An Expired Domain Name Cost This Company $57,000

Joshua Strebel, CEO and Co-Founder of Pagely and Northstack, spoke at WordCamp Phoenix and shared an interesting story about how an expired domain name cost his company $57,000. He later shared the video of his WCP keynote via Twitter, and Adam Strong shared it with me:

The moral of the story is that domain registrants, including domain name investors, need to be mindful of their domain name renewals. Here are 5 things registrants should do to prevent domain names from expiring:

  • Registrants should keep their correct email address on file with their domain registrar.
  • Registrants should make sure registrar emails do not get caught by a spam filter or otherwise be unseen.
  • A valid credit card should stay on file at the registrar, and the credit card should be updated with valid expiry date information before it expires.
  • Setup auto-renew on domain names so they automatically renew each year.
  • Renew domain names for several years in advance (and keep doing this periodically while adhering to the suggestions above).

At the end of the day, Joshua and his company were lucky to be able to recover the domain name. It seems like they caught the error in enough time that the domain name did not go to auction or otherwise get picked up by another registrant or even the registrar.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

4 COMMENTS

  1. get a grip guys.. and max it out.10 years upfront is $90 bucks on your credit card and you have one BIG sorrow less… what’s with that one year registration BS? If you’re an internet company your domain is the HEART of it. The moment it stops pumping you’re dead and out of business..

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