Last week it was reported that the developers of the upcoming George W. Bush Presidential Library bought back the domain name GeorgeWBushLibrary.com that they had originally purchased for $3,000 for the princely sum of $35,000. Ouch. Big ouch. The real kicker? The company that sold it back for $35K bought it online for just $10 after it had expired.
Now I am often the one at our agency responsible for purchasing and managing domain names for our use and for the use of our clients. And once you factor in all of our clients and all of the primary and campaign/microsite domains that everyone has and the fact that they weren’t all registered on the same date, this can keep a person fairly busy. However, I was bolstered on the importance of this job by reading the story above.
It pays to have someone to keep track of your domains. You can also flip the Bush library story the other way – if you buy and renew early at a price more in the ballpark of $10-$20 you might as well go ahead and buy any additional domains you can think of as well that a competitor/extortionist (like the one above) might buy out from under you later. We go through this often – should we really buy those other names as well? – and ultimately we come up with the logic that if its just $10 per additional domain, then it is money well spent.
So to keep with the political metaphor, you could say that domain registration and renewal is like voting … do it early and often.
If you are interested, you can read the full story on the Bush library domain here.
