I’m in an inspired state lately. I splurged and hit the Elite Retreat last week, and it lit a fire under my arse (pardon my french).
High level, I needed some direction for this small business of mine. I’ve got great names, but I was a little gray on how I should properly monetize each property. Elite Retreat is designed to give folks like me direction. And it did.
My direction, now, will involve Wordpress heavily, and building out a majority of my domains on that platform (which DG runs on as well)
I understand high level use and management of WP, but could use some in-depth education. This lead me to buy Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s ‘Wordpress for Dummies’ book (which has been well reviewed - - - Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress, even wrote the forward)…(and coincidentally, Matt was even a speaker at Elite Retreat..)
So… third part in, she’s covering the establishment of self-hosted Wordpress. First step, you guessed it, buying a domain name. She quickly runs through the steps of buying a name. Then as I turn the page, there’s a highlighted section titled ‘Domain Names: Do you own or rent?’.. I read on..
In reality, when you “buy” a domain name, you really don’t own it. Rather, you’re purchasing the right to use the domain name for the period of time specified in your order.
..textbook stuff, but worthwhile to highlight, as this would be a muddy aspect of the business for newbies. The next paragraph I read made me smile, but slightly miffed as well.
Be aware. however, that when your registration period ends and you don’t renew that domain name, you lose it - and most often you’ll lose it right away to someone who preys on abandonded or expired domain names. Some people keep a close watch on expiring domain names, and as soon as the buying window opens, they snap the names up and start using them for their own websites, in hopes of taking full advantage of the popularity that the previous owner worked so hard to attain.
wow. I guess you could say I disagree with this statement.
I hope she understands that we buy names that have been abandoned. We’re not stalking these things from a dark alley way. And Lord only knows how many times a registrar will email an owner reminding them to re-up. It’s not like these things are vanishing from their accounts..
She’s entitled to her opinion, though. But if she stands by it, she should give the registrars some grief for allowing them to be auctioned off..right? They’re the ones creating the marketplace.
and another thing, Merriam-Webster defines ‘prey‘ as
one that is helpless or unable to resist attack
do we prey? eh, nah.
are we opportunistic? um, yes.
No, no, I haven’t sold out and placed mini ads on the site…
