MBA1194 How to Get a Handle on All Your Domains

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling.

Payments and wondering how this became my life.

But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more.

PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade.

Your whole setup with amazing savings.

Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. The place to go when your business needs a boost every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn how to get a handle on all your domains. We've all been there. We get a great idea in our head for a business. The first thing we do is we search if that domain name is available. If that website address is available, we get so excited that we register it for a year and then pretty much nothing happens after that. And this happens over and over and before we know it we will have 5, 10, 20, 50 different domain names in our account in different accounts. At one point I had domains@godaddy, @domains.com, @hostgator, @hostmonster, all over the place. Domains I didn't use for years, domains that expired by accident that I needed to make sure that they renewed domains that didn't expire and I kept on being charged for something I wasn't using. So in today's episode we're going to talk about how to get a handle on all your domains, how to have them all in one place, manage them, save money, make sure you're not wasting money, and make sure that they get renewed properly, even if the credit card on file expires. I'm going to share with you my own experiences of cleaning up my domains because I've been guilty of buying domains on a whim and giving you a game plan to implement today. Let's jump right into it. Let's get down to business. Domain names are more than just a website address. Domains give us hope, they give us promise. It gets us excited. It makes us feel like, hey, maybe one day this domain will be the name of this huge business that I build that's wildly successful. All that for pretty much 10 bucks a year. That's not bad at all. But as entrepreneurs, we don't want to be wasteful. As entrepreneurs, we want to be organized. We want to make sure that we're taking care of our domains. And for the most part, if you're not in the business of domain names, if you're not in the business meaning that you're trading it like real estate, picking up domains for a certain price and then flipping them later on, most of us are not doing that. Most of us, that's not our business. That's a full time job. Most of us are picking up domains because we think, hey, this is a cool name for a business that I may want to build in the future. So in today's episode, we're going to clean things up. First of all, I want to mention costs. Domains can get really costly, especially.com, even if you register a domain name for 10 bucks, the renewal is most likely going to be around 30. And those add up as you add domains on a whim. If you're adding domains left and right, before you know it, every year you're spending three to four hundred dollars on domains. So dot coms are getting expensive. So are dot nets and dot cos. So we're gonna go through a few steps to clean up our domains and then put them all in one place so we can easily organize them, renew them and make sure that they're taken care of. So the first thing is we're gonna call, we're gonna kill our darlings. Basically, we're gonna stop renewing the ones that are not being used. Take a look at all the domains you have now. What I want you to do is open up your computer right now and open up a bunch of tabs and open up everywhere you've registered domains. If you, uh, you had domains at different registrars, whether it's domain.com or GoDaddy, you can name them all. Some of us have registered our domains with our host or our website builder, like Weebly or Squarespace. So open up that as well. Okay, so take a look at all the domains you have and look at the ones that you don't have active, meaning you don't have a website on that domain that's actually out in the world that I can actually visit. So if you can visit it, if you can visit that website, put them aside, those domains you want to make sure you can renew. Okay, we're not going to touch them right now. Keep them where they are, wherever they are, wherever you have them registered. The next category are domains with different extensions to the ones you're currently using. So for example, I use webinar ninja.com for our website, but I also own the dot co and it forwards the dot com. So that's one I want to keep. So I'm going to keep that one and it forwards. So, so any kind of a similar or same name domains with different extensions, put those aside, you're going to keep those. Everything else that you're not using that doesn't have a website attached to it, we're going to end renewal on it. Okay? There's only two exceptions to this. Okay. Exception number one is if this domain is your name. Okay? If it's your name, I highly recommend you keep your domain name for your own personal name because that can always, uh, be handy when you build your personal brand. You don't want anybody to snatch that up. You want to keep that with you. So for example, Omar Zenhome.com, that's mine, I have a website attached to it. But if, if I didn't, I would still keep that domain. The second exception are domains that are short word domains. One or two word domains, those are going to have some value, so you may want to keep those, especially if they're.coms or.nets. so if you own pizzaparty.com you want to hang on to that. But pizza partyonfriday.com not really sure if that's worth keeping. And to be quite honest, if you're not going to build a business in the next six months on pizza partyonfriday.com, don't do it. Let it go and let the person who will build a business with that domain have it. Okay? And when I say let it go, that means you're going to shut off auto renewal, you're going to let it expire on its own, make sure you shut off auto renewal. You can also set the domain to being parked so you can park this domain so that if anybody does go to that domain looking to see if it's available, it will say this domain is parked at this, you know, domain registrar. And you can make the website information, the whois information public. That way somebody can contact you if they want to buy it. So you could do that while it's expiring, before that renewal is up and you, you know, obviously shut off the renewal. But in the meantime, somebody may make an offer so you could do that, open up the whois information, make it public so people can reach out to you and park the domain. So all we're left is our active domains with websites and our personal domain, our name or any really special limited character domain names like pizzaparty.com, right? All right, now we have our domains, but what do we do with them? We have them all over the place. We have them at different registrars, maybe they're with our hosting company. We want to make sure we keep them in one place. That way we can organize them easily and make sure they renew automatically, no matter what. This is where it gets fun. And this is what I recently did, and I'm so happy that I did this. I recently discovered Google Domains. Google Domains is not a sponsor of today's episode. I just discovered them and discovered how awesome they are. And I say recently, in the last year or so, so Google Domains allows you to organize all your domains with your Google account. Now, what's great about Google Domains is one, it has a really easy interface. You can transfer in all domains from all areas. And giving your domain privacy or turning that on is not going to cost you any money. It's free. Actually, other domain registrars charge for that. So what you're going to do is you're going to transfer all your domains to Google Domains. Now, word of caution, when you do this, there will be a change of DNS information. If you don't know what DNS is, don't worry. Just tell your website master, your web developer, the person that manages your website, you're transferring domains to Google Domains and you'll have to manage the domains there, DNS there and they'll understand. Now, transferring your domains is so simple. It's step by step instructions. You basically request to transfer the domain from where the domain is. So say for example, you have it at GoDaddy and you say, hey GoDaddy, I want to transfer this domain. You click a button, you confirm via email that you want to transfer the domain and it's going to give you a special code. You're going to take that special code and you're going to pop it into your Google Domain dashboard. When you're going through that transition, it's going to ask you in Google Domains what's the domain you want to transfer. You put pizzaparty.com it's going to ask for the transfer code. You put the code that you got from, for example, GoDaddy, and you're good to go. It's going to take a few days to transfer, but it's all good. Super simple. Now, when you transfer domains to another registrar, you are required to renew for an additional year. So even if you just renewed yesterday, you're going to have to renew for another year if you transfer the domain to a different registrar. Now these are domains we want to keep anyway, so it's not such a big deal for us to pay another year in advance. Now, after the few days have passed, you'll find that the transfer is done and your domain is in Google Domains. Here you can control the DNS, you can control forwarding, you can check your MX records and you know, attach an email system there if you'd like. The point is, is that you can manage all your domains inside of Google Domains in one spot, transfer them all in there. And that's what I did recently and it makes life so much easier. Another awesome thing about Google Domains is that you can have a backup payment system, meaning that if you have a credit card that's on file with Google Domains, it may expire. And then if for some reason, if they can't charge you, you may lose that domain. You need a backup payment option and with Google Domains they give you that option. And you can choose PayPal as an option, which you can choose as PayPal being linked to your bank account. That way, even if your credit card expires, you know it will charge the 10 bucks or the 30 bucks and make sure your domain does not expire. Once you have all your domains, put them all on auto renewal and make sure you have a backup payment source.

