Don’t Let Your Domain Name Expire!

Many businesses who register their Domain Names for their Business purposes make the fatal mistake of not keeping the Domain Name information up to date.

This can cause alot of misery to the business owner or the company and could lead to you, your business or the company to losing one of their most precious assets … yes that asset is their domain name.

If your domain name is a developed website for your business and it is your main source of income, losing your domain would be devasting.

Can you just imagine this scenario? ( Yes a silly scenario, but just read it anyhow)

You own yourbusiness.com and it is a very succesful online website which specializes in delivering e-products to customers all over the world, your orders amass a daily delivery of 100 or more orders on a daily basis, bringing in a total of say for example $7500 per week.

Your loving this income stream and provides you with enough income to enable you to work from home and you don’t have to worry about finding a boring 9 to 5 job.

You decide that it is time for a vacation, work is just too busy, so you think you need a break to re-evaluate your business goals and maybe it is time to employee some other people to extend and improve your business.

You’ve booked your Holiday to a remote part of Borneo to go and see the Orangutuans, and you have made a promise to your wife that you will not touch the internet on your four week vacation, because she is sick of you spending 18 hours a day on the internet processing orders and answering emails.

So you make the promise, and prior to leaving you send an email to all of your clients informing them of your vacation and put an announcement on your site saying that you have closed your Online Shop for a few weeks, because your going on vacation.

Before you leave you check your site is update, but in a rush you don’t even consider checking your domain name information, because it is pointing correctly to your site.

You and your wife take off to the wilds of Borneo, see the Orangutuans and all of the beautiful wildlife, you climb Mount Kinabulu, living with the Headhunters for a week or two in the deep dark depths of the Jungles, of Borneo, make love under rushing waterfalls and renew your relationship and love for your wife again, totally forget your business back home and have the time off your life.

Unfortunately the time arrives for you to head back home to your busy and booming online business, you make a promise to your wife that you will employ a couple of people to help you with the business, because it is getting that busy, you cannot keep up.

On your arrival back home, your jet-lagged, your wife ges to bed to recover from the long flight home, finally you can get back on the internet to check on your site, you make a coffee and check your emails, and their are reminder emails informing you that your Domain Name is going to expire and you have failed to enable “Automatic Domain Name Renewal” those Emails were received just under four weeks ago!

Your stomach starts to get those funny butterfly feelings, but you just reassure yourself that everything will be fine, you’ll just go and update your details and pay for your Domain Names renewal for the next two years.

So you decide to check your Domain Name Account, you log in and your heart starts to beat a million miles an hour, you feel sick … your domain name has disappeared from your account!

Your domain name  has expired, and you did not even know that it was due to expire soon after leaving for your vacation to Borneo. You start to panic, your write to your Domain Name provider asking them to get it back for you, but unfortunately their reply is not good news.

The name is gone, not gone forever, but you have basically lost your name, your source of income, your customers, your business…. all in an instant!

This is just an example of what could easily happen if you do not keep your Domain Name accounts up to date on a regular basis.

Believe it or not, even though it is a silly scenario, these scenarios do happen on a daily basis, not just to a few unlucky people, but to thousands of businesses on a weekly or if not daily basis.

So how else can I lose my Domain Name?

1. Incorrect Email Address on Registration
2. Correct Email Address on Registration, but you delete that email address down the track and forget to update your domain name account with your new email address.
3. You choose not to Auto-Renew Your Domain name either by mistake or you choose not to because you think you will remember
4. Your credit card details change and you forget to update your credit card details
5. You go on a holiday without checking your emails
6. Your Auto Reminder email goes to your Spam Box in your email folder and you delete it without relising.
7. You Die without letting anyone know your account details!

Thats just an example of how you could lose your domain name and I am sure their are hundreds more ways!

Dying is just a joke, but I am sure it does happen to many people and they lose their domain names! LOL.

Anyhow back to that first scenario of losing your domain name.

Can you get it back?

Well yes there is a way of getting your domain name back, but getting it back may cost you a small fortune or hopefully in your case you may get it back at the cost of a domain name registration

The costly way of getting your domain name back is to sign up to as many Expired Domain Name companies as possible.

Some Examples of websites which specialise in catching expiring domain names are as follows:

Pool.com
NameJet.com
SnapNames.com

As I mention just above that it may be costly for you to get your domain name back, well thats when the Expiring Domain Name Auctions comes into place.

What happens is when Domain Names Expire they go into a pool and Expiring Domain Name Companies catch these domain names for Domainers who wish to invest in these domain names, or hope that if they are good domain names with good Page Rank, that the previous owners (like you) may wish to buy their domain names back off you.

You could call them cybersquatters … well most of them are, but they prefer to call themselves “Domainers” or “Domain Investors”

Domain Name investing is a multi billion dollar market which most people have never heard of, but thats another story I will go into at a later date.

Anyhow you sign up to these Expiring Domain Name companies and reserve your old domain name back.

For examples sake, your Domain Name had a page rank of PR5 and the website was hugely popular with thousands of backlinks and over a hundred thousand listings in search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Finally your name drops and it goes into an auction, the auction starts of at $59 dollars, you make a bid of $200 thinking that you will easily get your name back … then a few hours later it goes to $2000, so knowing it is your business at stake, you bid $4000, then you watch frantically the auction come to an end, with minutes to spare. You click refresh, still at $4000, yes you got your name back … a minute left, click refresh and your stomach turns, some bid $4500.

Minutes later you receive an email informing you that your auction bid was unsuccesful, you lost your domain name to someone on the other side of the world.

Weeks later, you see your Domain Name parked at Sedo.com with a buy now price of $20,000.

Your out of work, your lost your domain name, your business, your livelyhood.

I could go on, but just think about that scenario, please make sure you keep your domain name account up to date, your password secure, don’t lose your domain name like thousands of others do on a daily basis.

Tags: .com, .com.au, Business, Domain, Domain Name Accounts, Internet Tips, Websites, Your Business