The .PRO Discussion

[InvisionTech]

It seems .PRO is slowly coming out of the cage with cheaper reg prices than they were a year ago and major registrars like netsol taking notice of the extension and promoting it.

Here are some that I picked up in last couple of days:

Alexandria.pro

Anchorage.pro

Arlington.pro

Belfast.pro

Birmingham.pro

Budapest.pro

Durham.pro

Fairfax.pro

Italian.pro

Lisbon.pro

Fire away with your regs after the relaunch on September 8th, 2008.

 

[akcampbell]

Congratulations on your first Sedo .pro auction, I wonder if the bidder is Gulf Publishing, also known as Gulf Professional Publishing. There are 191,000 indexed reference on Google to "Gulf Professional Publishing".

http://www.gulfpub.com

I developed a sortable database of .pro sale prices on Total.pro today, I look forward to adding Gulf.pro.

 

[sky]

I'm planning to add a .pro registrar reg fee check and star rating to Total.pro. I have a provisional star rating based on price checks, my own experience and comments on NamePro.

I want to be as fair as possible to the registrars so please can you post a short summary of your experience. Here are the six candidates;

1) Encirca
2) Hostway
3) Network Solutions
4) Gandi.net
5) OVH.com
6) DomainPeople

I'm keen to know if anybody has successfully transferred .pros between any of these registrars. Hostway has the cheapest reg fee but has anybody managed to reg a .pro with them? What can you do with DNS management at Encirca that you can't do with other registrars and why would you need to do it? If you don't want other people reading your comments, please send a PM. I'm keen to hear from anybody who has used OVR and Gandi, in particular.

All my .pros are registered with Encirca. I'd love to see the comparative data when you get it. Can you also provide links to click on in a nice central place to refer to their sites?

 

[terol]

My .pro ones are at Encirca and DomainPeople. Good support for both and no problems. Well, I would prefer that Encirca didn't send me postal mail about my domains and DNS changes for both use to take more than necessary, but I have a good feel.

OVH and NETSOL are bad registrars. OVH because there is too much KAOS there and they use to loss domains or take so much time for registrations. NETSOL is just a machine for retain your domains and get your money. I hate them.

 

[b2b]

Sorry to ask this again, but if anybody has ever approached an end-user via email and conducted a sale, would you please shoot me a pm with an example that I can use?

Thanks!

 

[TechZone]

Quick question.

Can any and all tell me where is the best place to sell the .Pro domains? I have several that I am not going to have a chance to develop.

Many thanks!

 

[akcampbell]

Can any and all tell me where is the best place to sell the .Pro domains?

Anywhere but here! This thread is for .pro discussion, not for listing .pros for sale.

 

[akcampbell]

Total.pro published it's first survey of .pro registrars at the weekend, OVH.co.uk came out top by a big margin. We gave it a 5 star rating with Encirca second on 3 stars. The site is still being developed but I will be adding new content every weekend.

 

[steveteva]

Since a year now and I hardly can see any dot pro website on top of goolgle, also when you type a domain .pro in google it always suggest the dot com even if the pro is listed. Does Google ignore dot pro? Is it a seo issue?

 

[akcampbell]

It's an SEO and content issue. There are 30,000 new .pros, few get developed and when they do its by enthusiasts multitasking at weekends. On the other side of the fence you have 77m .coms, millions of which get developed round the clock by teams of people specialising in SEO, content writing, design, server side coding, databases, PR, and so on. Any alternative extension can get to the top of Google with the right site e.g. Austria.info, Spain.info, Vienna.info. Can you name a .pro that deserves to be at the top of Google?

 

[akcampbell]

Do I need to have a registered business or have to show proof as a licensed/registered professional before being able to register a .pro?

If so, is there any way around it?

I don't know if any of these would work, you would need to check with RegistryPro, but if I wasn't an accountant, I would consider the following;

1) Register a company, in the UK you can do this from about £25, I use CompaniesMadeSimple.com. Register the .pro in the company name and use the company's registration number as your business license number. Companies House is a UK government approved licensing authority.

2) Register a company and use the contact details of a professional adviser with their consent. For example, you can often pay for company secretarial services, company secretaries are licensed by ICSA in the UK, that's a government approved licensing authority.

3) Apply for a license to do something work related through your local council. eg collect scrap metal door to door. It will give you a license issued by a government approved authority.

4) Use your drivers license and do some freelance work as a professional chauffeur. You could drive a friend to work, charge them £10, and issue an invoice in your name. The DVLA is a government approved licensing body.

In terms of timing, you register a .pro, self certify that you are licensed professional, and then submit your details within a set number of days.

Registrants shouldn't have to look for loopholes to register a .pro, I'd like to see the licensing requirement removed and for the focus to be on professional use.

 

[Ben42]

Have you guys seen the new .pro registry website? http://www.registry.pro/index.shtml It looks professional and nice design, however on the homepage they have white text on this gradient background that looks bad. Anyway, it seems they are investing some money at least...has anyone seen any ads in business magazines or anything?

