There are currently a lot of internet businesses beginning to emerge in the market place. In today’s economy, everyone is looking to save a little here, create a little there to keep up with the changing financial landscape. Not too long ago, some real estate investors would acquire a controlling interest in a piece of property so that when the property was sold, they would make some money during the transaction for having a “controlling interest” in the property without actually owning the property. I am seeing a similar scenario emerging when it comes to internet businesses.
When a domain name is registered, the name and address of the person is recorded during the transaction. If you’re purchasing that domain through a software developer, they may purchase the domain for you and then sell it to you for an amount or they may lease it to you for an amount. Either way, they control the domain. They also have the ability to lock the domain. Locking a domain prohibits the ownership and associated hosting from being transferred to another entity without the owner’s consent. Locking a domain is a normal activity used as a protection so that the website cannot be redirected by someone else. It is simply a safety mechanism. Even if you paid the software developer to purchase the website domain on your behalf, if they purchased it in their name, you do not own the website until it is transferred to your name. Because you do not own the website, you do not control it either.
How do you know who owns your website? You can search for your website name using a tool called “whois”. Simply search for “whois” + yourwebsitename as shown in the example below:
Obviously you would replace “monetizationmagic.com” with the website name for which you are inquiring.
Your search should return several possibilities. Take a look for one that will discuss who owns the website. It is possible that this information has been obfuscated by a privacy service as well. If this is your case, you will need to contact the privacy service and prove your right to know this information before this is revealed to you. This can be a very good thing if you are a high profile individual and someone is looking to extract large amounts of money from you. With privacy protection in place, they will not be able to easily uncover intellectual assets that are in your name. Truly, if you have an internet business that makes a lot of money, there are other protections that should be put in place that are outside the scope of this post.
Now maybe you’re completely comfortable with the website ownership; however, you should keep in mind that website “flipping” is becoming a very lucrative business for those who know what they are doing. Let’s say you have a website in which you have lost interest. To you, the website is in a good niche and has a nice title but frankly it’s ugly. It’s kinda of like the ugly, unkempt rental real estate down the block. What is trash to you may be a mighty treasure to someone else. Rather than just abandoning it, try to sell it and you may find that you can pocket a nice return on your investment! Someone else might be able to purchase those ugly bits from you, transform it into something beautiful and then resell it for thousands more than they paid for it! To whet your appetite, check out the article below that talks about Apple just paying over $4 million for a highly coveted domain name. (Now why didn’t I think of that!) If this is something that you might be interested in learning for yourself, check into my class offerings to get you started.
Look for website auctions to be opening right here in the coming weeks!
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