Domain Magnate

The biggest problem of having a portfolio of over 3,000 domains is of course the renewals, but not only the decision what to renew and what to drop is tricky, but the most annoying part is the constant renewal emails.   Some registrars like to send multiple emails for each domain which creates huge amounts of emails in my inbox. I’m getting these on a weekly basis and usually tend to ignore.

Every month or so I login to my main registrar accounts and renew the domains which are to expire. Not a well organized process yet, but I don’t like to use auto-renewals and I usually renew the top domains for a couple years upfront.

There is software like dnzoom that helps automate this stuff, which is sensible for large portfolios, however giving all your registrar passwords to one site seems a little too much for me, besides it’s not really something you can’t manage manually.

Naturally sometimes I forget to renew good names and lose them..

How do you manage renewals?

This is a complete guide on domain scammers that shows how to recognize and avoid scammers while trading domains.

There are several popular scamming schemes:

1. Scammer sells stolen domains

How it works:

Scammer trying to sell quickly a stolen domain for a bargain price.

A domain can be stolen by hacking into the a email address associated with it - like yahoo, or hotmail; or by means of social engineering, e.g. if a scammer contacts the registrar support and pretends to be the owner of the domain who forgot the password. Stealing passwords is also possible through keyloggers and trojans installed on the domain owner’s computer.

How to avoid having a domain stolen?

- don’t use free email addresses in your domain contact details. Most people still do this and it puts their valuable domain assets as higher risk. Instead use an email address from your own domain.
- install and run an antivirus and antispyware software, update it frequently and run scans. Here is a good guide on cleaning your computer from spyware and viruses.
- always use strong passwords, random letters and numbers that are near each other on the keyboard. Use different passwords for everything and a password manager to keep track of them. Roboform is recommended. Change the passwords once in a while.
- keep your whois contacts and registrar information up to date read more »