OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Rightside made an important comment regarding some questions there have been lately regarding the renewal pricing of New gTLDs.
There have been some accusations that some New gTLD registries are making domain name renewal rate changes without informing the registrant and that the registries change domain pricing from non-premium to premium pricing without notice.
I have to say that is not the “notice” part that worries me. Any increase in renewals in New gTLDs will be unjustifiable at this point. New gTLDs already have higher renewal rates than the legacy TLDs like .com, .net, .org and .info. And the current inflation in the US is at about 1%.
This is what Rightside said on the issue:
We’re posting to this thread in order to provide information about Rightside’s domain pricing.
We have never moved a registered standard domain to a premium price tier or raised the price of a registered premium domain. This type of activity is not part of our business model and therefore we have no plans to do so now or in the future.
Rightside also maintains a set of high-value premium domains that we call Platinums. These domains are available for negotiated prices. Our Registrar partners handle these domains in different ways. Some of them provide a ‘Make an offer’ option, others show a high retail price (greater than $55,000/yr) and some show them as unavailable. The WHOIS information for these domains will include the following info: “This premium domain is available for purchase. If you would like to make an offer, please contact platinums @rightside.co.”
The response was quite clear. I wonder what the other registries have to say about this matter. Donuts, Minds + Machines, Uniregistry, Radix, Afilias and the other smaller registries including all the Geo .city TLDs have to speak out.
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What are the rules, ICANN is to busy getting touchy feely to even enforce anything, how does one protect one’s business investment if they decide to take a reg fee domain to $60,000 per year like some of their other’s were priced.
.com is a safety net, gtld’s are good, but they need some regulation, and insurance for their owners, which is lacking. The blueprint is not clear.
Rightside if anything needs to decrease pricing.
Under the agreement with ICANN, registries can do whatever they want regarding pricing, with no limits. It is somewhat comforting that they (RIGHTSIDE) mention their business model/plan, but that can change as they often do. It is not “far off” to believe that pricing could eventually depend on many factors such as keyword popularity, page rank, Alexa rank etc…This is by far the #1 issue that will hold back end users to develop/build on New G’s. I have run into this issue while negotiating aftermarket sales with end users and it is a deal breaker….As I mentioned, it is SOMEWHAT comforting that RIGHTSIDE addressed this issue, I can only hope other registries address this as well.
I had an end user, the IT manager who was looking into a domain said they will not pay $250 a year renewal out of principal, and really would never pay more than $25 per year to renew a domain.
GTLD;s at this point are on crutches, and headed to being totally crippled, kudos to the registries for squeezing every yuan out of the Chinese, but technically from a graphing standpoint GTLD’s are in a broken pattern.
I made the same decision NOT to renew my .berlin domain using the same logic. I registered some very good domains. Trouble is, I can justify paying $50 each to renew 30 domains. Beats the rules to the economics of supply and demand.
Ryan,
Google just starting using .google , I’m quite sure the new g’s and the 14 million already registered in two years is not “on crutches” just wait for Amazon and 1800 with large marketing budgets start using .gifts … .movies will gain traction every day .. Awareness will happen .. Acceptance .. And then adaption.
.com and cctld’s are the way to go IMO. Most of the traffic will bleed to .com anyway. I tried to register a .auto, .car and .cars and thought there was a mistake. Even gibberish is $2888/year! Good luck with that.
This is one of the biggest jokes going, these guys wanted to open these extensions up because poor old businesses could not find good available domains.
I just tried to register sdldsfdhzkza.auto for 10 years, and my bill came to Total: $29,138.81
I almost wonder if the Taliban run ICANN?
Another EPIC.FAIL from ICANN.
The writing was on the wall back in 1999 when Registrants were locked out of the decision making process, and Registries insulated from Registrants by Registrars.
I appreciate Rightside taking the initiative to make a clear statement. Any registry that begins to raise prices on domains (which are already relatively pricey) would undermine their customers’ trust. Conversely, building trust and good will are conducive to business expansion.
I would advise any serious end user to avoid GTLD”s until they put the right framework into place, where they are clear on their pricing strategies, and put the contracts in place.
These things were just shot out of the cannon, and launched without some basics being covered, everyone got rich, except the registrants, who are going to lose their shirt, and traffic.
Domainers works hard. They brain storming for secondary name for hours. ICANN, registrars, registries or who ever made this kind of business model and decision making; please do not get so excited. You think pricing domain name from non premium dn to premium dn is cool? Something that drove you from making this kind of unfair and unreasonable moved. You are trying to predict something that doesn’t exist. The now is now; all domains that was sold for thousands and millions back 10-20 years ago was before. And this can never be repeat again. This because of overwhelming new TDN that’s being produced. So therefore, if you want to make more money; you can do this: reduce your sexycutive salaryman and salarywomen. Problem solve! Just my opinion.
Man made demand with unlimited supply, and premium
Pricing, you do the math