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Have you renewed your domain name yet?
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By Cosmin Miclea
[Hits: 22943]
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In most of my articles, as well as most pages of my web site, Ikeep telling people that the internet is changing and evolvingconstantly. One of my favorite ways of putting this is that theonly thing NOT changing with internet is that the internet ischanging constantly. And this is especially important for anonline entrepreneur.
I am not going to get in too many details about this inparticular. This article is here to warn and inform you about arelatively new trend.
What in the world am I talking about?
Have you lately clicked on a link and ended up on a websitelooking like a directory or a mini-search engine whichdefinitely had nothing to do with what you expected to see? Andyou start clicking on links hopping that the webmaster just hada bad day when he/she designed his/her website. But it doesn'treally take you too long to realize that what you are seeing isnothing but a directory of "sponsored results". So what is goingon?
This is a result of probably the latest gimmick in making moneyonline. Believe it or not there are people "stealing" populardomain names. And then use them as their own money makingmachines. Whoever came up with this idea in the first place isabsolutely a millionaire by now. Lately, though, more and morepeople started using this "opportunity". So, I believe it's fairto say that the level of income per person has gone down alittle bit. On the other hand more and more of those who spend anoticeable amount of time on the internet know what's going on.But not to worry, there's still plenty in the un-know aboutthis, so it will be a little while before we can talk aboutsaturation.
But let me go back to explaining the mechanism. There is onesite (actually, by now probably more than one) that lists themost popular domain names - high ranking with search engines,thousands of visitors a month etc. - together with the date theyexpire. And all of its members have access to this list.
And this is where I wanted to get. Are you the owner of apopular domain name? Do you know when it expires? Have yourenewed it yet? If the answers are Yes-No-No, then you might bethe next victim. One of the members of the above mentioned sitemight be up for stealing your domain name. Once they do that,they set up a PPC directory/search engine and the money kind ofstart rolling in. The person benefits from all the traffic yoursite (actually it is not yours anymore) gets from searchengines, affiliates, links from other sites, etc.
But how is it possible for someone else to steal your domainname? Well, apparently, there is a grace period of 40 days inwhich you can still renew your domain name. If you haven't doneso in this period, there still are about 35 days before itbecomes available to others. How and who is the one that willeventually get his/her hands on your domain name is a differentstory. It's a different battle that is not the topic of thisarticle. One thing is for sure though: all those hoping to getyour domain names place back orders on it even before itexpires. And if for some reason - it is quite hard for me toimagine that someone would not claim back their domain withinthe grace period, but, believe me or not, it has happened withsome of the most notorious websites - so if for some reason youhaven't renewed your domain name within the grace period, off itgoes! You lost a whole bunch of hours and money spent on makingyour web site a success.
Is it right what these people do? It seems that from a strictlegal point of view, there are no regulations against suchpractices and chances are there will never be any. I personallybelieve it is not a fair practice. But it is something ithappens. So make sure you renew your domain name on time, beforesomeone else steals it from you.
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