Ever get an official looking envelope from an outfit warning you that your domain name is expiring? You are urged to fill out the form immediately and pay anywhere from $35 – $75 per year to renew it before someone else comes along and snatches your company URL out from under you.
The company that sent you the letter may be a legitimate domain name registrar, but they may not be the one that your domain name is currently registered with. In the same way that phone companies used to try to get you to switch your long distance service until the FCC cracked down on them, this company is trying to get you to switch your domain name registration to them without being transparent about it.
Our recommendation is to identify your current domain name registrar and login to your account. Check the expiration date of your domain names. If necessary, you can renew right on the spot and probably save yourself from paying more than you need to, as well as some potential headaches that come from switching domain name registrars.
Another example involves a series of emails we received recently from an outfit in China, informing us that someone was bidding on marketvantage.cn. Dot-cn is the main extension for domain names in China. The letter offered to sell us the dot-cn domain name but urged us to respond quickly to prevent someone else from acquiring the domain and encroaching on our brand.
If we were Coca-Cola or General Motors, and had a major presence in China, we would be concerned. As it is, we own the dot-com and dot-net versions of marketvantage and that’s all we intend on buying. As far as we’re concerned, if some poor fool in China wants to buy marketvantage.cn and make a go of it, they’re welcome to try.
The third example has its origins in recent history. In the very early days of the Internet, Network Solutions was the only game in town if you wanted to own a URL. Today, there are many registrars to choose from but Network Solutions still enjoys excellent brand recognition based on their unique history. Domain registrars can charge whatever they like and some offer additional features like email forwarding, so it pays to shop around. You’ll also find that pricing varies by TLD (dot-com, dot-net, dot-org, dot-biz, etc.)
Network solutions charges about $35 per year for a dot-com or dot-net domain name registration. You can find perfectly good domain name registration for about one third of that. We’ve used Active-Domain as our domain name registrar for about 10 years. They charge about $11 per year for a dot-com or dot-net domain name and we’ve never had a problem with their services.
Network Solutions has recently been sending out promotions about new domain extensions like dot-guru, dot-tips, dot-vacations and dot-travel. We think this is just another opportunity for domain name land grabs. There are, of course, people who make a nice living buying and selling domain names, and if you’re a trader in that space, then this may be an interesting play for you. But if you’re just thinking about domain names for your business in a more traditional sense, ask yourself how many successful companies you know with .biz and .info as their primary domain name extensions.
Maybe someday the Internet will be organized by domain extensions like dot-rentals but we wouldn’t suggest getting too excited about them just yet.
Ever get an official looking envelope from an outfit warning you that your domain name is expiring? You are urged to fill out the form immediately and pay anywhere from $35 – $75 per year to renew it before someone else comes along and snatches your company URL out from under you.
The company that sent you the letter may be a legitimate domain name registrar, but they may not be the one that your domain name is currently registered with. In the same way that phone companies used to try to get you to switch your long distance service until the FCC cracked down on them, this company is trying to get you to switch your domain name registration to them without being transparent about it.
Our recommendation is to identify your current domain name registrar and login to your account. Check the expiration date of your domain names. If necessary, you can renew right on the spot and probably save yourself from paying more than you need to, as well as some potential headaches that come from switching domain name registrars.
Another example involves a series of emails we received recently from an outfit in China, informing us that someone was bidding on marketvantage.cn. Dot-cn is the main extension for domain names in China. The letter offered to sell us the dot-cn domain name but urged us to respond quickly to prevent someone else from acquiring the domain and encroaching on our brand.
If we were Coca-Cola or General Motors, and had a major presence in China, we would be concerned. As it is, we own the dot-com and dot-net versions of marketvantage and that’s all we intend on buying. As far as we’re concerned, if some poor fool in China wants to buy marketvantage.cn and make a go of it, they’re welcome to try.
The third example has its origins in recent history. In the very early days of the Internet, Network Solutions was the only game in town if you wanted to own a URL. Today, there are many registrars to choose from but Network Solutions still enjoys excellent brand recognition based on their unique history. Domain registrars can charge whatever they like and some offer additional features like email forwarding, so it pays to shop around. You’ll also find that pricing varies by TLD (dot-com, dot-net, dot-org, dot-biz, etc.)
Network solutions charges about $35 per year for a dot-com or dot-net domain name registration. You can find perfectly good domain name registration for about one third of that. We’ve used Active-Domain as our domain name registrar for about 10 years. They charge about $11 per year for a dot-com or dot-net domain name and we’ve never had a problem with their services.
Network Solutions has recently been sending out promotions about new domain extensions like dot-guru, dot-tips, dot-vacations and dot-travel. We think this is just another opportunity for domain name land grabs. There are, of course, people who make a nice living buying and selling domain names, and if you’re a trader in that space, then this may be an interesting play for you. But if you’re just thinking about domain names for your business in a more traditional sense, ask yourself how many successful companies you know with .biz and .info as their primary domain name extensions.
Maybe someday the Internet will be organized by domain extensions like dot-rentals but we wouldn’t suggest getting too excited about them just yet.