Prices Slashed for Dot-Pro Domains

[WhoNet]

Prices Slashed for Dot-Pro Domains
EnCirca announces 50 percent discount for dot-pro's re-launch

EnCirca July 21, 2008

BOSTON, July 21, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Effective July 21, 12:00 pm Eastern Time, dot-pro domain names can be registered on a first-come, first-served basis for just $49 for one year. EnCirca ( http://www.encirca.pro) is slashing its dot-pro domain name pricing by over 50 percent to celebrate the re-launch of the dot-pro domain name. For the first time, licensed professionals from anywhere in the world will be eligible to register dot-pro domain names on a first-come, first-served basis at http://www.encirca.pro.

"The dot-pro landrush is first-come, first-served, which means all licensed professionals can grab their brand name in advance of the re-launch in September," says Thomas Barrett, President of EnCirca, the leading dot-pro registrar. "There has never been a better time for professionals to secure their online identity with a dot-pro domain name."

Dot-pro domain names work just like dot-com domains, with the ability for fully featured websites and email addresses. The extension is already universally recognized on the Internet as the premium space for licensed professionals.

"We are thrilled to finally be able to offer the dot-pro domain to licensed professionals from around the globe," says Catherine Sigmar, general manager of RegistryPro. "We are expecting enormous interest in the dot-pro domain with this expansion and we are pleased to be able to meet the needs of the market with this offering."

There are no restrictions on the types of names a business may register. Businesses may register industry keywords, search engine terms, company names, or their trademarks. There is no limit to how many dot-pro domain names an individual or company can register. The $49 special dot-pro price is available only for the first year of new registrations.

Qualified businesses and licensed professionals from any country in the world can register their business names, trademarks, product names, marketing slogans and personal names.

Some of the businesses and professions eligible for dot-pro include: Lawyers, Accountants, Engineers, Doctors, Architects, Dentists, Educators, Chiropractors, Veterinarians, Surveyors, Plumbers, Inspectors, Investment Advisors, Real Estate Brokers, Insurance Brokers, Nurses, Opticians, Optometrists, Podiatrists, Psychologists, Therapists, Social Workers, Building Contractors, Electricians, Patent and Trademark Examiners, Court Reporters, Police and Fire Safety Officers and any other profession where an official credential is required for a business or individual to offer services.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/sto...737DAC-B82C-4275-A966-87A48B1C8F0B}&dist=hppr

 

[MJ]

Thanks a bunch for the update. It is nice for the first year of registration... then it goes back up

I think I will stick to ccTLD domains still for the time being, seeing that .jobs, .travel, .asia, etc have some time before they take off.

However I'm sure everyone is going to get overrun with extentions when you will be able to create your own! I'm waiting for .mike :D

 

[wot]

You can reg a .me for 2 years for that "special" price and if I had to choose then I think that .me is a far better deal and more likely to have a chance of success.

Prices only get lowered by 50% when things are going badly. JMO

 

[ecigs.net]

dot Pro is still too expensive. How about giving them away for $7 each like COM?

 

[gjvblack]

I would but dot pro domains if it was cheaper. It is still quite expensive to reg one but then would be the "Regular" price after. That is the best way to get ppl into paying $$ lol

 

[acronym007]

I like .pro better than .me. Either way, I don't think the public gets it so it's more of a novelty at this point in history.

 

[ecigs.net]

If you are going to compare something to PRO, wouldn't BIZ be more accurate?

 

[akcampbell]

The big difference between .pro and biz is that pro means something and biz is a made up word. This translates to 14,565 US trademarks that include the word pro and only 767 that include the word biz. Plus, a heck of a lot of the 767 biz trademarks are actual .biz domains, none of the pro references are domains. Pro is 20 times more inherently brandable than .biz.

The difference between .me and .pro is that .pro is pitched at the people with the money, professional firms and individuals. .me is more of a novelty personal extension with a much narrower keyword range fit.

.pro fits just about every keyword. Casino.pro, Travel.pro, Debt.pro, Mortgage.pro, France.pro, Money.pro, all the big gun keywords work with .pro. .me doesn't work with that many blockbuster keywords, it works with verbs and in general verbs aren't killer commercial keywords.

I prefer .me to alot of other alternative extensions like .nu, .asia, you get some mind bogglingly brilliant keyword extension fits like Play.me, Find.me, Date.me but if you look at the biggest selling .coms, they just don't work with .me, eg. Diamond.me, Vodka.me, Pizza.me, Wine.me, CreditCards.me, Porn.me, Sex.me. Category killer million dollar .com's are definite articles, things that people type in to Google, they don't type in verbs.

