Lucky, Then Dispenses Bad Advice — Man Gets

Domain name owner thinks he got his web site back since he was savvy. He just go lucky.

I came across a blog post by Zack Katz titled “How I got my domain name back from cyber squatters“. In a fit of stupidity, Katz let his domain name expire to make it easier to transfer to another “host”:

I was given the domain zackkatz.com for my 17th birthday by my mom…I owned the domain (and let it stagnate) until around 2006, when I wanted to switch hosts. I waited for my domain to expire so that I could transfer it to another host (I was lazy!). Well, it was registered out from under me, and I lost my domain.

Katz tried to get the name back by threatening the fresh domain registrar of the domain, but following a few months the domain was sold to what Katz calls a “”Traffic Monetization Firm” that was using my site as an ad spam website (you know those sites with a bunch of ads.” There was a link on the page to purchase the domain, so Katz made a $10 offer:

My domain had a link to “Make an Offer on this Domain,” and I offered them $10…I wanted to see what they were going to do. They wanted $150.00.

I countered with an offer of $100.00, which they accepted. I was not willing to pay $100.00 for my domain back. So I just waited. The offer expired, and they didn’t renew their registration.

So what’s the lesson, at Katz sees it? He thinks that by making an offer and then not upholding his end of the bargain he frustrated the domain owner, which caused him to just let the domain expire:

I believe the last straw for this firm was me offering them money, them accepting the offer, and me never taking them up on it.

If you want your stolen [sic] domain back (and don’t want to go through a legal battle), make offers on your website, then let them expire. I believe this was a major contributor to me getting my domain back.

Yikes! That’s terrible advice. Making an offer on a domain signifies that someone is interested in it, and this is one reason someone will go ahead and renew it even if it’s not making much money. (This also ignores the fact that Katz make a legally binding offer that he didn’t go through with.)

[Editor’s note: I’m not a fan of registring firstlastname.com combos for resale, but the point is the same regardless of the domain Katz was writing regarding.]