How I lost a domain name

Sometime ago, I made a huge rookie tech mistake. Now, in the grand scheme of things, it is not really affecting my life and probably not that big of a deal. However, in principle, and when it comes to “You never know,” I messed up.

So here’s what happened, I had a few domains expiring. I thought to myself, “Meh, I don’t use them anymore so I’ll just let them go, there’s no point in continuing to pay for these things annually.” So against my better instincts, I didn’t renew them.

Later that week I thought to myself, “You know what, I kind of like the names, I should renew them.” Not a few moments after I had that realization, some random guy emails me stating the following, “Hi, I am the new owner of the domain “hiddenreportdotcom” and I’ll gladly sell it back to you for 6k.”

What the hell just happened? This guy just bought the domain within a day or so of its expiring and then tried to sell it back to me at a huge profit. I was surprised, pretty pissed off, but I knew that I had no recourse. This behavior, though seemingly in bad taste is perfectly legal and very smart on his end. Well played internet domain monitoring guy, well played.

Anyway, after this rude awakening I immediately ran back and purchased back all my other domains that had expired. I bought them all including “thehiddenreportdotcom” and “hiddenreportdotnet” among a few others that I had.

I’m extremely bothered by this and I really want my domain back, but that’s what he’s counting on, isn’t it? He wants me to buy it back, but I ain’t dropping 6k for a domain name. I own way more valuable names, plus I ain’t rich to be dropping such ridiculous amounts of cash on something that is just gonna sit in my domain manager. I don’t think so, but that blows. In any case, there’s nothing I can do about this now, its just over and done with. I simply messed up on this one.

In an unrelated domain matter, I almost donated “aroddotorg” to a non-profit. You know how I’m all nice to people and someone asked me to donate it. I almost did it too, but I’ve had that domain since 2001 and I just didn’t want to part with it.

Anyway, I’m sure that those of you who own many domains wouldn’t make this same mistake, but I thought I’d share this story for the benefit of those of you who may not know or even consider that this can happen. If your domains are expiring, especially one and two word domain names, pay the money and keep it active. Apparently, you might be able to sell it for over 6k one day.