Unless you took the day off yesterday you are probably aware of the news out of Uniregistry.
Domain Incite detailed comments from Frank Schilling on the upcoming price increases for several Uniregistry extensions.
People as well as markets hate uncertainty, not knowing what your registrations are going to cost you year in and year out pretty much makes your portfolio unmanageable as a domain investor. It makes it difficult for you to budget your expenses year in and year out.
It also adds a wrinkle in any negotiations with potential buyers. How do you explain to them why some extensions cost $10 and the one you are selling costs $300 ?
Of course many like to say if they are an end user they don’t care, what’s $300 a year ? What’s the cost of an ad during the Super Bowl or the lease payment to rent their office space ? All businesses don’t think that way, some don’t place great significance on the domain name.
Either way it is just something you don’t need tacked on to a potential domain sale. You want to have a price every business sees as negligible.
I think another factor for registries raising their prices into the hundreds is brand protection. One source on income for a lot of registries has been brands regging their name in extensions that mean jack balls to them. They just accepted it as a business cost.
If the price gets so high it becomes cost prohibitive and they might also figure a potential squatter will not pay $300 – $500 a year for a worthless domain.
Aftermarket sites are also going to need to inform potential bidders and buyers that some names have three and four figure renewal prices.
Given the massive expected domain name deletions, Uniregistry shall henceforth be referred to as Punyregistry. 🙂
Lol George.
Spot on article. why do I need to tell a small business this name is going to cost $2,000 for example, and then $300 a year to keep it.
They will never buy into that.
“If the price gets so high it becomes cost prohibitive and they might also figure a potential squatter will not pay $300 – $500 a year for a worthless domain.”
That is a great point Raymond. I think there will be a move to not bother so much and protecting in so many extensions, especially if the price is high. What is worse, squatters or registries try to sell them their own brand? Some of those defensive rages are going to get dropped as well.
This means several new Gtlds will fail. Bye, bye.
“If the price gets so high it becomes cost prohibitive and they might also figure a potential squatter will not pay $300 – $500 a year for a worthless domain.”
That is it!
They want to weed out domain investors and keep “end users”.
Trouble is… nobody is using Frank’s extensions since he’s hogging all of them.
78% of .LINK domains are For Sale. 🙂
http://www.hosterstats.com/link-website-usage-survey.php
We have to be appreciative of the fact that .com (and largely .net) prices have stayed stable over years. No wonder, their aftermarket is most stable and does not seem to be losing its luster.
Student enrolls at university for $10k per semester.
Course credits are non-transferrable.
2 years into the program with 2 years more to go, the student is surprised to learn that tuition is now $50k per semester. There goes the beer money!
What’s the rent this month, Mr. Landlord? $900 or 5,000?