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Don’t let your Domain Name expire –
Lack of record keeping proves to be costly!
By Lisa Eaise, Owner Digital Xpressions ©
Many times Digital Xpressions has experienced a company where they don’t know where their domain name is registered, who registered it, or the username or password to gain access to their Domain Registrar account.
This can prove to be a substantial problem for several reasons. One, if the domain expires, the wait period for it to become available for registration can take upwards of 3 to 6 months, or you can try to obtain your domain name back through a bidding process and if you win the bid, it will be costly.
What could have cost $15.00, can now cost in excess of $50.00 and higher, and here is why. When the domain expires, your domain registrar will give you a grace period, after that, the domain goes into a bidding pool (for example, NameJet). You will now have to bid on your own domain name which can now cost you over three times the amount of a renewal!
Here is a perfect example of that scenario; I have a client whose domain has expired. Not a big deal? Nope, not only does he have this domain name on all of his marketing materials, (business cards, letterhead…), I too used the domain name as samples in mailers and brochures to new and existing clients! The site no longer exists under that name, (we registered a new name) – the original domain name is now in a bid pool, and bidding started at $69.00. He can pursue his domain using this process, but keep in mind, there is no guarantee that he’ll win his own domain back, or how much he’ll wind up paying when the bidding is completed. I know of another company who wound up in a similar situation, and it cost them $99.00 to obtain their own domain.
Another problem that domain name registrants have to watch out for, are false companies that send the domain registrant an invoice for domain name renewal services and they are not the domain registrar where the user registered the domain! Many people have been caught captive of this scam! Sad to say, they had paid the false invoice, (which the cost is much higher than what they originally paid), and since little or no records were kept regarding their domain name, they had no clue that they just gave away their money to a fictitious company, and are in for a big surprise when their domain expires for non-payment! And then have to go through the losses encountered with losing the domain name!
Here is a run down of potential losses of losing your domain name:
• The cost of the bidding (if you win),
• The time the site is down while waiting for the name to go back into the domain
availability market,
• The cost of starting over:
• Update marketing materials, printing costs
• Start over with search engine ranking
• The potential cost of a new website development - Do you still have the original website files, does the company that developed your site have a back up?
• New email address(es), clients will have to be notified immediately!
• The cost of branding the new site.
What can you do to prevent this? First, use a website company that can manage this information for you. Experienced web companies have a bulk account with their domain registrar, as it makes sense for them, it enables them to manage websites on a bulk level, and take care of website operations / preventative maintenance without involving the client! (Server migration, DNS records, IP address update, ect.).
For those who have registered their own domain name: Digital Xpressions has provided a small but very important form for you to complete and file with your website documents. This form will prove to save your company time and money, for it will keep your relevant documents in one place.
We hope that this article has been informative and of course, highly recommend that you allow a professional company to manage all of your website needs. Just think, you’ll have one less thing to worry about!
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Download Domain Registration Detail Form
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