Owning your own Domain Name
Why Owning your own Domain Name is Important!
Would you buy a car and put it in a strangers name? Of course not, that’s just silly. Well, would you buy a house and put it in a stragers name? C’mon that’s insane! Well, would you buy a domain name and put it in a strangers name?
Well, would you? … The sad fact is the answer to this is YES. This, to me is one of the most frequent mistakes business owners make. Why would they do this? There are many reasons. Here are a few I hear daily. “I am too busy, can you do it?”, “I have a web person and they handle everything”, “It only costs $10 a year, no biggy if I loose it”, “I don’t know how to buy a domain name”, “What’s a domain name?” and “I don’t like using credit cards on the Internet and this guy had a paypal account so I just….”. These are just a few but you would be amazed at some I hear.
I sell domain names from http://yesitisavailable.com for $8.99 a year and I must admit some of the horror stories I hear from people that have let their friends, wives, husbands, husband’s dogs, Tyrone, their web developer, etc.. purchase and own their web domain names is sad.
One client allowed someone that worked for them who was also making their website get a friend who was hosting the site purchase the domain name. Did you follow that, an owner’s employee’s friend that hosted the site owned it. Well thats cool from a stand point of getting things done! kudos there. Here is what happened, this friend went through a hard time and sadly ended up committing suicide. BTW, this is the third time I have come across a sad story like this. I think you know where this is heading, when the renewal for the domain name came up there was no one around to renew it. Here is where it begins to get worse. The website domain went up for purchase and the expired web domain name porn kings quickly had the domian purchased and pointed to porn sites in a matter of minutes from purchasing the domain name. Now, not only did the client loose thier domain name that they spent thousands of dollars on marketing such as business cards, yellow pages, let alone online Internet marketing, but all the programming and web development, marketing, search engine placement and personal client bookmarks and backlinks from their wonderfully happy clients now pointed to porn. They lost their reputation and many of thier clients. What a horror story! Not only is this true, but trust me, this happens all the time!
I have more horror stories and would be happy to share them with you if you are not yet sold on being owner of your domain name.
As a developer I do understand that the whole Internet website thing can be a bit overwhelming. If you have a developer and you entrust them to purchase your domain names for you make sure they transfer the domain name after purchase to you. If your developer does not suggest this in the first place, get a new developer. If your developer has a problem with this, get a new developer. I have purchased domain names for clients. Once I recieve payment for the domain name in one form or another I transfer the domain to the client. I usually keep my name as a technical contact (one of four contacts for the domain name) incase there is a problem or upon renewal if the owner of the domain can not be contacted.
One other piece of advice when purchasing a domain name is to use a public email address such as a yahoo, gmail, msn, etc email address for the contact email of the domain name. If you use one of your domain emails such as bonnie@mycooldomainname.com as the contact for the domain name and your webhost provider goes out of business you will not receive emails and might not be able to renew your domain name.
Here is an article by Trish JOnes on this subject as well.
http://www.trishjones.com/own-your-domain-name-or-else/
Here is another helpful document as to why you should have a domain name.
http://www.ecomhelp.com/KB/internet/kb_your-own-domain-name.htm
Hope this helps.
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