So, I'm technically streaming live now on Facebook. Today's subject, I thought I'd cover something that I've come across with a few business owners of late. And that is, a domain name. Whether they actually own their domain name. You'd think they would, right?

But two clients quite recently, their webbie, they'd been engaged about a year ago, registered it in his business name. I don't know why you do that. To me, it's just a wrong thing to do.

But more recently, there was another client. He's had his domain name for 18 years. So, thriving business, local business, doing really well. Now, the problem in that particular instance, was his domain mane was a dot.com domain name. So, the webbie he engaged 18 years ago, registered it in his actual own name. Now, the guy is an old codger. He's actually getting quite old and decrepit.

Now the danger there is that because the email notification for renewal is in his name, if he dies, nobody gets the renewal notification for the domain name. The domain then becomes unregistered. And you'd think the proper business owner would be able to register it. But the problem is, with dotcom domains, it's an open side of the market. So, if that becomes unregistered, one of the domain squatters will grab that domain name and buy it, and hold the original business owner to ransom, basically.

So, it's something that you've got to be really, really careful with.

Now, this is my first live webinar, so I'm not quite sure how it's streaming everything else. I'm actually streaming this using Zoom Webinar, through to Facebook Live, so I'm actually not able to see the stream.

What I wanna be able to do is share some web links to show people where they can actually go to ... I'm just gonna share this live now. I'm gonna share this on my screen. You should be able to see my screen.  If I go to one of these domain registrars, this particular one is https://whois.auda.ltd/. And you can basically put your domain name in there, I'll just grab mine. You enter it in and hit search. And it will give you all of the details to who that's registered to.

So the registered contact is me. That's the partnership name of Linda and myself, and the technical contact is me. This is the sort of information that you really need to know.

Now in this particular platform, it doesn't actually show other details. So, I'll use two platforms, 'cause it gives across range of information. I'll just open the other one up now, which is AusRegistry.

That's https://whois.auda.ltd/. Put your domain name in here. Now you gotta take out the forward slash at the end and the www. You just want the domain name. Put in the code, okay. Eight ... And you'll see the information that this gives. Shows you the tech [00:05:00] contact email, so the person that's on as the technical person, but more importantly, the registrant contact email.

So, if this information is not your name, that's a really scary thing.

If you need a hand with sorting this out, just give us a shout-out. More than willing to help. We've helped literally dozens and dozens of people. Where we come to actually build their website and all of a sudden they find out "Oh, I can't access my domain name." And then it's like, "Oh, it's actually not even registered to me,"

And the reason I thought I'd do this now, it's just timely. Two clients recently, as I said earlier, one client, for 18 years he's had his domain name, thought it was in his name. Really vulnerable position to be in. Not only that, because his was a dot.com, we then found out and advised the client to actually secure the dotcom.au domain name. He'd never owned that.

The dotcom.au, the auDA, Australian Domains Association, have really good controls. In Australia, if somebody buys your business name as a dotcom.au and squats on it, you can actually take them to court, and you will win. Because when you register domain names, there's a check box, which is closely related to the business name, so you just can't go buying domain names randomly. Well, you can but them, but people can challenge you on it.

So, we've got a lot of good regulations, which is really encouraging.  But, if you've got a dotcom only and it's not in your name, you are actually quite vulnerable.

Anyway, so I thought I would cover that topic. So, bigger picture, I plan on doing business tips at 10 every Saturday morning. I'll cover topical subjects, not always related to internet and web science. We cover a lot of subjects, email marketing, SEO, but direct mail marketing. There's a lot of different subjects that we cover because we've been helping business owners for 11 years, we've become almost business coaches.

So, I've set up a business group on Facebook, I will just go to that now. So Smarter Business Mastermind. So have a look at that. It's an open group. Now, I'll be posting this video and a lot of other business tips along the way. But basically, it helps business owners to get a handle on websites and online marketing.

There's so much to learn but so much of it is so simple, and it's just a matter of having heads up on how to move forward yourself.

My help platform is, the more value that I can add to business owners, the more value that I'm gonna get. And I just like helping people.

So, I really hope that this webinar helps you, makes a difference. Do go to those two links, whoa, not that one. That one, and that one. And just do a double check.

Now the other thing is, on my website, which I don't have up in this particular window, going to it now. Because I'm running through a webinar program, it's loading a little bit slowly. On my website, Smarter Websites, you can navigate down the page, and the webinar platform is slowing it down, down the page, and there is a free resource down here. "YOUR DOMAIN NAME - Get Instant Access." There's a whole host of information in that resource "YOUR DOMAIN NAME."

I've had that written for quite a number of years and never officially released it. So do jump on the smarterwebsites.com.au, download this, have a read through it, you'll be amazed at the information that's available.

So, we hope that helps and we look forward to being on another webinar with you, and I will sign off with my little tagline.

Go work smarter.