A Scary Story (& Warning) About Domains

I just ran into an "issue" I had never thought about… but should have.

As I was editing and updating one of my most popular free reports in the
self help niche, I came across a link/domain that I used (to use) to redirect
to a CB affiliate link.

Fortunately, I thought of checking the link - because I wasn't sure whether I
still owned the domain (or whether I still redirected it where I thought it
was going to).

Imagine my horror when the website that opened was a pretty ghastly
Japanese porn site with a rather explicit image front and center.

Yikes!

So I checked my Godaddy account and indeed, I no longer owned that
domain.

It had never occurred to me that if I let go of a domain that it would turn
into something like THAT!

Obviously, I immediately created a new redirect to a domain I actually
own, and changed the link in the report, and re-uploaded it to my server.

I'll also have to send my subscribers a replacement report with the new
link.

And then I will have to search through hundreds of blog posts and articles
and several reports and some resource pages to make sure I remove and
replace any links to THAT page.

I guess I was lucky! I almost posted a WSO with a new guide that had this
link in its resource box. Fortunately, now it doesn't.

Some lessons…

I'll need to be more careful when I let domains expire that are in any of
my free ebooks and special reports… and certainly remove or update the
booklets.

I've got dozens of such domains floating about in cyberspace right now,
and sure hope that none of the others will come back to haunt me like that.

From now on, I will always make sure to renew domains that I've been
spreading around. I used to think that the worst thing that could happen
was that there'd be a dead link, and I'd lose a commission. For products
that I never sold any of, that didn't seem much of a problem.

As it turns out, there's a whole other dimension of potential trouble out
there...