Some Things I've Learned In The Last Weeks.......

It's been a challenging time for me and My Doggie Doodle, along with the other two business opportunities I'm involved with. I thought this information might hep someone else to avoid the drama and wasted time, so here goes.

You Tube Issues

1. The music on My Doggie Doodle's video is now changed. Even though I had permission from the composer and performer to use it, You Tube decided it was a copyrights violation, which I disputed. Today, I find that someone has added advertising for the song, along with a link to Amazon where they can buy it below my video (no big deal, I don't object to that).
2. I tried to monetize the video and paid through Adwords to have it promoted. Good news, lots of views. Bad news, my "monetize" request was denied due to copyrights claims. Today, I find that the video is monetized, by whom, I don't know. So the video and promotions got stopped. I am now in the process of replacing the background music with some generic, non copyrighted song.

Hosting Issues

1. I was having trouble sending and receiving emails from my site, and some people who signed up for my newsletter never received the verification notices. After a few days of investigation done by the kind folks at MailPoet Plugin, I discover that my IP address is "spam" listed in 7 or 8 different places.
2. I start putting in manual requests to get my site delisted, which worked for a few. The violations go back to the beginning of the year. I didn't even have a website until August.
3. After a conversation with GoDaddy, I spend $150.00 to get an SSL certificate, which means I have my very own IP address and can't get blamed for someone else's spam, along with a security system that will alert me of any changes to my site and fix any malware, etc.
4. After the SSL certificate was added, my Amazon aStores and Widgets stopped working. I have the widgets working again, but not the aStores and Amazon doesn't support WP so they can't help me.

Lessons Learned:

• You Tube had terrible customer service and no way to contact them with issues
• USE GENERIC MUSIC or write your own
• When you make a change to your site, even if it's for the better, the "snowball effect" will kick in and other problems will arise.

I'm sorry there are no pictures, I'm too aggravated to look for any!

Hope this helps somebody avoid some trauma.