I've just spent about 20 hours solid changing links (2000+), text and graphics on 4 sites, uploading the old site to a new domain, contacting other sites to ask them to change links etc. I've still got more to do. The client has to mail all her contacts to let them know she's got a new domain etc. Luckily she used an email address not related to the domain, but she's lost a vast amount of traffic from several dozen high ranking pages and it's going to take a long time to recover.
Even worse is that she's got a lot of publicity for the site - national geographic, northwest airlines etc etc etc. All gone to waste without the domain name.
Until now, if that had happened to me, I would have bought a new domain and started again (I always had moral objections to "taking advantage" like that). I would not have approached the new owner to buy the name back or anything. But now I think there are times when it's very worthwhile to buy it back. I can see just how lucrative that game is - I might join it myself ..........
the quote is $1000 .... loss of business will be several times that, so it's probably worth paying. client is going to negotiate.
Shak
.........I was just thinking, GoDaddy allows you to register a .com @ $ 65.00 for 10 years. Now if someone were to pay them $ 1000.00, how long a registration would they allow :)
I have learned that it is best to start renewing your domains few months before they reach anywhere near expiration date. Also, if possible, renew your main domains for longer time.
how long a registration would they allow
The 10 year limit is imposed by ICANN.
Godaddy now has an auto-renew feature. Just make sure you've got a credit card hooked up and it will never be lost.
Richard Lowe
