Sins of The Internet: Domain Sniper

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The internet sure makes it possible to do things ...
so quickly it will make your head spin. One day yoursite is selling lots of product or is very popular, and the nextno one is visitin The internet sure makes it possible to do things quickly,sometimes so quickly it will make your head spin.
One day yoursite is selling lots of product or is very popular, and the nextno one is visiting. Perhaps your site got kicked out of a majorsearch engine or some competitor hijacked your page and yourlisting.
Or perhaps someone just brought a new site online whichis simply gaining all of your traffic.Or perhaps you just forgot to renew your domain name. Maybe youchanged your email address and forgot to update your domainscontact information.
Or your spam filters automatically deletedthat renewal message that you got. Maybe you deleted it yourself,thinking it was just another piece of junk email.
It could simplybe that your domain registrar had a glitch in their remindersoftware, meaning you didn't get the reminder email.Whatever happened, your domain name expired. You have tounderstand that domains are only leased or rented for a certainperiod of time.
You do not own them forever, and you must renewthem in advance of their expiration - or you risk losing themforever.You mentally kick yourself, load your browser and enter the URLfor your registrar's site. After you log in, you enter theinformation to renew.
If you are lucky, they take your money andyour name is reactivated within a few days. All is well, justremember to renew beforehand next time.Quite often, however, you will not be able to renew your domainbecause in the meantime someone else purchased it out from underyour nose.
This most often happens if your name is very desirable(likely to be typed by someone) or has very high traffic, but itcan occur with any domain name.Why did this happen? Oftentimes, someone just happened to buy itfor honest reasons. More often, however, there are shadymotivations behind the purchase.Someone may have sniped your domain.This simply means they've been watching your domain name,waiting for it to expire.
They waited through the hold perioduntil the name became available, then quickly purchased the domainthe second it was deleted from the internet databases.These people generally have no intention of creating a web site,selling a product or doing anything you'd normally expected with adomain name. What they want to do is sell the name back to you, orto anyone else who is interested.They will not be charging standard registrar rates either.
Theymight want a few hundred dollars or a few thousand or even more,depending upon their estimate of the value of the name.In the meantime, in order to attempt to force you to become verydesperate, they will often set up a page of pornographic banners(which also makes them a few dollars). This has the effect oftarnishing your image and making you want to get the domain backat any price.What can you do about this? Unless you happen to have a trademarkon the domain name (in which case you might be able to sue forcybersquatting), there is nothing that you can do.
You see,nothing illegal has been done. Someone is simply taking advantageof your mistake.The only thing you can do is (a) negotiate with the domain sniper,or (b) get a different domain name.
You can be sure he will makeit easy to contact him (the email address or phone number will beeither in the WHOIS record or on a page at the domain name.You don't, however, need to take his first offer. Unless yourdomain is extremely desirable it's very likely that you are theonly customer for the name.
In which case, the sniper as thechoice of making a few dollars a year from his pornographicbanners or selling it back to you. He may also put the domainname up for sale on eBay or domain name auction sites.He wants to get your money as fast as he can, and he wants to getas much as he can.
He's also going to ask you for as much aspossible to begin with, so don't take his first offer.Be careful when handing the money over to the sniper. He'salready proven himself unethical, so be sure to use some methodof payment, such as a credit card, which can be revoked ifnecessary.Once you've got your domain name back, remember to renew it ontime next year.
Set up a reminder so you don't forget, and don'tdepend upon your registrar to send you an email. It's yourresponsibility to remember to renew.To see a list of article available for reprint, you can send anemail to: mailto:[email protected]?subject=send_article_listor visit http://internet-tips.net/requestarticles.htm Article Tags: Domain Name Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .