Expiring Domains = Big Problems

Several months ago, I received an urgent phone call from the home office of an MLM program I had been building. The lady was really nice and just wanted to let me know that one of my websites was still up and that I needed to take it down. She said that the MLM company's name had changed as well as the compensation plan, and that Marketing was trying to get everyone on the same page. Oh, and by the way, she added, you may want to do this asap as your page is directing vistors to an Adult Web site! I asked her to repeat that last part and she did. Apparently, when they registred the domain names for the affiliate replicating websites, they were only registered for 2 yrs. Upon expiration, someone forgot or neglected to renew them. And you guessed it, some enterprising fellow or company snagged it up and forwarded it to their sex site.

This led me to ask a very simple question: If I were running a million dollar network marketing giant with 1000s of members, would I run out and register a domain name for less than 10yrs? And especially only 2 yrs???? I mean, come on ... we're talking about paying $20 for 2 yrs or $100 for 10! I would hope management would have the long-term vision that the company would still be around in 10 yrs. Registering the domain for just 2 yrs makes it seem like management doesn't feel very positive about the company's future success.

So I took at look at the WHOIS database for several big-name network marketing companies to see just how "long-term" their vision is for their companies. I was looking for 2 specific dates: the date the domain was created and the date it expires. We would expect for them all to be at least 10 yrs, right? Well, let's see:

Domain Name..........Created Date....Expires On........Domain Term

AcaiPlus.com............03/09/2005.....03/09/2007..........2yrs
Agelesslife.com.........09/23/2005......04/21/2007........<2yrs
Arbonne.com............01/18/1997.......01/19/2010..........13Yrs
Xango.net.................04/27/2002.....02/19/2007..........5Yrs
AmigoHealth.com.....12/31/2005......12/31/2007...........2Yrs
FrutaVida.com..........11/02/2004......11/02/2007..........2Yrs
Advantage
conferences.com.......07/01/2003......07/01/2008..........5yrs

Oh - and the company I talked about (earlier above) who let their name expire now has a new domain for their distributors. It is:

Umbizsite.com..........05/29/2005.....05/29/2008.........3Yrs

Well, I will give them a little credit - they have gone from 2 to 3 yrs.

The bottom line is this: If you are in charge of taking care of the company's domain name, get out your checkbook and get this done right. People in this business work entirely too hard to have to deal with all the problems that come about when domain registration is not viewed as a serious manner. Take my experience as an example, and then multiply that by 50 or 100,000 distributors.