In a former life, one of my main jobs was creating/building websites. Once deciding on a URL to purchase, I would go ahead and buy company.com and companysucks.com. Why? If anything it showed that we were thinking ahead for our client – one day in the future either a competitor or someone sitting in an Eastern European internet café would claim the “sucks” version and use it however they saw fit.

Why is this important today? Because right now Donald Trump owns jebbush.com. Look for yourself here.

Regardless of your interest in politics, you know this is a marketing failure of the highest level.

If you are unfamiliar with how URL ownership occurs, a quick overview – anyone can buy an available domain (.com, .net, etc.) and once purchased it is yours… as long as you pay the annual fee. Failure to do so put the domain back on the open market. If you had gone to jebbush.com yesterday, you could be inspired to vote for someone, maybe even donate to their campaign. Today? Welcome to donaldjtrump.com.

It is surprising how frequently this happens. Ever hear of Sanmay Ved? Just last fall, he bought google.com (the most frequented website in the world) for $12. It may be easy to mock a politician, but sometimes really large companies are more likely to let something like an annual fee fall through the cracks.

This is where we can help our clients. Some of them probably own hundreds of domains, but just even casually asking if they have the fees on auto pay/renew might spark a conversation that could lead to other opportunities.

At the very least, they’ll know you are looking out for their future.