Get a Nudge, Get a Domain Reminder
filed in Domain Registration, Internet Business on Oct.28, 2008
Never forget a domain renewal again. Should it be your own domain name or one you are looking to grab or purchase, it is always annoying to miss the date and see the domain going to someone else. We are usually holding our domain names with different registrars and it would be good to have a single domain reminder service. DomainReminders.net is a new service and its title speaks for itself. The thing that makes it stand out from the competitors is that DomainReminders is free and you can add any domain to your watch-list. Even if you don’t own it. Let’s see if we can learn more from the author of DomainReminders.
3APP: How is it possible to tell a genuine reminder service from an idea skimmer? Many has experienced problems with Whois systems, when you check if your domain idea is available and the bad guy owning this whois just grabs your idea and, alas, the domain name is gone.
I’ve always been concerned about putting in an enquiry about the availability of a domain just in case it’s a great opportunity that gets snatched away from you. However I think it’s a bigger imaginary problem than it really is. Consider a typical “whois” search provider. They can’t realistically have someone manually checking all the possible searches and trying to spot the pearls… so I’d imagine all they could do is to aggregate the information and look at the top ~100 names… but surely by then an individual will have already put the request in via their trusted domain provider? I imagine that the biggest risk would be at the point you put in
your order for a new domain and they person handling your request then siphons it off to a buddy and informs you “sorry but it’s gone!”. I can’t imagine that would go unspotted if it happened more than a few times.
However the concern is still a valid one. All I can say for domainReminders is that we wouldn’t do that - and I’ll make sure our policy statement clearly states that. I’m too busy to sit and go through the domains people are registering with us!
Also, our main aim isn’t really just to capture domains that you don’t own, but to be reminded about ones you DO own. That’s where all of this started. About four years ago I’d built up a personal domain based around my online nickname and it was doing really well. I used it to communicate with friends, family, contacts around the world and it was becoming my de-facto way of letting people know what was going on in my life. However… as you can guess I failed to renew the domain and within an incredibly short period of
time it had been snapped up. Unfortunately the group that snapped it up didn’t just put random search boxes and affiliate links, their business was pornography! So I was faced with the embarassing option of having to let everyone know that I’d lost my domain and to NOT visit it! Of course I used this domain for my eMail as well so that wiped out all the sites where you register with your eMail address that I used as well, urgh the memory still hurts!
3APP: Who or what is badCat, the company behind the DomainReminders?
badCat’s primary business is a reminder site to allow people to not forget important dates in their lives. It’s at http://www.nudge.me.uk As part of us building this site though I realised that we could kill two birds with one stone and use the technologies from nudgeMe to provide a free, simple service to people out there on the internet. I *love* that so many cool things on the internet are free and am always miffed when people charge for something so simple as (for example) being reminded that a domain is coming up for renewal! So domainReminders just ticks away being useful… It’s already helped quite a few people out who had their renewals coming up.
3APP: What about the competition? There are other domain name reminders around.
As for competition, well that’s quite interesting… I could only find one other site that provided a similar function and they weren’t free. You had to buy a “bundle” of reminders, urgh! As for ISP’s themselves, well a lot of good ISP’s will warn you… but in my experience there are more bad than good!
3APP: What else does the badCat have under his sleeve?
We’re considering adding new features to the reminders. Maybe text messaging as well as eMail… but again aim to make this free if possible, people do suggest new ideas and we definitely appreciate them.
October 29th, 2008 on 11:02 pm
Dunno but I don’t need reminder. I can just check once in a month if I have renewal warning. That’s all.
But I understand people who uses tools when they got >500 domains at huge variety of registrars.
As I mostly use Godaddy, Moniker or Namecheap I’m fine.
I catch expired domain often. But those are with some traffic or pagerank that I sell. Good Parking company + keyword optimization brings up to 50% CTR, and almost same PPC as Adsense.
Parking + keyword research makes some nice free money.
October 31st, 2008 on 4:42 pm
Shuwix, thank you for the comment. I agree that reminders are useful for people who hold their domain names with several registrars.
So you’re mostly using Moniker to grab expried domain names?
Talking about parking. I am not a fan of it. I like my domain names to be indexed. Majority of the parking pages do not get indexed and fail to add up the domain age factor… which is so very important!
November 16th, 2008 on 2:48 pm
Monkier is nice for grabbing expired domains. I agree that email reminders are enough to keep an eye on expiring domains. A text messaging service would be convenient for a number of situations however.
November 17th, 2008 on 12:55 pm
I think that the biggest wake-up call you can get is when you completely forget to renew a domain, and 3 months later, when you go in to check it - someone else has snagged it. This happened to me - not with my site - but with a client’s. I am so glad he was pretty cool about it, but I kick myself to this day for that one.
Great post!