Will domain registration price affect popularity?

[XDuncan]

We have all seen the increases in .com and .net pricing. Net sol/verisign has been raising these prices for the last few years at a certain percentage. In turn, our renewal rates are beginning to increase.

Many people will not settle for anything but a .com. Many cheap domainers (you can debate, but if you're using a .info we know your cheap) are already using .info domains to develop websites on.

What if .com and .net pricing increases to as much as $30 per registration/renewal? This would mean that domain parking and other activities might not be "viable". By raising the cost of registration, the internet would clean itself up a bit. The crap names would be dumped and the crap sites would be dumped - other extensions like ccTLDs would get more use.

This could be a good thing, however it also makes me cautious. If the prices continue to increase then I will have to sort through my portfolio again and dump my sub-par names.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Domagon]

Until 2012 the rate increases for .com, .net, and .org, in particular, are capped.

There's deep concern that ICANN may negotiate the renewal contracts without rate caps. If the caps come off, then what you envision very likely will happen.

$30 or so per year is definitely realistic given that .com and .net registry price used to be $35 per year back in the pre-ICANN days.

And expect to see registry discounts with terms that, in effect, favor particular registrars / registrants...

Such a scenerio has already occurred in .ORG with its (now defunct?) International Advantage Program (IAP) that provided registry discounts to registrars / registrants located in select countries.

In my view, ICANN should not allow discounting of any kind at the registry level, since it opens the backdoor, so to speak, for the registry to directly sell domains to registrants.

While other gTLD registries will likely get the caps off and/or be permitted, through various backdoor methods, to directly sell domains to registrants, it's likely that the .COM registry operator, in particular, will be highly scrutinized with additional restrictions - much like how VeriSign's Sitefinder, similar to wildcard redirects long used by many ccTLDs, was quickly shotdown by .COM stakeholders.

Ron