Having operated Hell Yeah Bitch! .com for over two years now, there have been two questions that I am asked or I have asked myself. The question I receive the most is: “Why did you name your site that?!” and the question I have asked myself the most, other than “Should I go with a mohawk?”, is “Should I change the name of my site?”. After having yet another discussion about my name with someone the other day, and the 2nd birthday for my little site in my rear-view mirror, I decided it was way past due for an article that explains myself, and my decision.

Lets start at the beginning

When I was still in college, I was tossed the responsibility in my fraternity of creating little 10-15 minute videos that we played via rush week to show off what we do and so forth. Well I had a pretty good time with this, and when I was finishing the first one my friend and I thought it would be funny if I made up a fake production company name. I picked Hell Yeah Bitch! Productions because of this picture I had found on the net of a girl holding a empty keg over her head. (Guys would walk by, see the photo and the most common statement was “Hell yeah bitch!”). So I created a little logo out of that picture and slapped it at the end of the video. After a few most videos came and went, I just kept slapping that logo at the end of the videos because…well I really don’t know why, I just kept doing probably because of equal parts habit and my dedication to the joke.

A year or so later, my school offered a Web Programming class and I signed up. Not surprisingly, the main project for the class was to make a website that did certain skills pertaining to the class. What site should I make? I decided to make a site for my fictitious company: Hell Yeah Bitch! or Hell Yeah Bitch.com.

After the project was done, I had the bug. I decided to jump in, get a domain name, get a hosting provider and make a real site. (Not hosted by Angelfire or Geocities.)

Isn’t it a bit vulgar?

Yes. It is a bit vulgar I guess. Thats probably why my parents and family, for the most part, don’t like it much. As I stated before, I’ve thought about changing the name of this site many times. I even tried to get “hyb.com” but some other company already had that…scratch that idea. So what else would I name it? …I didn’t know either. Every time I put some thought about this I came up empty, and then came back to feeling like changing it would be a mild form of selling-out. So the name continued on. Now, two years into the process, its here to stay.

There are problems that come with this name other than moans and groans from my family. They are minor, but problems none the less. The biggest by far is the number of links or mentions that I get because someone doesn’t want to have “Hell Yeah Bitch! .com” as one of their sources or a Recommended Link on their site. For instance the first person I got to link to me was this guy that ran betakingz.com. It was a lame site, but so was mine at the time, so I didn’t care that much. He was all about helping me out until he heard the name. I finally convinced him to give me the link, but in the text of the link write: Hell Yeah B*tch.com. About 2 weeks later, my link disappeared entirely. Granted that was a little under 2 years ago, but it still happens. Just recently I was mentioned on Gadgetopia, a great site that I really respect, and I was very happy to get the mention. However at the foot of the article instead of sourcing “Hell Yeah Bitch.com” the link read: “Mike”. Nice.

Hell Yeah Bitch! .com is still at heart, and will always be, a humor site. Now, I’ll be the first to admit, there are jokes on here I only I think are funny, but its my site, and I think I’m funny…and what do you know anyway? All in all, even though the site’s attitude doesn’t seem to be growing up, the readership is on a steady rise and hopefully someday I will get the enjoyment of seeing more and more things being mentioned with “from: Hell Yeah Bitch! .com” after it…or at least “from: Mike”.