Okay? Does this happen to anybody else? You sit down with a juicy cute PC, some McNuggets, and those golden fries from McDonald's. Then you take a long sip of your Sprite because you can still hear your mama saying, don't fill up on that drink before you eat your food. But you're grown now, so you do what you want.

Share and share alike. With the 20 piece McNuggets from McDonald's for just $6. Limited time only. Price and participation vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people One of.

The things that's really cool about Google domains is that their domain renewal prices are very competitive. You're not going to get gypped. Actually, some other domain registrars will charge more than others. They'll charge a premium knowing that you like this domain and that you want to renew it. But Google's quite fair and they charge a reasonable price. So now you have all your domains in one place. When you think of you want to buy a new domain, where do you think you're going to buy it? Of course you're going to go to Google Domains and add that domain there. Now, as a bonus tip, as a bonus practice, this is going to be a bit fun here, okay? If you ever buy a new domain. Now as a rule of thumb, if you don't have a landing page, a website, something that you can attach that domain to that day when you register. If you can't do that, then shut off auto renewal, okay? This is going to force you, this is going to put some fire under you that you have a year to get this thing off the ground and if you forget to actually renew it, that's on you. That means you didn't take action. Now if you're super worried about this, I like to give myself a calendar reminder three days before so I look at when it's going to renew. Three days before I put myself a calendar reminder, hey, your so and so domain is going to expire. I don't do this if I have a site up the day I register the domain because then I have my auto renewal on. Kind of my reward for taking action and actually putting my idea out in the world and not just saying let me buy the domain and worry about the business later the idea later. This stops us from being dreamers and being doers. Okay? Even if you just put a simple landing page up and saying this space is where so and so is going to exist, have an opt in where you can collect some email addresses for those who are interested in what it is, PizzaParty.com will be launching soon. If you're interested in throwing a pizza party for your staff, leave your name and email address and we'll let you know when we launch. Done. You can easily do this on WordPress. You could do this on any website builder like Weebly or Squarespace. You could do this with leadpages. No sweat at all. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. If you love the show, the biggest compliment you can give us is leave us an iTunes rating and review. Let us know what you love about the show, your favorite episode, your favorite takeaway, and don't forget to hit subscribe on whatever you love to use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Spotify or Stitcher Radio or or Apple podcasts, we're on them all. By hitting subscribe, you get all our episodes automatically. They get downloaded straight to your device so you never miss an episode. It's there waiting for you when you're ready to listen. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I've said this probably more often on the show than anything else, and that's Ideas are dime a dozen, okay? Domains are really just ideas. They're an idea for a business. Ideas are really not that important. It's your execution. Ideas are all over the place. There are no original ideas really in the world. Look at all the popular businesses that you frequent. Look at all the successful businesses you know of, whether it's Facebook or Amazon or Apple. They all had similar businesses. Concepts exist before them, okay? There was MySpace before Facebook. Facebook's not novel. There was ebay before Amazon. And then even when Amazon was just doing books, Barnes and Nobles was doing online books as well. They just didn't do it as well as Amazon. Their execution was poor. So you get the point. Don't get hung up on grabbing this URL and holding onto it, because it's going to be your ticket to freedom. No, it's the execution of how you're going to use that domain that matters. And if the execution is right, you can buy the domain that you want later on. For example, my buddy Noah Kagan has a software company called Sumo.com but it didn't start out as Sumo.com a four letter domain. It started out as Sumome. That was a domain that was available. He started with that, built the company, became an eight figure business, and then later bought Sumo.com for $1.5 million. How's that for inspiration? All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've been the trusted experts since 1960 because nobody knows tires better than we do. And with over 90 tire brands, we have an abundance of options in stock for your vehicle. Buy and drive today at discounttire.

Com.

Let's get you taken care of.