Internet Marketing: Surviving the Loss of Your Domain Name
By Jeff Herring

On Saturday evening October 28, 2007 I learned a very important lesson about Internet Marketing.

I returned home from a pumpkin carving party with my two sons and checked my email only to discover an email from one of my joint venture partners Ellen Violette, The eBook Coach. In the email Ellen mentioned that one of my domain name for TheArticleGuy was going someplace very strange.

As I checked it out, I discovered I had forgotten to respond to several reminders from GoDaddy to renew my domain name. Because I had forgotten, it had gone back on the market and, due to all the traffic and back links I had built, it was quickly snatched up by one of the companies that does such things.

I was more than I bit panicked.

Survival Tips

1. Seek and accept the support of those around you – As I was freaking out my 12 year old son made me really proud of him. He walked over, handed me a Bible, and told me “swearing doesn’t help Dad.”

2. Turn to those with more experience and cooler heads – I called my Internet Marketing mentor Tom Antion who was available at 10:30 on a Saturday night! Having been through this before, he guided me through the next steps to take.

3. Take immediate action steps to take care of those affected – Right away I did three important things 1- Got a similar domain name, www.TheInternetArticleGuy.com – actually I already owned it and had forgotten that I did - 2 – Transferred my files to the new domain name – 3 – Let all my members, readers, students and mentees know what had happened and to use the new domain name until further notice.

4. Decide whether to get your domain name back – Because of the traffic rankings and back links I decided it would be worth trying to get my domain name back. I discovered that a company had purchased the domain name that I had been paying $9.20 for a year would gladly sell it back to me for $1500. I negotiated the price down to $1000.

5. Keep you head and attitude right – The problem was due to a divorce the year before and being in the middle of a move to Atlanta from Tallahassee there was just not $1000 laying around to use for this purpose. Once I decided to get my domain name back I created a very special deal on my Article Marketing Mentor Program and offered it to my subscribers. Not only did I get my domain name back, I gained several really great mentees that are out there making a difference with their writing and I made several hundred dollars.

6. Create systems to prevent this from happening again – You can buy your domain name for up to ten years at one time. You can pay attention to the reminders sent to you. You can mark your calendar for when to renew. You can buy the right to be the first informed if your domain name does go back on the market. All these steps keep this from happening again, or better yet, ever happening.

7. Be prepared for pleasant surprise gifts in the middle of the crisis along the way – While dealing with this little crisis, there were several unexpected and wonderful results and blessings along the way. In addition to actually generating  from this mess, I gained several new and great mentees. When I let my members and subscribers know what was going on, I was surprised and very touched by so much support and so many suggestions for new domains names. As one subscriber put it, “Remember Jeff, they took your domain name not your brains.” Though I sometimes think the other way around would have been better. One of my biggest worries was what to do about all the articles on www.EzineArticles.com about article writing and marketing with links back to my domain name now owned by someone else. This would have taken DAYS to change by hand. Before I could really even think about how to accomplish this, Chris Knight of www.EzineArticles.com stepped up and volunteered to put his staff on the changes first thing on Monday morning. Another class act among many to whom I am so very grateful.

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