No matter which country you’re from, this decision will affect you in one way or another. Read this and this when you get a chance to.

What This Means

As previously mentioned, EzineArticles.com is actually a decent site with decent content compared to others. They have been around since 1999 and if such a website can lose 35% of its traffic just like that, then I’m sure you can imagine that things look grim for content farms and sites which don’t provide value in general (minisites and mass developed sites, for example).

I don’t want to waste your time by stating the obvious through a huge blog post, so as a conclusion, I’ll simply list some of the changes which have been or might be implemented on EzineArticles.com according to their blog post (if this doesn’t make it clear that even big players are taking Google’s recent changes seriously, nothing will):

1) Their rejection rate is expected to climb from about 40% to 60%

2) They will expect the articles to be exclusive to you as of this point and in the future, they’re thinking about only publishing articles that are exclusive to EzineArticles.com (in other words, you might not be allowed to publish an article there that has been published somewhere else)

3) They added a nofollow attribute to all links but have reverted back to dofollow links according to a recent update

4) Thousands of articles were removed on Friday and many more will be removed in the future

1) Momentum, momentum, momentum. There have been a LOT of conferences this year and that makes it hard to decide which event is worth attending. TRAFFIC South Beach definitely stands out as the only TRAFFIC event organized by Rick and Howard in 2010 and this much is certain: quite a few people are looking forward to it and momentum has slowly been built as of the point when the announcement that TRAFFIC South Beach will be the only event organized by the two has been made.

2) Special guests. I love the fact that they have two “extremes” as special guests: Don King and a US Congressman. Now you can say a lot of things about Don King but not that he doesn’t stand out from the crowd. This fact alone makes him a person worth listening to from a business standpoint.

Do you have to like him? No.

Do I like him as a person based on what I’ve heard? Nope.

Did he accept the invitation so he can be your best friend? Once again, no.

He will simply be there to share his 2 cents and listening to what he has to say might just prove to be worth it IMO. You don’t have to like someone as a person in order to listen to his perspective on business.

Lots of people are scum in real life but brilliant when it comes to the business side of things, I think Don King might be one of these people and this pretty much sums up my opinion when it comes to the guy.

3) The organizers feel right at home in South Beach and this makes everything a LOT easier for them. We’ve had quite a few non-US conferences in 2010 and when criticizing, lots of folks don’t take the fact that organizing an event in another country is not exactly a piece of cake into consideration.

All in all, the situation is as simple as it gets:

Are there lots of conferences these days? Yes.

What does this mean? More competition.

What do you have to do in order to be successful when there’s a lot of competition? Stand out.

Does TRAFFIC South Beach stand out? Yep!

Alright, let’s get right down to business, here’s what makes DomainDiscussions.com special:

Navigation = A Piece of Cake

Most forums have so many sections that it’s just not funny and as a result, pearls of wisdom go by unnoticed because a lot of people (me, for example) don’t have enough time to go through all of them.

I understand that you guys are busy and have tried my best to make navigation a piece of cake. Make DomainDiscussions.com a part of your daily surfing routine and you won’t regret it!

LOTS of Contests

Leaving the fact that I’ll be offering some extremely tempting prizes (cash and vector logos) aside, the contests will be a lot of fun AND will provide value to the community.

I won’t give any more details just yet, our first contest will go live a bit later today, stay tuned

Freedom of Speech. Period.

As long as we’re not talking about things like racism, everything goes. I don’t care how controversial an opinion of yours is, it won’t be censored. If you’re tired of domain name forums which have censorship as their business model, you’ll love DomainDiscussions.com!

DomainDiscussions.com = A Bridge Between Domainers and Developers

I have a LOT of contacts in the development world and let’s just say that our “Development” and “Traffic Monetization” sections will contain quite a few pearls of wisdom.

Some of the mods are developers first and only then domainers, so you’ll be receiving advice from people who actually develop sites for a living, not from folks who are just starting out.

People Who Provide Value to the Community WILL Be Rewarded

I’ve mentioned this time and time again: nobody who does business with me ends up regretting it. You guys will be the founding members of a community which will take domaining to the next level.

If you provide value to the community, you can rest assured that I will never forget the fact that you contributed. At one point or another, you will need a powerful ally and I will definitely be there for you: sign up and let’s make some money!

For more details, read this blog post. Jennifer needs your help and even if you’re not from the New York area, you can still help save a life by joining the Be the Match Marrow Registry.

Edited: voting is no longer possible. The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation will be receiving $100,000 in grant funding. A special thanks to everyone who has voted!

Important instructions:

• In order to vote, please visit http://VoteForSMA.com
• Post http://VoteForSMA.com to your Facebook profile every day of this week
• Post this video to your Facebook profile
• You can also forward the http://VoteForSMA.com link to your contacts and ask them if they can do the same and use the http://VoteForACure.com Twitter app to spread the word.
• The foundation’s main website: http://GwendolynStrongFoundation.org

Voting takes less than a minute, the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation is currently ranked #6 at the moment of writing. If it manages to make it to the 5th position, it will receive $100,000 in grant funding and if it wins, it will receive a million dollars in funding. Don’t just say something like “ok, I’ll vote a bit later”, acting fast is extremely important. Vote now, all you need is a Facebook account and it takes less than a minute!

Most domaining blogs have 125*125 ad spots, I’ve created a banner you guys can use, click here. Or if your stripe ad is available, you can put that to good use as well. The banners can take visitors to this page, where they can find more details (you can also make a donation by calling 1-800-REDCROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish) or by clicking on the Donate Now button found on the page I’ve mentioned).