Finally got our original domain name back! Woot! : )

A few years back I signed us up for grrlpickers.com and we proceeded to use that domain on all of our advertising materials. Business cards, tshirts and a bumper graphic on the back of my car, we were happy with the resulting ability to direct our customers to one central location for all of our online shops.

   Life was good.

 Then my old email got hacked so badly that there was no recovering it, it was a nightmare. The email that I had for about 10 years with no issue at all was suddenly gone. I rebuilt my contacts and thought all was well until I went to visit our site one day and discovered the domain was no longer ours!

   Apparently the host had sent an email reminding me to renew the domain and since I didn't respond (due to my email hack I never saw the renewal message) the grrlpickers.com domain went up for grabs to the highest bidder.

   At one point I could have gotten it back for about $65.00 plus the 15 bucks or so to buy it back for ourselves but I did not have that kind of disposable cash at the time and I figured, "Who will want our silly domain name? No one! There will be no bidders at auction and then we can buy it straight as if it were a new domain!"

 I thought I was a business genius!

   Then someone else bought the domain and the price started to go up...

  I signed the domain off as lost and reregistered as grrlpickersvintage.com but I never fully lost hope on our old domain.

   "Someday..." I figured, "We will develop our business to be able to buy our old domain back!"

 I never threw out our old marketting materials because of this belief that one day, some day, we would get it back...

   Our doamin went to auction again and the last price I saw was just over $800.00 (this was sometime last summer). I stopped watching and everytime I saw the tshirts in my closet I contemplated tossing them and starting over with new ones that had GrrlPickersVintage.com on them but I just couldn't do it.

Good thing I couldn't because I randomly checked the host again a week or so ago and Lo!

   Our old domain was back for sale at a bargin basement price! Woot!

   So,
      we now have 2 domains that direct to the same place but I don't really mind that small cost when I think that our fans and customers will no longer be directed to a big spammy page when they Google Grrl Pickers.

  Hooray!

   Just thought we would post our tale of woe so if anyone else out there might be going through the same thing, don't give up, there is hope to get your original domain back.

   It might take years but sometimes, just sometimes, good things come to those who wait.

       : )