How We Snatched Our Domain Name

Good Domain Name News
Yay, We Got Our ProfessionalWebServices.net Domain Name!

I thought I would share this story with everyone about the case of registering an expired domain name.

Just to give a little background information, it is important to understand my thought process in picking the name of Professional Web Services, Inc. in the first place. When I first got involved with Internet Marketing, I felt it was important to portray in our name the type of company that we consider ourselves to be. That is, we always take a professional approach to everything we do online and with our customers. Sure, we have some websites that are fun and have a Fridays entertainment value to them, but when it comes to the business of Internet marketing for our clients we honor their trust they place in our services by always giving 100%, to not only publishing the best website possible for them, but also in the ethics aspect of Internet marketing.

So, you can see how we got the first word, "Professional." The second word made sense from the Internet standpoint. The World Wide Web is all encompassing and growing steadily. I was one of the early pioneers of forging online. So, it was logical that the second word would be the "Web." Then, the third word just fell into place naturally with the "Services" provided by: Professional Web Services, Inc.

At first, with any name that you choose, it is important to also see what type of domain names are available. This is an area online that is continually evolving into what some might see as a War of Names.

Common names and common words are some of the more interesting stories involved with domain name ownership. The dot com names have been taken for the majority of words in the English language. This is also true for many of the combinations of logical two word English phrases. Internet Marketing, Online Advertising, and Web Marketing, are some of the more highly sought after combinations of online words. Other words like the words for the day of the week have also been registered by various individuals or company organizations. For example Fridays.com is owned by TGI Fridays restaurant chain, but Fridays.ws is owned by me. I actually use Fridays.ws website as our Thank God It's Fridays fun day outlet. Now, TGI Fridays restaurant chain does not have the rights to every single instance the common word Fridays is used on the Internet or in a domain name. In fact, there is no confusion between our Fridays and their Fridays. Our site even has a disclaimer that we are not affiliated with T.G.I. Friday's® Worldwide Restaurant chain. However, if we were to go into the restaurant business, and started using the name Fridays as our restaurant name and the domain name, that would be an entirely different story.

As far as the use of Professional Web Services is concerned, there were a couple of individuals that had the .net and the .com names. So, we decided that we would register all the other uses of Professional Web Services that made sense for us. However, early on, we thought that having to type out the long name Professional Web Services every single instance of usage would be exorbitantly long and tiresome. Also, imagine the long email addresses that you would have with both a name and the long domain name attached (InternetMarketingServices@ProfessionalWebServices.Net). That is where it made logical sense to also grab pwebs.net, and use this one for the website to begin with.

This thought process actually worked out very well, but because of the physical size and amount of information at pwebs.net it also made sense to establish another website, with different information related to our business. It is at pwebs.org that we have a synopsis overview of our company plus the addition of another Top Secret Blog.

So, getting back to the story of ProfessionalWebServices.net. GoDaddy.com has a backorder service for monitoring domain names that are taken but if they ever come back into the pot and become available or change hands, this service lets you know by email and in the case of an expired domain name, tries to register the domain name for you automatically. Once this option was set in place, there was nothing more for us to do except wait.

It is important to note, that if the domain had many suiters it might have gone into an after market bidding area online. However, in the case of our name, since we are incorporated as Professional Web Services, Inc. and most of the other domain names are owned by us, we thought it would be unlikely that there would be any type of bidding on this name. Additionally, under domain name laws, U.S. federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, a person or company that tries to capture an already established domain name for some corporation or entity that is not rightfully theirs could be considered to be Cybersquatting. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

If the domain name had the potential to be in an after market bidding war, then there are other services online to try and secure a domain name. There was an excellent story by: Mike Davidson: How to Snatch an Expiring Domain, in which he goes into great detail about his quest for a domain name.

Well, back to our story. So I knew that the previous owner of ProfessionalWebServices.net did not renew the domain name and the time frame for reintegration into the domain name pool was coming due. So I set up the GoDaddy backorder service and just waited to the drop date. It was on this drop date that we were hoping to here from GoDaddy that we had gotten the domain name. However, with a sad face I must tell you we did not get the name.

We're sorry, but the following domain name(s) that you backordered was not captured successfully:

PROFESSIONALWEBSERVICES.NET

Changes made to a domain take at least 24 hours to update in the WhoIs database. If you perform a WhoIs lookup on the domain to verify registration information or the status of the domain before 24 hours has passed, the information may appear to be incorrect.

OH well, it was not the end of the world. But, it was not the end of the story either.

Four days later I get another automatic email with this message.

Congratulations! The following domain name(s) that you backordered was successfully captured:

PROFESSIONALWEBSERVICES.NET

I am not sure how this happened, but I am not one to question good fortune. This was Great!

Our plans for the ProfessionalWebServices.Net website are to really share a little about website customization and website design. PWEBS.NET will continue to focus on the main foundation of what our company's focus is on, which is Internet marketing services, ethical search engine optimization, Online advertising strategies, and Web branding solutions for B2C and B2B businesses.

If you have a B2B or B2C business that needs help in any of these areas, Professional Web Services is here to help you. Contact us today for a free Internet marketing evaluation or a custom website design quote.

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