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!

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

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.

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:

• More .TV info and marketing materials for resellers
• Watch.tv blog
• Follow .TV on Twitter

Now 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.

With just over a month to go until .co officially launches with the General Availability phase, we’re continuing to see a lot of buzz building around the new domain extension.

We’re nearing the end of the Sunrise phases of the launch where trademark holders get first dibs on .co domains that match their existing trademarks. Later this month, things really begin to heat up as the Landrush phase starts on June 21.

For many, Landrush will be the first chance for many to get their hands on some great .co domains. And as exciting as Landrush will be, General Availability will really ramp things up with a first-come, first-served registration blitz when the .co Registry officially opens for business on July 20.

e.co Auction

While t.co is generating some significant buzz around the tech community, another .co domain is also grabbing headlines. Between June 7 and June 10, .co is auctioning off another single character .co domain – e.co.

With bidding set to close tomorrow, the current price for e.co is already up over $30,000 and continuing to climb.

Proceeds from the auction of e.co go to the winner’s charity of choice which makes the whole thing even more of a win for all involved.

Are you selling .co?

OpenSRS is fully supporting the launch of .co as one of ten .co accredited registrars. We’re continuing to take Global Sunrise orders at the moment and we’ll be switching on both Landrush and General Availability pre-orders in the coming weeks.

If you haven’t yet started marketing and selling .co domains, it’s not too late. Awareness amongst the general public continues to build and CO Internet SAS continues to do a great job building buzz around the new extension. With General Availability coming next month, demand for .co domains amongst the general public should continue to swell.

If you are looking for more information on the launch of .co, we have a special page setup for you. All the information around dates, phases and pricing is there. And you can download a full package of .co marketing materials including web copy, flash banners and other images and graphics you can use to highlight your participation in the launch of .co.

Effective July 1, 2010, registry fees for .com and .net domains are increasing. These registry fee increases were announced by VeriSign (the operator of the .com and .net registries) in January, in accordance with their agreement with ICANN.

Here are the details:

• .com increases by $0.48 to $7.34 beginning on July 1st, 2010
• .net increases by $0.42 to $5.40 beginning on July 1st, 2010

Several years ago, OpenSRS transitioned to selling gTLDs, including .com and .net domains under a ‘cost-plus’ pricing model, meaning that the price you pay is broken down into three separate parts – the Registry cost, the ICANN fee (currently 18 cents), and an OpenSRS management fee. OpenSRS retains the management fee for providing the domain registration and management service. Changes to the Registry costs and the ICANN fee are passed through transparently.

The chart below shows the changes to our domain registration fees after the VeriSign fee increase on July 1st:

OpenSRS

Our transparent, reseller friendly pricing model is in contrast to the approach taken by other registrars, where there is often a single price per gTLD. In the case of eNom, this was recently announced as an across-the-board 55 cent increase to domain registration fees for the six most popular gTLDs. Below is their Basic plan pricing, broken down into its component costs, with the new pricing effective July 1st:

eNom

As an OpenSRS reseller, you have complete visibility to our costs; We won’t use one registry’s price increase as an opportunity to raise our prices on additional gTLDs. We believe that our transparent pricing model gives you comfort in clearly understanding how we approach pricing, and what you can expect in the future.

If you want to see more detail on the current registry costs and ICANN fee, you can see it here: http://opensrs.com/services/domains/domains-pricing

Up next, we’ll be writing about our more reseller friendly approach to sub-resellers. Stay tuned!

It’s pretty easy to figure out your new cost for new .mobi domains:

1. Take the new Registry cost of $7.25
2. add the ICANN fee of $0.18
3. then add your OpenSRS Management fee

Assuming list pricing, that totals out to $10.43.

The cost for renewals and transfers is unchanged ($12.00 plus ICANN fee and OpenSRS Management Fee).

As mentioned this all goes into effect on June 1st, 2010.

Way back in 1985, Coke became New Coke and Old Coke became an instant Classic, Live Aid raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia, and both the Commodore Amiga and the NeXT computers were launched. Amid all that, a Massachusetts company registered the first .com domain name — symbolics.com.

Here we are, 25 years later. New Coke is gone, Live Aid is ancient history, Amiga and NeXT computers are museum pieces, but .com is going strong. To celebrate the milestone, VeriSign has rolled out a campaign that looks back at some of the events and people that shaped the Internet over the last quarter century. The focal point is the 25yearsof.com website which provides a hub for all the different activities, events and celebrations taking place this year.

The .com 25

One of the most interesting elements is the .com 25. Later this year, a panel of Silicon Valley influencers will select “the ‘.com 25′; the 25 people and/or companies whose inspiring contributions were fundamental in shaping the Internet and, thereby, our worlds.”

Head over to the 25yearsof.com website and you can see a list of the 75 finalists from which the .com 25 honourees will be selected. From companies like Amazon, Netscape and Cisco, to people like Vint Cerf, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Case, the list reads like a who’s-who of Internet history. I wouldn’t want to be on the jury that has to select just 25 people to honour as the .com 25.

The .com25 will be announced at a .com Gala event in San Francisco on May 26, 2010. The event celebrates the impact that 25 years of Internet innovation have had on society and looks forward to the next 25 years as well.

Take part in the celebration

You’re invited to take part in the 25yearsof.com events. There’s going to be lots of media attention paid to the various events taking place over the course of the year. You may wish to be a part of it by leveraging some of the 25yearsof.com marketing assets, and maybe build your own promotion around the events.

VeriSign is going to kick off a contest shortly called, “How do you .com?” They’ll be asking people around the world to answer that question and share how they use the Internet, and the .com extension in their lives.

If you would like to get involved, check out the 25yearsof.com website, their Facebook page, follow @25yearsofdotcom on Twitter and subscribe to their YouTube channel.

Please note: this is the Local Sunrise phase and only holders of valid Colombian trademarks can apply for .CO domains at this time. Global Sunrise which is for all trademark holders doesn’t start until April 26th, 2010.

Each phase of the .CO launch is distinct. Make sure you put your orders in during the correct phase as application fees are non-refundable.

Keep in mind that there’s no real reason to rush for the sunrise or even the landrush phases of the launch. The domains in these phases aren’t given out on a first-come, first-serve basis. Instead, those domains with multiple, valid applications will go into an auctions process.

.CO Launch Page Has More Information

We’ve updated the .CO launch page here on OpenSRS.com with more information including details on the auctions process as well as some information about the different phases of the .CO launch. Additionally, documentation has been updated with everything you need to submit orders through OpenSRS

.CO Webinar – April 15th, 2010

We’re also happy to announce today that we’re going to offer a webinar for OpenSRS Resellers coming up on April 15th, 2010.

Crystal Peterson, Senior Marketing Manager, .CO Internet SAS, will be joining us to talk about the opportunity that .CO provides to you and will talk about how to market and sell .CO domains to your customers. Adam Eisner, Director, Domain Services for OpenSRS will also be on hand to answer any specific questions you might have about the .CO launch as it relates to OpenSRS.

We’ll hold two sessions to accomodate resellers around the world:

Register for the 9:00 A.M. EDT (1300UTC) session

Register for the 2:00 P.M. EDT (1800UTC) session