Tutorial: How-To Renew Your Blog Domain!

Have you ever got the dreaded emails from Google saying, "please log in to your account and update your payment information. If you take no action, your domain will not be renewed"?

Well, it looks a little something like this...

 

My blog won't be renewed?! Is that what you just said? MAJOR YIKES.

You would think that this would a 3, maybe 5, minute task at the most, right? Just let me go in, update my payment information, pay for another year and I'm all set....

WRONG.

Oh-so wrong.

The reason why I created this tutorial is because of how hard they have made this process to be and because of all the other bloggers I have heard that have had the same problem. Some have even lost their entire blogs due to this. Hopefully I can help some of you with this!

If you haven't got these emails yet, your turn is probably coming, so Pin this tutorial (or bookmark-whatever you fancy) to save for the future!


Step 1. Go to admin.google.com

>>this is where it's tricky and was causing me all the problems. You are signing in under a different account-NOT what you use to log into your Gmail/Blogger accounts. So click where it says, "sign in with another email address".

The username (in most cases) will be: yourname@yourdomain.com. For example, mine is: katie@mykeepcalmandcarryon.com. Apparently, when you set up your blog this separate account was created, but obviously a lot of us can't seem to remember this. My password ended up being the same as my Gmail password. If you can't figure out your password, you can hit "can't access my account" to reset it.

Step 2. Once you are logged in > go to the Billing tab > then to the RIGHT under "Domain Registration" there is a "$" symbol that says "Verify billing information". Click this. Then click "Billing Settings" on the left hand side and update your payment information. I put in two forms of payment just to be sure.

NOT DONE YET.

Step 3. This is so important! Click to go back to the Billing page, or "back to subscriptions" it might say, and hit the "+" sign to the LEFT of "Domain Registration". Under Renewal Options, hit CHANGE then "AUTO-RENEW MY CONTRACT".

Now every year it will be set up to automatically renew. If you have to go in and update payment information in the future, this is how you would do so.

A saint lovely man named Alan, from Google Support, actually called me to verify that this was all correct and I kind of want to send him a Christmas present for going over all this and reassuring me that I am good to go. He told me this is such a big problem and he personally is sorry for all the troubles it's caused me and my blog friends (ha)...see? Man deserves a Christmas present. Where are all the other Google support peeps?!

I hope this tutorial helps some of you and you are able to update your blog domain without any problems in the future. This also means that in return I get to keep reading your awesome blogs and that makes me pretty happy.

Over and out,

**UPDATE: This is just for domains registered with Google! Also, as much as I would like to be able to help each person's unique situation or problem, I simply don't have the time to do so. If you have followed these steps and still are experiencing problems, I have had success with Google's support department. I would suggest sending them an email (found on the same screens where you are trying to log in) and they typically respond within 24-48 hrs. Thank you!