Daily Domainer

A few weeks ago I was going through a weekly list of recent domain sales together with a friend of mine. Suddenly, he froze in his tracks. "That's my domain!", he screamed.

And there it was: Expired, caught and sold.

For five figures.

His investigations revealed that he had simply failed to renew the domain. With thousands of domains to watch and many other things to do, he had gotten so distracted that he had failed to act on the renewal emails sent out by his registrar. When the domain expired, someone else got lucky and acquired it in an auction of expiring domains.

A true story. An expensive mistake.

What can you do to stay in control of your domains and prevent the same thing from happening to you?

Here are a few ideas. (There is some much-needed redundancy in there to make sure you don't fall victim to unforeseen events and other emergencies.)

1. Consolidate all your domains at one or two registrars. The Daily Domainer recommends Moniker.com and Fabulous.com, but there are many others you can choose from. If you have all your domains in one account, it's so much easier to watch them and renew them on time.
2. Schedule an adequate period of time each month to renew all domains that are going to expire within the next six months. Only renew the domains you already know you want to keep. If you're not sure about a domain yet, take another look at it the following month.
3. Additionally, schedule ten minutes each week to check if any of your domains are about to expire. This is especially important if you frequently buy domains from other domainers. Many domains are sold shortly before they expire, and if you don't renew them, they will drop.
4. If you prefer an "opt-out" rather than an "opt-in" approach, set all your domains to auto-renew (if your registrar offers this possibility). Schedule an adequate period of time each month to go through the domains that are scheduled to be renewed within the next three months and cancel the auto-renewal for those domains you know you don't want to renew.
5. Prepay your most valuable domains for several years in advance. You never know what might happen to you and/or to your credit card. You might not have a chance to renew your domains on time.
6. If you own a large number of domains and prefer to have accounts at many different registrars, using a domain monitoring tool like Watch My Domains Pro or a service like DomainTool's Domain Monitor can make your domainer life easier.