[stymied]
Upsize was virtually dead for three long weeks in July. That is, our Web site, dev.divistack.com, was out of commission, auctioned to a stranger in California by the company that registers our domain name.
It didn’t take long for the vultures to circle. People left voice messages saying they couldn’t access our Web site or send us e-mails. “I hope you’re not out of business,” they’d cheerily say, then detail their story ideas.
A competitor sent an e-mail to a customer that we have in common, inquiring about our contact information and pointing out that we couldn’t be reached.
The comments were ironic because we’d just reached three milestones that were physical manifestations of our company’s health. Our June/July issue was the biggest ever, and in publishing the size of the issue is set by the number of ad pages sold.
We’d hosted more than 150 people in June at our signature event, the Upsize Growth Challenge Seminar & Celebration. In April we achieved a circulation milestone, hitting the mark that allows us to pay second class rather than third class postage.
Lesson No. 1: Actual proof of business success doesn’t mean a thing if people’s e-mails bounce back, perhaps because people are so used to businesses folding.
Here’s what happened. We signed up for the “SafeRenew” program with register.com, which automatically renews one’s domain name registration. We received two e-mails in the spring, one confirming that our domain name was being renewed, and one saying that our credit card would be charged.
Alas, the registration was not renewed and after 30 days it was auctioned off without our knowledge. By July 5 our domain name was in the hands of another buyer, and so began day after day of phone messages, e-mail messages, faxes and other forms of communication that were notable for their lack of progress.
Lesson No. 2: Nobody really cares about a problem like this except you, so don’t leave it to others to handle. Don’t wait for your outside attorney to wait for the vendor to respond to your fax. Keep calling every hour until someone fixes it.
We switched to using www.upsizemag.biz in the meantime, and tried to spread the word via our electronic newsletter and voice messages. The vendor after about 10 days said it was a result of “inadvertent error” and they would attempt to restore our name. That finally happened in early August.
Lesson No. 3: There are people waiting to take your Web identity.
Local tech expert Kirk Hoaglund, CEO of Clientek, wrote a detailed article about that fact in the June/July issue of Upsize. I edited it and published it, thinking it was a great piece but not applying it to our own company.
I have no evidence that our case was anything other than inadvertent error. Hoaglund says, however, that there are plenty of ways for people to commandeer someone else’s legitimate Web business. Re-read his article, and guard yourself.
Lesson No. 4: It’s good to be alive, virtually and otherwise. My original e-mail address started working again one July day, and I’ve never been so happy to see 127 messages flood my in box, even though 30 or so as usual were for Cialis.
We are sorry for the disruption to all our wonderful readers and advertisers. Thank you for continuing to read Upsize, in this print edition and at our Web site, which I am thankful to say remains dev.divistack.com.
— Beth Ewen
editor and co-founder
bewen@upsizemag.com
