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Posts Tagged ‘Domains Service’

.AU Domains Now Available through OpenSRS

As of today, you can add .au domains to the ever-growing list of ccTLDs available through OpenSRS.

We thought about doing a typical blog post full of Australian references to things we think go on “Down Under” – like putting another shrimp on the barbie, Paul Hogan (aka Crocodile Dundee), lots of happy kangaroos and koala bears, a big can of Fosters and a warning about some common toad that can kill a grown man with it’s skin. But, of course, we didn’t want to risk offending our Australian friends.

As igloo-dwelling, beer drinking, Canadians protected by red-suited Mounties on horseback who say “eh” and apologize constantly, we’ll instead just point out that Australia is a large country with a well-connected population of about 22.5 million people.

With more than 8 million Australians online and a total of 1,676,068 .au domains registered (as of March 2010), you can see there is still plenty of opportunity.

There are a few things you should research before you start selling .au domains. Consult the documentation and domains policies page to ensure that you are up-to-speed on the various policies and regulations around who can buy which of the different extensions.

You should also visit our .au marketing page to learn more about the various .au second-level domains and other information to help you position and sell .au to your customers.

.au domains are $20USD for a two-year registration through OpenSRS and you’ll be enabled to sell them automatically in your Reseller Account. Those using OpenSRS Storefront are also able to sell .au domains as of today. If you use Storefront, .au has automatically been enabled at a selling price of $23USD for a two-year registration. Of course, you are free to enable or disable .au domains and set your own pricing.

G’day!

.ORG Surpasses 8.5 Million Domains

The latest edition of the bi-annual .org domain name report, “The Dashboard,” is now available.

Public Internet Registry (PIR), the operator of the .org domain extension released the report, which showed 7.6% growth in the .org domain in the first half of 2010. That’s twice the growth compared to 2009 and signals continued strength in the .org extension.

Some other figures of interest:

  • The growth of .org in the first half of 2010 outpaced both .com and .net over the same period.
  • New creates for .org showed 16.5% growth, on par with both .com and .net.
  • 77.1% of organizations renewed their .org domains for one to three years, an increase of 4% over 2009.
  • North America and the European Union continued to represent the regions with the most .org registrations. China showed growth of 4% in the first half of 2010.

With over 8.5 million .org domains registered, .org is the third largest generic top-level domain (gTLD), behind .com and .net.

You can always download the latest version of the “The Dashboard” from PIR’s website at http://pir.org/news/dashboard

Four Million .nl Domains

This week the total number of .nl domain names in existence hit the four million mark for the first time, according to SIDN, the .nl Registry.

That puts .nl in fourth place in terms of ccTLDs for total registrations behind .de, .uk and .cn. Curiously, .nl actually leads all ccTLDs when you look at total registrations compared to the population of the country. In the case of .nl, there is one .nl domain for every four people in the Netherlands.

If you aren’t selling .nl domains, perhaps some of the stats around .nl domains will get you thinking about it:

  • Since the .nl domain was created, a total of about 5.1 million unique domain names have been registered. Of these, roughly 1.1 million are no longer registered leaving just over 4 million .nl domains.
  • Within the Netherlands, .nl has a 72% share of the domain name market. Next comes .com with 14%, then .eu with 8%.
  • Over the last twelve months, the .nl domain has grown by almost 13%.
  • The use of domain names to create personalized e-mail addresses increased by 25%.
  • In the Netherlands, 38 people in every 100 have broadband internet access – more than anywhere else in the world.
  • The average .nl domain name is 13 characters long, but the most common length is 11 characters.

OpenSRS is .nl accredited and we recently rewrote our connection to the .nl registry to take advantage of the new EPP interface.

For resellers who are .nl accredited themselves, you may not know that our OpenSRS Registrar Service platform offers a hosted solution to manage .nl domains using your existing accreditation. Of course, OpenSRS Domain Service offers an easy way to manage .nl domains for those who aren’t accredited.

.nl domains are priced at $8USD/domain year and anyone can register a .nl domain, regardless of where they live.

New Lower Price for .TV domains and a .TV Promo!

Good news! Starting August 4th, 2010, we’re dropping the price for new .TV domains to just $19/domain year. That new price applies to all resellers and will be in effect through May 31, 2011.

But wait! There’s more!

Better news! Not only are we lowering our wholesale price, but we’re also rolling out a .TV promo at the same time. Resellers who sign up for the .TV promotion and agree to do some marketing around .TV domains will see their cost for new .TV domain registrations drop to just $12/domain year from now until May 31, 2011. Signup here.

Like other promotions you are required to do some marketing/promotion of .TV domains on your website or through an email campaign. The discount will be paid in the form of a rebate deposited monthly.

To sum it up:

  • The regular price for new .TV domain registrations is now $19/domain year for all Resellers, through May 31, 2011.
  • We’re offering a .TV promo starting today – signup and do some marketing to get an even better price of $12/year for new .TV registrations through May 31, 2011.
  • The lower pricing applies to new .TV domains only, but multi-year registrations do qualify. Renewals and transfers will continue to be priced at $35/domain year.

About .TV domains

.TV domains are made for websites with video. To help drive sales of new .TV domains, consider suggesting that new customers purchase the .TV domain to go with a .com or other domain extension to showcase videos, screencasts and other multimedia content. Many of your existing customers might also be interested in picking up the .tv version of their domain name as well.

With the increasing availability of easy to use tools for video content creation and sharing, demand for .TV domains will continue to grow. This special pricing on .TV domains makes it even easier for the average person to get their own place online to show and share video content.

Find out more about .TV domains:

.CO Landrush Begins, GA is Next

Yesterday was the first day of Landrush for the new .CO domain extension. Of course, as Adam Eisner, our Director of Domain Services, is fond of saying, there’s no rush in Landrush for .CO.

.CONow that’s not to say that people won’t be lining up to get their preferred .CO domain during the Landrush phase – demand for .CO domains has been quite strong. Rather, it’s a way of saying that Landrush orders aren’t approved on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, multiple Landrush orders for the same domain will result in the domain going to an auction in which all those who applied for the domain during the Landrush period are able to bid.

You can submit Landrush orders through OpenSRS and we’ll continue to accept them through the end of the Landrush period on July 13th, 2010.

General Availability is just around the corner

What will be a rush is General Availability (GA), which happens on July 20th, 2010. On that day, it’s a real free-for-all as registration officially opens to everyone at the regular price and whoever gets the application in first gets the domain. We’ll have more information about what we’re doing for General Availability shortly, but in the meantime, OpenSRS is already accepting pre-orders via the Reseller Web Interface (RWI) and the API.

As always, the .CO Launch Page is updated with all the information about the launch of .CO.

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