How And Why You Should Care For Your Domain

Don’t get caught in the painful situation of losing your domain name. In this instance experience can be a very hard teacher, so PLEASE just trust me on this one. Don’t register your domain name year to year. You’ve spent a great deal of time and money establishing your domain’s authority. It has become an important business asset and you should make it a point to treat it as such. It won’t be expensive. Domain name registrations cost $10-$15 a year. Protect your domain. Don’t just register it for a year at a time.

Too many people treat their domain name like a red-headed stepchild. This is unwise. Domain names can expire, and your registrar will only send you one or two warning emails. If you ignore these warnings as spam, or change email addresses without updating your contact information with your registrar, you have nobody to blame but yourself if this happens to you:

Domain Squatters

People out there want your domain name. For the price of a one year registration, about $10, they will have bought all the hard work you’ve put into your site. They’ll have your search engine listing and they’ll have all your traffic. Your domain is quite a bargain! Sound bad? Well try this on for size; they’ll be able to intercept any email sent to the domain and map your website address to a p*** or gambling site. Many domain squatters are ready to jump on your name as soon as it becomes available.

Don’t think that just because you’re domain is obscure or specific you’re protected from hijackers. Unfortunately that doesn’t matter, the domain has value to these guys even if they can’t resell it. More often than not they’ll use it to link to SEO clients, so don’t be surprised if they start directing your clients to some really sleazy sites. They might sell it to a competitor, but they don’t need to sell your domain to make money off it. They can harvest valuable information from your emails using something called a catchall or they can set up a competing website of their own.

If a hijacker gets your name it’s going to the highest bidder. If there are no other bidders expect to pay $500-$1000 to get it back. Be polite and professional with the squatter. A lot of these bottom feeders think of themselves as businessmen, and once they take over the domain they hold all the cards. Domain hijacking in this manner is completely legal, and if negotiations break down the hijacker is only out about ten bucks.

What a Hassle

Under the best of circumstances it can take hours to get your domain back if it expires. If you’ve forgotten your login information and you’ve changed emails since you got the domain it can take a day or more just to prove to the registrar that you are who you say you are. Dealing with a squatter can take days or even weeks.

Some owners decide to start over with a new domain. This is a huge hassle in and of itself, and if there’s a squatter sitting on your old domain the consequences can be pretty ugly. Most domain hijackers are just plain nasty people. They can be pretty vindictive in their attempts to get you to buy back your domain name. They’ll map your domain to p*** sites, gambling sites, or landing pages that loudly announce “This Website Is Closed Because the Owner Doesn’t Pay His Bills”.

Service Interruption

Your website is going to go down. That’s how most people notice their domain has expired, but it get’s worse.

Another real problem is that your email is going to go down, and it’s going to stay down until you can get control of your domain and map the DNS. This will take at least a few hours, and if there are challenges it might be a lot longer than that. This is enough to hurt any business, but for many it’s enough to shut you down altogether.

We’ve all had to deal with our email going down for a few hours, so I don’t need to tell you how unpleasant it is. Think about this for a moment. Imagine how much worse it would have been if it had gone down for an entire day! Or over a whole weekend? If your domain was hijacked it can take days to get everything up and running again. How angry will you be with yourself when you realize it’s all your own fault?

Fees

Many domains have a grace period that allows you to reclaim your domain name up to 30 days after it expires. That’s good, but the bad news is that it’s going to cost you somewhere in the range of $80 just to get it back.

Do you really want to have a sense of panic every year when your domain name renewal date arrives? With everything else you have to worry about why add your domain renewal to your list?

So, how long should you register your domain name for? I recommend registering your domain name for the maximum allowable 10 year period. With domain name registration costs so low and discounts for multiple year registrations why chance it?

Special Guest Author:
Kenny Marshall is a maketing guru and former Officer of CPA Site Solutions, one of the United States’ largest web firms dedicated solely to accounting websites.