc).
- Consider editting the “Popular Posts” thing, because the plugin has some shitty posts coming up there, and I’d like to showcase some of my favourite posts there instead.
- Some work on Entrecard (consider changing this blog’s category on there, and also spend the shitload of credits I’ve built up lately).
- I’m also thinking about getting a whole new theme for the blog. Currently it’s very “Make Money Online” style, and I don’t think this suits my blog anymore.
And some exciting news about the blog! I’m introducing a new regular post which will appear every Sunday. The idea is nothing crazy, but I think it’s quite unique, and it’ll have that typical lovable Walsho spin on it anyway. I’m excited about this, as it’ll be an easy enough post to do each week, but hopefully it’ll be fun too, and I’m interested to see the site stats when people know there’ll be a new posts every Sunday. Be sure too check it out and tell me what you think.
I’m happy with the blog lately, more and more often I’m getting compliments on it (many of which aren’t from myself OR my mother), and I’m getting a lot more comments recently too. I’ve gotten into the habit of replying to every comment on here, so do leave a comment for me 
That’s all I can think of that’s worth mentioning, so I bid thee a fond farewell dear reader (this post is nowexactlyonethousandwordswhichIcouldn’tresistsoperhapsI’matadOCD).
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Posted on 31 July '08 by Mark, under Business. 4 Comments.
I’ve been mentioning lately that I’m back in the Internet Entrepreneur mode, but haven’t yet given details. So, here we go.
Over the past week I’ve been developing CleanseAcne.com, editing the site and writing content for it (which involved quite a bit of research). The articles on there total up about 1,200 words, so I wasn’t exactly lazy. Anyway, I sold the site last night for $80, which I was happy enough with. There were some people bidding who seemed very keen, and I have two people wanting me to let them know if the sale collapses for some reason, so I must have done something right!
Next up, an old website - GuideToWordpress.com, which was a collaboration between myself and Smemon. Admittedly I did very little work on this project (basically I let him use the domain which I owned), so when we completed the sale for $75, there was a split of 80/20 in his favour - a perfectly fair arrangement in my eyes.
Add to this $10 for a link sale (on here) and ~$7 from TNX links, and I’m around $100 on the first full week back. Not too shabby.
I’ve also been working on the sale of ImgSlut.com, which should have sold to someone who offered $40 just for the domain. He has not been online since though, and I’m starting to get tired of waiting.
I also picked up the domains AndreiArshavin.org and AndreiArsashavin.info. This guy is a Russian footballer who has lit up the Euro 2008 competition, and a few big name clubs are rumoured to be after him. Because I’m so lazy, I’d like to just sell the domains for a small profit, but may have to put a website up and sell for slightly more. Time will tell, I’m in no rush. If he moves to a large club then the value of these domains could rise significantly, so I shouldn’t be hasty.
I have a main project that I’m trying to get going, but it’s proving difficult to get off the ground. I’m keeping this to myself right now, but it’s nothing too new at all.
In the meantime I’m going to keep trying to clear my server and sell off some of the 20 or so domains I own. Does anyone want a really terrible domain & adsense website for free? It’s ‘goinghairless.info’, and cost me shit all to make, and I’m sick of having so many domains lying around idle, so if anyone wants it, leave a comment and it’s yours.
So, things are getting going again. Small money at the moment, but that’s to be expected. By the by, did anyone happen to notice who’d purchased an Entrecard ad on this blog yesterday? The big dog, that’s who.
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Posted on 29 June '08 by Mark, under Business. 3 Comments.
An online friend of mine, Jason, is running a contest, with a prize of the new Creative Vado, as seen below.
Pretty sexy isn’t it? Details of the competition can be found at this link, or alternatively this one, and here is my entry.
So to win this I must explain how I’ll make money online using this gorgeous little piece of equipment.
Firstly, any readers of this blog will know that for the past few months my main focus has been on my exams, and they finished just over a week ago, so only now am I getting back into the Make Money Online mode. And I’m loving it. Having been out of the game for so long, I’m back in with renewed enthusiasm and vigour, and this pocket video camera would find no more suitable home than my own.
