Many people don’t own their own website – and don’t know it.
Ownership means owning the domain name – your website address.
That is done by registering the address with a “domain registrar” – a company authorized directly or indirectly by ICANN, the international organization that handles such issues.
But in many cases a website designer handles the registration for a client and charges them for it yearly. And usually they don’t make it clear to the client that in fact they (the designer) actually owns their domain.
They do provide a service, but they also make a nice little profit. But the main point is, if you don’t control your own domain name, your website could disappear or be changed without your okay, and there would be very little you could do about it.
Getting control of your own website domain is usually easy, takes a few days and is inexpensive (like $7.49). But we’ve recently seen a client have to pay $2,000 to get ownership of their domain name.
It’s worth paying attention to.