When you buy a domain name there are a three things you should do.
- Record sale for tracking purposes (my spreadsheet)
- Update whois information – buyers can’t find you to make offers if it’s not
- Update your nameservers
This article is about updating your nameservers, so why is it important?
When you purchase a domain name and do not change the nameservers, chances are the previous owner is getting paid for your traffic. That’s right, if the previous owner had the domain parked then they are still collecting profits from your traffic. Perhaps you are new to domaining and don’t know how to update this information. In this case you can simply contact your registrar and they will walk you through the process.
I promise it’s easy, if I can do it so can you 
If you don’t care about the possiblity of lost money, maybe you should. It is very easy to park your domains and you have absolutely nothing to lose, especially if your domain names are just sitting there collecting dust.
Good bit of info Chef. I have accidentally done the old accept transfer and forget to update nameservers bit myself, to only realize a month later that its still going to the previous owners parking page
I do this all the time once the name is in my account i don’t think much of it until one day I am in my account and say doh!!
at godaddy, I always get the list of all the domains with all the data like name servers,renewal status/option, dates and etc…and I do it every 2 days.
easy to download the whole list.
No need to put on your spreadsheet.
You can even set the domain to expire before the 7 days for domain tasting so you won’t forget.
The GoDaddy data is great if you are just tracking hand registered domains and only if you use GoDaddy exclusively. For myself though I purchase or have purchased a lot of names from the forums and domain owners. Relying on the GoDaddy data alone would not work for me.
When I first got my start in domaining, I had a premium domain name I had bought from someone. They had it parked, and me being the new kid, didnt update the DNS and thought I was still going to get paid. WRONG! I lost about $200 :S