Secure Your Web Domain Name or Risk Losing It

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I run across small business owners everyday that put all of their web assets, including their domain name, in the hands of a web designer or consultant. Web sites are easy to replace, valuable domain names are not. Make sure that you have ultimate control over your domain name or risk losing it or suffering some serious downtime if your web host goes belly up.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust your web designer, I’m just saying that for many small businesses, your actual domain name may be one of your businesses most important assets and you should treat it as such.

First a couple points that may need to be clarified.

Your domain name is just that, control of the name – bobsmith.com for example. Your domain host is another element altogether and is probably your web host. You assign who hosts your domain name by controlling your domain name. Many web designers or hosts will set all of this up for you including registering your domain name – you need to separate your domain name control from your domain host and keep it secure.

If you do not ultimately control your domain name – meaning you can’t log in securely and update your domain’s records, here is my recommendation:
Set up a free account with GoDaddy.com and ask your web host or designer to transfer administrative control of the domain to your GoDaddy account #. Once this is done you can use features at GoDaddy to give your IT person or designer access to make technical changes for instance, if you wanted to move to a new web host, but you need to control your domain name.

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Posted by: John Jantsch on May 11, 06 | 12:12 pm
Category: Web Marketing | Tags:

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reese

Peter Flaschner also wrote an article about this (he's a developer).

It's good for businesses to stay on top of this. Sometimes a designer isn't malicious, but may forget to transfer a domain, etc. Yours and Peter's advice is sound and important for any person getting a site developed.

Chris Scott

Same thing goes for web hosts that register client domains. Also, the key is that the organization--not a person, but the organization--be listed as the Registrant of the domain. Even if you can log in to manage your domain and/or are listed as the Admin, Billing, or Tech contact, if someone else is the Registrant they "own" the domain and can make any changes to it.

I run a hosting company and we too come across clients like this all the time. Unfortunately, domain registration either confuses most people or they don't understand the importance of being the Registrant so they don't think about it until it is too late and they have a problem.

John Jantsch

Thanks Reese and Chris for adding some great details and resources to this point.

LLC formation author & CPA

Thanks John, a really, really, really good point.

My principal business involves a CPA tax practice doing lots of S corporation and LLC tax returns and tax planning for high net worth entrepreneurs. And let's just say that's worth "X". My CPA web site generates, like, .25X of new, repeat revenue a year. Which means it's probably worth even more than my web site.... or at least close to what my web site is worth.

So my web site *is* a significant component of my business.

Another angle here... I love working with offshore designers. I love www.elance.com. I've had nothing but good experiences.

And getting back to offshore resources, the service and expertise is great... and the economics are pretty darn good. But it's a little scary to be giving some, e.g., Egyptian designer ftp access to your web site.

DISCLAIMER: I am absolutely *not* making some xynophobic comment about Egyptian web site designers. (One guy who contacted me was obviously very talented!) But working with some half way round the world, well, hey, you wonder.

And just to be fair, I have no problem with that Egyptian designer wondering, worrying about me...

But, heck, you've got this really important thing... and it's pretty vulnerable...

Stephen L. Nelson, CPA
Author, QuickBooks for Dummies
www.stephenlnelson.com

Amy Cham

Case in point....a friend pointed a site out to me yesterday. After an apparent billing dispute, the developer defaced the site with an angry note about non-payment and put the domain for sale on ebay. That was yesterday.

Today, the domain just points to a GoDaddy landing page.

Michael

I’ve heard a lot of stories about domain name importance. However, check out the figures below - here are the top five most expensive domain sales in the last few years:
Business.com – $7.5 million
AsSeenOnTv.com – $5.1 million
Altavista.com – $3.3 million
Wine.com – $2.9 million
Autos.com – $2.2 million

I am not sure how such an investment – paying millions of USD for a simple name – can be recovered and used to produce profit. There was a story about Coca-Cola, which said that if the company lost all its infrastructure, but kept the name and brand characteristics, it could bounce back in about 4 years. However, if the company managers were left with all the infrastructure, but lost the Coca-Cola name, the company would be very likely to go bankrupt. Do you think this is also true for domain names?

Regards,

Michael Rad

John Jantsch

Michael,

The primary point here is that for the small business - I'm not talking about Coke or Autos.com (2.2 million was a steal)

I'm talking about the small business that can't really stand the frustration, time and effort that it might take to replace a domain name or have a web site down for a month.

This is particularly true of sites that are starting to generate some nice traffic and search results. Having to start from scratch because you didn't have control of your domain name is a little like giving your keys to your office to someone and hoping they show up to meet you for work each day.

Cortland Coleman

John,

Excellent advice, and thanks for promoting an AZ-based company. Having Go Daddy in town is a huge assett to the Phoenix-area. Heck, they were even in town before Google!

That being said, any reputable, honest and integrity-driven web/blog developer/designer should be 100% up-front with their clients regarding the ABCs of web hosting, domains, etc. so the correct decsions are made at the outset.

Ben

We also see a number of small businesses turning over their web image to the Yellow Pages. It seems to me this is like turning over part of your business to Tony Soprano. The Yellow Pages is akin to Mr Soprano in how they do business. We talk about it here.

www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/blog/2006/05/s...

If you turn this over to an organization that already has a lot of control like the Yellow Pages, you are opening yourself up to a lot of “abuse” later on.

Maria Palma

Thanks for sharing this information because I know it can be very useful for those just starting out with their online business venture. It wasn't until this year (after doing business online for 5 years) that I learned just how valuable a domain can be.

churchrelevance.com » Th

<pingback>...John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing brought up a very good point that if you own a website you should have control over your domain name. It sounds obvious, but many website owners don’t. With that said, here are three important lessons that I ...</pingback>

churchrelevance.com

<trackback>Three Lessons About Owning a Website
Last week, John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing brought up a very good point that if you own a website you should have control over your domain name. It sounds obvious, but many website owners don’t. With that said, here are three important lesson...</trackback>

Dalene Bradford

This caught my attention, as a client recently suffered from having turned everything over to a web designer who went out of business three months after their site went live.

Thanks, John, for prompting me to talk about this with the nonprofit organizations I work with on e-communications. I've put a link to a useful Technology Inventory Worksheet produced by TechSoup on my blog today. It should work well for small businesses, too--and it's free.

Duct Tape Marketing Blog - Vot

<pingback>...|

Links Here | Tag:Web Marketing

A couple of days ago I wrote a post about securing the control of your domain name. This post sparked a lot great comments including one from Dalene Bradford who writes Charitable Thoughts - a blog focused on ...</pingback>

jestep

I've seen several times exactly what you are talking about. Small business owners that don't have appropriate control over their websites. Their designer goes AWOL or their super cheap host disappears. This concept seems so obvious, but is so often overlooked.

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