Domain names are essential for building online presence and millions of domain names go live every year. If you are considering building your online presence registering domains is the first step you need to take. It would not take you much effort brainstorming your domain names and purchasing them through a domain registrar. But do you know about the issues you need to take care of once you are a domain owner? Let us discuss some important issues that every domain owner should know.
How to own domain names:
So you are all set to register your www.mydomainname.com. You are dreaming of making it really big one day when your domain name would make it to the list of most successful online ventures.
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But wait! Are you selecting the RIGHT domain names registrar?
There are thousands of domain registrars out there but not all are reliable. To protect your domain names from shady registrars it is recommended to opt for ICANN accredited domain name registrar. A list of ICANN accredited domain registrars is available on http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html.
The next step is to make sure YOU are the registrant, the administrator, the billing and technical contact person and no one else.
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Protecting your domain names: Once you own your domain, you work very hard to build the presence. You spend hours and money to make it a success. Gradually, traffic increases; you start making sales and desire to grow more. Then one fine morning the dream shatters and you lose your domain to a domain poacher who makes merry stealing your domain name. Now to get back your domain name, you have to pay a ransom. Or forget your moneymaking domain. Can you afford it? To protect yourself from this horror, you need to lock you domain as soon as you buy a domain name. While registering domain, you need to check if the registrant offers domain security service features such as a domain lock. A domain lock keeps your domain safe from hackers hijacking domains. A locked domain cannot be transferred to another registrar without your knowledge. Also keep your e-mail address up-to-date and make sure the spam-mail filter does not block any mail from your registrar. You might miss important mails from your registrar if you don’t white list your registrar. If you receive WHOIS confirmation mails from your registrar take a look at the mails to look for any error. If there is any error contact immediately and get the correct information recorded. You can also consider not publishing your contact information for public viewing. Ask your domain registrar to register domain names under private domain registration schemes.
Managing your domains:
Managing your domains is crucial for your domain safety. Apart from taking the safety measures discussed earlier, you can register domain for longer period – for example 5 years depending on your budget. If you forget to renew your domain on annual basis, you won’t lose it. Besides, if you register domain for a long stretch Google would value your site.
Renewing your domains:
With cybersquatting at rise, you can’t afford to be lazy about your domain names renewal. Domain names are like e-real-estate. Expired domain names are very much in demand as they offer instant traffic. There are plenty of online businesses that make huge money from expired domains. So if you own domains note down carefully the expiration dates. Some wait till the very last date and then forget the renewal and lose their domains to domain poachers. It is always suggested that you renew your domains for at least 5 years. If you are too busy to take note of your renewals then choose a registrant that send you renewal notices periodically.
Domain Longevity Cycle - A brief overview that comes handy:
The domain stays active for a time period it is registered. It can vary from 1 to 10 years. You have unrestricted use of the domain for the time period that you are paying money. Once the time period elapses, it enters the second phase where the domain is kept on-hold. You need pay a renewal fee to the domain registrar to continue with the ownership of the domain. If you don’t renew then the registrant determines an on-hold period of 1-45 days. You can still pay the renewal fee on may be 20th day and continue using your old domain. And after 45 days the third phase starts that is called RGP or Redemption Grace Period. This normally has a 30-day span during which the owner requires to pay a redemption penalty fee to renew the domain. If you still don’t renew the domain, the pending delete period starts. It lasts for 5 days and you can’t renew the domains anymore. The expired domains now are released for public sale once again. This cycle is however valid only if there is no backorder for the expired domains. Again the domain registrars now go for exclusive drops that are outside this deletion cycle stated above. When you purchase domain names be sure to know about the domain renewal policies your domain registrant offers.
Expired domain names: Do they generate money?
These days, thousands of domains go live everyday. Some make profit and some don’t. There are hundreds and thousands of domains that are not renewed by the owners for different reasons. Savvy online marketers, however, buy the expired domains for loads of instant traffic and even make profit from them. You too can try generating business buying expired domains. All you need to do is to search for expired domains. http://www.domainsbot.com/ is a good place to start your search for expired domains. Once you are done with your searches, make a list of the domains and examine how to back order them. There are numerous domain registration sites that offer domain backordering services. You can get yourself a list of affiliates by visiting this URL: http://whois-search.com/deleting/who.php from whom you can backorder the expired domain names.
Expired domain names: should you buy one?
Buying expired domain names would always be tricky and you can never know if you can really make some profit. Though some suggest that expired domain names bring their PageRank and back links that help the buyers from search engine ranking aspect it is only applicable for Yahoo, MSN and others to some extent. Google, however, detects the expired domains and makes the PageRank and back links zero. So to get rank in Google, it is not worth buying expired domains.
Do your research before you buy expired domain names:
Before you buy expired domain names be sure to check the previous records associated with the sites. You can visit http://www.archive.org/ for the Wayback Machine, where you can research the history of the expired domains to know how they were used previously. If your online business is important to you make sure you are taking the right steps from the very beginning. Buying an expired domain name that was banned by search engines would cost you traffic and harm your brand only.