The wonderful thing about .pro is it makes it sound like you know what are doing, like you are going get something extra or a better service. .Pro is keyword viagra, it can take a limp keyword and turn it into something you can hammer nails in with.

The problem with .pro is the ridiculous reg fees and cumbersome restrictions. $49 is way too high, nobody is going to pay 5-10 times a .com price for something hardly anybody has heard of.

.tv is overpriced but at least you can use it for whatever you want to use it for and sell it to whoever wants to buy it. With .pro you have to agree to "professional use" which means different things to different people, an online casino is arguably not professional use, even something tame like selling jewellery might not constitute professional use in the accountant or lawyer sense, it's all down to the registry's interpretation which isn't a solid foundation for starting an online business.

Yesterday, there were 5 .pros deleted and 5 created. And that was the day reg fees were cut by 50% to $49 which indicentally is a con because it's only for the first year and reg fees were $49 after the last failed attempt to kick off a landrush.

If somebody says .pro is a complete failure because the registry don't know how to develop a domain extension, I would agree, but it's not because .pro isn't a beautiful domain extension with heaps of branding potential.

 

[bizcorp]

I'm still sticking to the trusty .com before i invest in any speculative extensions like .pro or .me. I still prefer .me over .pro though normally when prices are slashed drastically by that much it indicates that they want more sales or no-one is buying...

 

[ecigs.net]

Awesome Post.

The big difference between .pro and biz is that pro means something and biz is a made up word. This translates to 14,565 US trademarks that include the word pro and only 767 that include the word biz. Plus, a heck of a lot of the 767 biz trademarks are actual .biz domains, none of the pro references are domains. Pro is 20 times more inherently brandable than .biz.

The difference between .me and .pro is that .pro is pitched at the people with the money, professional firms and individuals. .me is more of a novelty personal extension with a much narrower keyword range fit.

.pro fits just about every keyword. Casino.pro, Travel.pro, Debt.pro, Mortgage.pro, France.pro, Money.pro, all the big gun keywords work with .pro. .me doesn't work with that many blockbuster keywords, it works with verbs and in general verbs aren't killer commercial keywords.

I prefer .me to alot of other alternative extensions like .nu, .asia, you get some mind bogglingly brilliant keyword extension fits like Play.me, Find.me, Date.me but if you look at the biggest selling .coms, they just don't work with .me, eg. Diamond.me, Vodka.me, Pizza.me, Wine.me, CreditCards.me, Porn.me, Sex.me. Category killer million dollar .com's are definite articles, things that people type in to Google, they don't type in verbs.

The wonderful thing about .pro is it makes it sound like you know what are doing, like you are going get something extra or a better service. .Pro is keyword viagra, it can take a limp keyword and turn it into something you can hammer nails in with.

The problem with .pro is the ridiculous reg fees and cumbersome restrictions. $49 is way too high, nobody is going to pay 5-10 times a .com price for something hardly anybody has heard of.

.tv is overpriced but at least you can use it for whatever you want to use it for and sell it to whoever wants to buy it. With .pro you have to agree to "professional use" which means different things to different people, an online casino is arguably not professional use, even something tame like selling jewellery might not constitute professional use in the accountant or lawyer sense, it's all down to the registry's interpretation which isn't a solid foundation for starting an online business.

Yesterday, there were 5 .pros deleted and 5 created. And that was the day reg fees were cut by 50% to $49 which indicentally is a con because it's only for the first year and reg fees were $49 after the last failed attempt to kick off a landrush.

If somebody says .pro is a complete failure because the registry don't know how to develop a domain extension, I would agree, but it's not because .pro isn't a beautiful domain extension with heaps of branding potential.

Wow. That's an awesome post. Rep added. Good points made all around. It almost makes me want to buy one. The price and the restrictions are the big turn off. The price is the big set back to almost all new extensions, so PRO isn't alone. ME is way over-priced too. They would have sold a lot more and given the TLD a chance if they would have sold it dirt cheap.

Thanks for the information.

 

[namewaiter]

i too would like to see .pro take off and was checking out motion.pro earlier today at work.

the wierd thing is on my laptop at work, ms is stealing traffic...
if i typed in http://motion.pro without the www. it took me to the site, but...
if i typed in http://www.motion.pro it took me to a ms search page?

so i tried it with one of my domains
http://homeimprovement.pro took me to the sedo landing page
http://www.homeimprovement.pro went to ms

same with my ringtones, try it with your .pros

what the heck gives????

ps - this doesn't happen with my personal laptop using vista