As a blogger I’ve achieved a good few things. I’ve been published in national newspapers, been blogged about by some bigtime names, and even been named in the list of top 30 bloggers under the age of 21 (having just turned 18 
). But during all my time blogging, I have never, ever, made a video post. Why? I simply do not have the technology. If I were to win this Creative Vado, I could incorporate video blogging into my posts on here, which I feel would add a whole extra dimension to the blog. People around the world deserve to rest their reading eyes and listen to the soothing sounds of my voice and allow my accent to glide in and massage their ears. Obviously the mere sound of my voice would drive millions to the blog, causing an unprecedented rise in the value of the site and advertising on it.
Secondly, I am one cool, popular, modest, handsome devil. I mean, check me out. Here’s me with a famous rockstar by the name of Carl Barat.
The coolness is undeniable. And look at the sparkley eyes on me. Like two crystal clear pools of blue.
I think I could make plenty of money online simple selling images and videos (adult or otherwise) of myself. I already know of one woman who told me she’d love to have more pictures of me. The reason for this? Some would say it’s because I’m her son. I however, believe it is because I’m just too irresistibly handsome, and she would like something to treat herself and her posse of female friends with. The vast plains of the internet are quickly drying, and they need to be irrigated with images of me in various locations doing all kinds of wacky things. The masses are crying out to throw their money at me for this.
Other ways I could use this to make money online include using a video to advertise some products of mine/affiliate products, then sending traffic to the video on both Youtube and Metacafe. Or I could always sell the thing on ebay. Really though, I’d like to stick to the “I’m so handsome and cool” route I’ve taken here.
Finally, I ask that Jason and Derek show some human qualities and reach out to my poor kitten. Here he is :
Yes, that is my cat. And after he accidentally ate the cookie he had made for me, he felt awful. You know what he said to me?
“The only thing that could make me feel better is a creative vado.”
Well there you have it. For the sake of coolness, attractiveness and feline wellbeing, I deserve that pocket video camera.
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Posted on 24 June '08 by Mark, under Business. 1 Comment.
I’ve sold another site I can no longer run due to time constraints.
Your Gphone Blog was set up by me a few months ago, and during the time I owned it I made only three posts on the site. In fairness it had still managed to get decent enough rankings in Google, but there was no way in hell I’d have time to take advantage of that or try to improve it.
So I made a sale thread for it yesterday, with an ambitious Buy It Now price of $60. The thread died fairly quickly, it just got buried, but one guy did PM me saying he’d pay $30 for it right there and then, and the offer was just handy so I accepted.
$30 and less clutter on my server, I’m happy.
All this selling the websites I no longer have time for is like a digital detox for me or something, I’m loving it.
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Posted on 23 March '08 by Mark, under Business. 3 Comments.
Finally, I’ve become the number one search result for my own name!
For ages Wikipedia stood between me and that coveted number one spot on the Google search results for “Mark Walsh”.
I wanted to make this more boastful, but unfortunately Wiki is still ahead of me in the search results for “Irish Hero”, so I cannot yet declare that the number one online encyclopedia can suck my balls.
Apologies if that last remark was a bit vulgar, I’m currently planning a website based around life’s vulgarities. I would tell you that there’ll be more on that to come soon, but we all know there probably wont be. In fact, I find so little time to work online lately that it’s almost unlikely that I’ll get to a) make the new site and b) blog about it afterwards.
I’ve managed to put up my proxy site again, 4getschool.com. It was down for a while when my proxy host kicked me off for not paying the bill. Their goddamn site was down! When they emailed saying my bill was due, I went to pay and the site was down. So then after a few days they inform me they have taken my site down because of my failure to pay my bills. Again I try to pay and the billing option isn’t working. So after sending them a classic sarcastic response I decide that maybe they’re not the right proxy host for me! I’m currently testing out another one, so let’s hope it’s slightly better.
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Posted on 21 March '08 by Mark, under Business. No Comments.
I mentioned recently that I’d finally managed to conduct some online business amid all my school work these days.
Y’all remember the lolcatblog I set up at ShavedLittlePussy.com (also used lolcatblog.com) ?
I had posted on the blog every saturday for about a month, so nothing major, hadn’t even set up a feedburner count for the blog, or monetised it or anything. Well I threw it up for sale and within a few hours had gotten a Buy It Now bid of $100! I was delighted, considered the site had not been too developed. I think the quality of the two domains and the concept gave it the value. The few posts on there were funny enough, but were really nothing special. I was reluctant to sell, because it is a site I wanted to develop, but I needed some moola (I’ve recently gotten addicted to buying on ebay) and once I got the $100 offer there was no refusing it.
