In a post on his blog SevenMile.com, domain investor Frank Schilling urges domain owners to advance renew their domain names now. He said VeriSign will increase .com prices by 7% shortly. By renewing their domains for another year or longer in advance domain owners can make a 7% ROI now.
Frank’s blog post:
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/domain_investor.html
The .org registry announced it will charge an “excess deletion fee” as of May 26, 2007 in order to slow down domain tasting. The fee will be five cents per deleted domain if the total number of domains deleted within the grace period in a month is greater than 90%.
The 5-day grace period was meant to allow domain registrants to correct mistakes, for example if they accidentally registered a typo domain, but lots of domain investors and registrars have started to make use of the grace period to test potential traffic domains. This so-called domain tasting practice is controversial, because it allows domain registries and investors to register new domains or catch expiring domains that are likely to receive traffic at a minimum cost, not giving smaller domain registrants a chance to get domains they might need for their sites. Therefore, registries have started to look for ways to eliminate domain tasting while retaining the grace period. If the .org registry’s strategy shows positive results it is likely that other registries will use similar strategies and introduce an excess deletion fee too.
Sweden’s Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, the world’s oldest newspaper, has dropped its paper edition as of January 01, 2007 and went Internet only. The newspaper was started in 1645.
You can read more about this in an article written by Rich Lewis at The Sentinel.
This is just another example of the traditional media migrating to the web. Advertising dollars are migrating to the Internet too, resulting in increased domain name values.
Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times on the transition from traditional media to the Internet:
I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either. (…) The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there.
VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) is going to increase prices on .com and .net domains in 2007.
The company’s CEO Stratton Sclavos said there was a six month notice period before domain prices can be increased, which means it is possible that VeriSign will raise prices at some time in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
As per the contract between VeriSign and ICANN, VeriSign can raise .com domain wholesale prices by 7% per year and .net prices by 10% per year.
It is likely that most domain registrars will pass the price increase to their customers, because many registrars currently charging $7 or less per domain registration per year will face even higher margin pressure.
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