That's what happened to many unfortunate online business owners, lately. Specifically, a stunning controversy has emerged, which all Internet marketers and business owners should pay very close attention to. If you own an online business, be extra careful.

VeriSign, online security company, is now not only a domain name registrar but also company that runs master domain database (.com's, .net's and .org's). It's a responsibility once held by Network Solutions (since acquired by Verisign) conferred to them by ICANN. Is this monopoly a good thing? Apparently not.

If you neglect to pay your mortgage, for example, you lose your home. But this only happens after you've received several "past due" notices from bank and still failed to make your payment on time. (That's OK, since your physical address never changes.)

Similarly, most domain name registrars will notify you by email when it's time to renew. But what happens if your email address is wrong? What happens if your postal address has changed? What happens if you're on vacation away from your computer? And what happens if you simply overlooked notification?

If so, you're probably out of luck.

According to Janet Kornblum in a USA TODAY article, you can lose your "digital home" without ever getting an eviction notice. Says Kornblum, "What if you just came home from work, one night, and found new owners sitting in dining room, eating your food?"

That was case with a few business owners whose domain names, which were registered through VeriSign, expired and were quickly snapped up by other people, putting original owner right out of business in a blink of an eye! VeriSign is not only one, too. Some registrars fail to even send a single renewal notice!

(One lawyer became aware -- when it was too late -- that his URL for his law practice website lead to a porn site. Not only did he lose all that business and traffic, but he also had to deal with a much bigger loss: his good name, and not just name itself.)

It starts like this: You dream up a list of possible names for your company. You run them through a domain search engine only to find all your dot com selections are already taken.

So you face a choice. Do you settle for a domain name that doesn't really turn your crank but is available with prized .com extension? Or do you say 'damn torpedoes' and go with a .net, .org or other suffix and hope your clientele will remember it and appreciate what a rebel you are?

For starters, regardless of suffix, best way for traffic to find you is if your domain name reflects nature of your business and is catchy enough to recall without a lot of mental gymnastics. (There are notable big-budget exceptions to this rule).

You want a domain name that is spelled just as it is pronounced so even if your potential clients hear it mentioned in conversation, they can type it in later without confusion. If you can squeeze in one or two delectable search engine keywords, so much better.

If you do wind up using .net, .org or one of 250 country- specific extensions, you need to hammer it home in your promotions. Repeat it often. Accentuate difference.

Jenean Matthews of http://www.vitaherbs.net does all that plus supplements her online marketing with free gifts like pens printed with her URL. Does she ever worry that she missed .com bandwagon?

Not a bit. She predicts that, with advent of new technologies, typed-in URLs will eventually become a thing of past anyway.