I also managed to get rid of an old site that had been cluttering my server and Godaddy account- yourbabies.info sold for the grand price of $10! I mentioned it somewhere on DP and somone PMed me offering to take it off my hands, so I was happy just to be rid of it, since it was completely stagnant under my care.
I’ve also noticed the price of LLLL.com domains is rising already, with $50 being an average price for any crappy one going. Should my ebay addiction get the better of me once more at least I have 3 of those to fall back on for more funds!
Now let’s just hope my new jumper off ebay arrives tomorrow along with the complete works of Oscar Wilde.
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Posted on 19 March '08 by Mark, under Business. No Comments.
Entrecard’s development has been interesting to watch, hasn’t it? When it first exploded onto the scene, pretty much everyone was singing its praises, including me.
Then we kind of realised, wait a second, the traffic from this is a crock of shit. Perhaps that was a bit harsh, but we soon noticed flaws in entrecard’s system, and too many people were cheating it, and this caused the whole ranking system to get a bit screwed up.
However, it does get me some visitors, but another advantage of entrecard is that it has helped me meet some new bloggers, and get my networking on. They recently introduced the option to say where in the world you are from, and then find others that are near you. I’ve since got talking to Bebo Author, and we’ve done a little link exchange. Then today, I found an interesting blog by a guy from Galway. The reason it was so interesting for me is that his name is Marcus Walsh. Marcus Walsh!
It’s actually a nice blog, but I do wish someone with such a similar name to my own would upgrade to his own domain and wordpress. Good thing I bought walsho.com before this guy did though eh? 
So I’ll be keeping entrecard for a while. I’ve built up a good few credits so I’ll pick a day soon and go on a free advertising splurge.
In other news, I was glad to see my image hosting site, ImgSlut.com get a bit of action yesterday. I’ve only recently set it up, and had a custom header designed for it, and am hoping that its memorable name will make it a modest success. It actually earned $1.03 in adsense yesterday, but hasn’t even got any hits today, so I really do need to do some sort of promotion on it. Here’s the main bit of the header :
Do let me know what you think of it, and also let me know of any promotion ideas you may have for an image hosting site. I’m thinking of hiring a few guys to just go spamming a bit, along with
my proxy, but that’s a pretty undesirable method of promotion.I have my mock exams next week, so have been studying hard(ish), and even went to the library today to study in a quiter environment that my house. As always, the good website ideas are flowing at a time when I need to be focusing on schoolwork, and I’ve gone and made two new websites this week. I’ll be posting about them both in full soon enough, but for now we’ll say that one of them is a Joint Venture, and the other is a funny one that I’m doing for my own enjoyment than anything else.
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Posted on 12 February '08 by Mark, under Business. 3 Comments.
As regular readers know, I’m cutting down heavily on my online time lately, with school and exams coming up. I hate not tending to my online business, particularly this blog, since I used to pride myself on my daily updates. This is where I need your help.
I’d love to get someone for a guest post on here, so the blog’s being updated while I’m away trying to study. You can include some shameless self promotion at the start or ending of your post. This blog has a respectable number of subscribers and readers, but in total truth there are many other blogs you could guest post on that bring you more traffic, but since I’m such a nice guy and have probably helped you out at some stage, you should do me a favour
But really, I’d be very grateful if someone could write up a guest post for the blog, and as long as it’s decent and somewhat relative to the general sort of posting on here, I’ll accept it.
On a completely unrelated topic, I stumbled across this thread the other day on Digital Point. The guy was selling a “website” (was a domain with a non working template thrown on it) with the domain hostproxys.com.
Immediately he started getting shit over the domain name, over the fact that the plural of proxy is proxies. The thread just turned into a back and forth argument with the seller and some grammar pedant (I’ll admit I’m a grammar pedant too, but I wouldn’t go to the lengths this guy went to!) bitching at each other over the spelling. My piss-taking instincts went into gear and I posted
“Look let’s stop this crap. Now who wants to buy hostproxyz.com off me?”
It didn’t go down too well, but I’ll blame that on the lifeless DP’ers before I question the hilarity I perceive myself to have.
That’s all for now anyway guys. Remember to give me a shout about helping me out with a guest post, you’ll get some good karma!
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Posted on 4 February '08 by Mark, under Business. 2 Comments.
