By: RH
A Quick Chat With Anthony M. Beltran Coo/Cfo 101Domain.com
1) What makes 101Domain.com stand out as a registrar and why should someone use your website ?
101domain
has been around since 1999 with a primary focus on bringing domain
names to customers worldwide in all TLDs available at a good price with
good service. If it can be registered, we can do it. This focus has
resulted in us offering the largest list of gTLD and ccTLDs available to
be registered anywhere, from the simple, most popular extensions, to
the more exotic and restrictive jurisdictions. With our vast registry
connections, accreditations, and trustee service network, we are able to
provide these services on a stable platform at incredible prices.
With
the website, we aim to make the search, registration and management
process as transparent and easy as possible, providing our customers
with loads of information on every TLD and reliable systems that work.
The world of ccTLDs is not always as easy and automated as customers are
used to with gTLDs like com/net/org, but our goal is to make it just
that.
variety of Country Code Domains, Do you think Country Codes will be
affected more or less than the big three (com/net/org) by the New Tlds
coming to market ?
If you look
at the current market, we see ccTLDs registration volume growing at
nearly 20% year over year. com/net/org is considerably slower than
this, less than 5%. The stronger ccTLDs will be less effected by the
onslaught of new gTLDs coming to market in 2014. If you look at the
successful ones – co.uk, de,
ru for example – these TLDs have gained strong acceptance from their
country user base due to registry marketing efforts and are entrenched
and growing in their markets. The smaller country code registries have
become more active the last couple years in marketing their TLDs and
pushing out initiatives to broaden their market reach in anticipation of
new gTLDs taking away market share. We’re seeing registries like .PT
and .FR liberalizing their requirements to open their markets to more
people and its working. We’re seeing others creating 3rd level extensions to cater to smaller market segments.
3) Will 101Domain.com be an active participant in the new tlds when they are launched ?
Of
course! Our mission is to bring domain names to the public in all TLDs
available, including new gTLDs. We’re very excited over here to begin
working with new registries to market and expand the domain name space –
this is the biggest expansion we will probably ever see, and fantastic
for business owners, entrepreneurs, and Domainers alike. We’ve already
started taking pre-reservations in September and have taken over 100,000
pre-registrations already.
We have plenty of experience in new TLD launch procedures and are looking forward to a busy next couple years.
Integration,
launch and marketing of new gTLDs. New gTLDs are products just like
any other. A registrar has to prepare its systems and people to sell
and service these products en masse. Integration involves technical
staff, testing, legal, operations, marketing and sales. There are many
new registries going down this road for the first time with registrars
they have never worked with, this could pose problems for the less
experienced registries and registrars. We’re ready for this part –
101domain is built to be scalable and we add new TLDs every month which
you’ll find on our New Releases page on the website.
Our
bigger challenge is on the marketing end – getting the product in front
of the right customers with limited shelf space. You’ll find in our
site search an always improving TLD suggestion engine for both active
TLDs and new gTLDs. Customers won’t buy what they don’t see so were
working hard to position the most beneficial domains in front of our
customers. We’ll be pouring over this data and other analytics going
forward to see which suggestions are selling to which customers to put
the right product in front of you.
This
can really go both ways. We see a lot of short premium keyword
registrations in newer ccTLDs in zones like .AE which have become pretty
popular but we also see quite a few vanity name registrations at higher
prices like .AL, .ST and .GE. The tech world and general public seems
to be catching on to some of these and there are many entrepreneurs
working to build business models around catchy URLs, which in the end is
great for domain investors.
