John
With respect to IE domains – the retail price charged by most of the large .ie registrars is significantly below cost for 1st year registrations and transfers.
I agree with most of the rest of your comments.
The costs for registrars and resellers have gone up significantly over the last few years and as the market matures more companies have realised that they the “loss leader” strategy
is more “loss” than “leader”. I don’t enjoy charging what we charge for some of the services, but we have to pay staff etc
Regards
Michele
--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
Hosting, Colocation & Domains
https://www.blacknight.com/
https://blacknight.blog/
Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072
Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090
Personal blog: https://michele.blog/
Some thoughts: https://ceo.hosting/
-------------------------------
Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,R93 X265,Ireland Company No.: 370845
I have sent this email at a time that is convenient for me. I do not expect you to respond to it outside of your usual working hours.
From: John McCormac <jmcc@hosterstats.com>
Date: Thursday, 15 August 2024 at 14:55
To: Michele Neylon - Blacknight <michele@blacknight.com>, cpwg@icann.org <cpwg@icann.org>
Subject: Re: [CPWG] Re: Potential Topic of Discussion - NTIA & Verisign Cooperative Agreement
[EXTERNAL EMAIL] Please use caution when opening attachments from unrecognised sources.
On 15/08/2024 11:35, Michele Neylon - Blacknight wrote:
> John
>
> The .ie wholesale cost is NOT $25.
>
> The wholesale pricing for .ie domains is around €14 / year.
>
> Regards
>
> Michele
Yep Michele,
I should have made it clearer that I was talking about approximate
retail prices for .IE.
The .IE and most strong ccTLDs share one characteristic with .COM and
the US market. When people mention a website name without the extension,
there's an automatic assumption that the a site targeting the Irish
market will be a .IE website. The .COM has such a market position in the
US that there is an assumption that a website targeting the US market,
outside some niches, will be a .COM website. When a TLD achieves that
level of market dominance, the string becomes almost psychologically
invisible to end users. They identify with it as being *their* TLD.
The .UK has a lower retail price but massively dominates the UK market.
Some of the other European ccTLDs also have low pricing but dominate
their markets.
The .EU was intended to be a sort of replacement for the .COM for EU
citizens but leaving aside its history, it shares that kind of multiple
markets characteristic with the .COM in that it has a smaller EU-wide
market and a lot of EU member state markets. Despite a lot of marketing,
it is not a first choice TLD in the EU. It was up aginst a very strong
.COM market in the EU and ccTLDs of varying market shares. A strong
ccTLD has a very large and focused market at its core.
Pricing, wholesale and retail, is only part of the equation in how
registrants choose a TLD.
This part of Pat Kane's blog post, in respect of what has been happening
on the cost side of things for everyone, is problematic:
"Customers of .com domain names are more likely to be affected by two
factors outside of Verisign’s control: 1) the rising cost of retail
registrations that are outpacing wholesale prices, with some registrars
now charging more than double the wholesale price to renew a .com domain
name; and 2) the unregulated secondary market, which accumulates large
inventories of domain names and charges markups that are—in some
cases—thousands of times higher than the regulated wholesale price."
He's right about the first factor but potentially misses the reasons for
this. The costs in recent years have increased (inflation, rising energy
costs etc) and these have impacted registrars and resellers.
The second factor is not actually a problem for .COM but rather a vote
of confidence from registrants. There are more .COM domain names that
have been deleted and not reregistered than active .COM domain names.
A healthy secondary market is a good sign for a TLD and indicates both
demand and competition. Most of the ICANN accredited registrars are drop
catcher registrars rather than retail or brand protection registrars.
Some of the domain names on sale will keep renewing for years before
being sold or dropped. Ironically, Verisign and ICANN are beneficiaries
of a strong gTLD secondary market.
Regards...jmcc
--
**********************************************************
John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com
MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/
22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics
Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names
Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO
IE * Skype: hosterstats.com
**********************************************************
--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com