 

[sky]

I don't know if any of these would work, you would need to check with RegistryPro, but if I wasn't an accountant, I would consider the following;

1) Register a company, in the UK you can do this from about £25, I use CompaniesMadeSimple.com. Register the .pro in the company name and use the company's registration number as your business license number. Companies House is a UK government approved licensing authority.

2) Register a company and use the contact details of a professional adviser with their consent. For example, you can often pay for company secretarial services, company secretaries are licensed by ICSA in the UK, that's a government approved licensing authority.

3) Apply for a license to do something work related through your local council. eg collect scrap metal door to door. It will give you a license issued by a government approved authority.

4) Use your drivers license and do some freelance work as a professional chauffeur. You could drive a friend to work, charge them £10, and issue an invoice in your name. The DVLA is a government approved licensing body.

In terms of timing, you register a .pro, self certify that you are licensed professional, and then submit your details within a set number of days.

Registrants shouldn't have to look for loopholes to register a .pro, I'd like to see the licensing requirement removed and for the focus to be on professional use.

I registered an LLC (Limited Liability Company) in the USA with the charter of doing web design work. Do you think that covers me as a professional? I have already submitted my license info to the registry that wasn't that. So I guess I need to update them with the business ID.

 

[sky]

Any risks/pain involved xferring .PRO domains from EnCirca to OVH?

I'm looking at the .PRO prices on OVH vs. EnCirca and the price for registration is cheaper in $US but the price for renewal is *much cheaper (about 1/2).

I have a bunch of domains on EnCirca I've had for months and I'd like to renew some.

Are there any special concerns or warnings doing a renew w/transfer to OVH?
Any particular hassles or delays to expect?
Anything to be concerned about since OVH is a French company and I live in the USA?

Thanks!

 

[akcampbell]

OVH is about 50% of the cost of Encirca for renewals and approx 20% cheaper for new .pros at the current USD/GBP rate. New .pros and renewals cost £11.49 GBP.

I started a .pro transfer today to test the process. I found a problem with the registrant type selection box at OVH, I had to select "Other" in the choice between Individual/Company/Association/Other to get to the end of the process. I spoke to OVH technical support and they have referred the issue to their dev team, the guy I spoke to said it looked like .pro had been set up to expect company registrants only.

Before going through the transfer process at OVH.co.uk you have to go into your Encirca account, go to the screen where it lists your domains, click "N" under the lock column, unlock the .pro and enter an authorisation code, you need the authorisation code at the end of the transfer process. Theoretically, it should take 5 days for the transfer to autocomplete.

I checked with OVH and you get 1 year of registration for your £11.49 GBP transfer fee. I called OVH.co.uk Customer Service and Technical Service at lunchtime and got through within about 30 seconds both times. The person I spoke to was very helpful.

Hopefully, this OVH reg fee marks the beginning of the end of .pro overpricing. .pro is a gTLD and should be priced the same as other gTLD's so it can compete on a level playing field. Encirca will have to cut their promotional renewal fee by about 50% to remain competitive. I have sent a link to Tom Barrett at Encirca pointing out the price difference I highlighted in my Total.pro registrar survey but I haven't received a response.

 

[sky]

Do you speak French or is there an option to display the site in English? I can't read most of what is up at OVH.com.

I have several .PRO names, some of which I was going to let expire, but if this turns out to be feasible, which I'll have a better sense of after your trial transfer comes through and you update us, I will transfer them all and renew my favorites for a few years ahead. I may need them as website addresses in this economic climate at the read high-tech layoffs are going.

Thanks so much for all the energy and time you put into explaining this and helping others regarding the .PRO TLD. I'm an avid follower of your posts and have learned quite a bit from your writings.

 

[akcampbell]

You need to use OVH.co.uk. The .com is French.

 

[sky]

You need to use OVH.co.uk. The .com is French.

That helps. Might make me feel a little more at home. But beyond that, there are no risks using an overseas registrar that you're aware of? No weird contractual or protection issues? I'd just go ahead and try it now were it not for the fact that you've volunteered to be the guinea pig for us

So I guess it can wait a few days. Nothing is expiring for several months anyway in my portfolio.

 

[akcampbell]

It's important to draw a distinction between you and your company. A company is a separate legal identity, owning it doesn't make you a professional, but if the company has a business license number issued by a government approved authority, I think the company is eligible to hold a .pro. Somebody here said the company had to have a professionally qualified adviser to qualify, but that's not how I interpret the requirements.

 

[akcampbell]

The domain I'm testing is Flat.pro (flat is the UK word for condo). The status is currently showing as "OK, pending transfer". On Encirca's website it says that transfers should auto complete in 5 days. When I have the domain in my OVH account I will test whether I can update the nameservers, forward to another site, and renew for an additional year.

 

[sky]

I'm going to try the same thing today with one of my .pro's
It's a name I registered because it's a popular keyword, but
I think it's kind of dumb and probably not worth much.
So I don't care so much if it is bungled.

But I got a weird message that said nothing was done
when I tried to commit the unlock from EnCirca

"External interface command failed. No changes needed, nothing done"