Has the .IN Promotion Gone On Too Long?

IT.com

Has the .IN Promotion Gone On Too Long?

  • Yes

    Votes: 17 73.9%
  • No

    Votes: 6 26.1%

  • Total voters
    23

Jeff

Administrator
Staff member
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I received word today from Reseller Club that they are continuing their .in promotion until 30th March, 2010.

When the IN Registry originally announced the promotion, I though it was a great opportunity and good marketing by the Registry.

However, the promotion has lasted almost one year now, and it looks like it is going to last over one year. The promotional price is no longer a promotion; it is the regular price.

A promotion should be just that - a limited time discount.

My concern is that keeping the price of .in domains so low for so long will in the long run harm .in. Look what has happened with .info and their continual $0.99 promotions.

So, what do you think - has the .in promotion gone on too long?
 
I agree with you on the info promotion. In my opinion thats the reason why infos don´t sell or sell so low.To register an new in domain is cheap but to renew at name.com for example is 13.99 and I´m not willing to pay this for a .in domain anymore.
Also there aren´t many sales at Sedo and the best domains where already taken in 2005 I think. it´s a bit similar to the .eu or .at promotion the best keywords are long gone.
I have only a few in domains but will not invest a penny in the future in .in domains.
 
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I would like to know the rationale behind having a promotion so long and with such high renewal cost. Of course for 2 years reg, the cost would come to ~$16.00, but as you register for longer periods, the benefit of the promotion decreases.

I think that the cost of domain renewal should be related to the per capita GDP of the country it is targeted at, otherwise its like just another gTLD.

I agree with Jeff, that the .info was effected a lot due to the pricing scheme of the first year. In fact the same company that manages .info also manages .in.
 
Agreed. The continued promotion has turned .in into a discount domain. I believe it is now keeping the aftermarket sales artificially low.
 
If the .in registry is willing to charge $13 to renew .in domain names, i doubt these promo prices will be here forever. Also,.in is picking up momentum at a different time in the domain game. .info picked up momentum when ccTLDs were not as prominent/used,so i don't think its fair to compare .info to .in. FInally, India will have the most internet users in the world by 2013 according to some predictions. Do you think good .in domains will have low value by then? i guarantee you NOT. i will hold my LLL.ins till at least 2012 and i will reap the benefits. If you want to drop yours, go ahead, some other domainer telling you .in is just like .info on this thread wil pick up your super premium names. .IN is still growing and INdia is still developing,so i think things look Ok so far IMO.
 
As to me, I'M HAPPY that promotion is still here. Just found out that resellerclub are continuing their .in promotion till the end of March and I'm even happier than I was :) Also I'm happy with Dynadot's $1.99 pricing (dear Mitsu guys, I like you very much but Dynadot offers me $1.99 per domain ;) ).

And I LOVE .in's :rolleyes:
 
Right now our focus is lowest renewal pricing to our existing customer , as we found that such kind of long promotion always give bad reputation to the registry and an official protest is already launched by us to the .In registry.

As we studied that only benefit of such promotion is that .In registry are able to maintain figures as people who drops the domain re-registers the same at cheaper price and this way they are able to maintained the figure.

But overall such promotions are not good for the health of .In registry.

Our doors are open for all the customers who want the lowest renewal/ transfer price.
 
Well, I don't know whether long promotions are good or not for .in registry but they are definitely good both for domainers and millions of people living in India. I'm from Russia and .ru regfee/renewal is about $3.5-$4 at right places all the time and .ru registry looks good.

And, no doubts, your renewal/transfer price is really nice.
 
I agree that the ongoing promotion is hurting the aftermarkets for .IN.
Promotions are meant to be promotions, not permanent lowering of the prices.
 
The reason for the promo is simple and has been a standard strategy for any emerging TLD namespace... If you can get people to register, you can convince many of them to renew... In order to get them registering names, make the financial barrier to entry trivially small.

Remember that there is absolutely no inherent "cost" associated with the creation of a domain name. For every name that is created, the probability of sustainable revenue increases proportionally, in terms of people electing to reup that name year after year.

The only .in names I own are .net.in and .org.in pure geos (good ones- all Indian cities with populations 1mm or higher) as well as some relevant .com's. Should my .in names ever undergo an exorbitant renewal price, I'd probably drop them, unless the aftermarket had caught up by that time and I could sell them to an interested party...

Look at what happened with the .im's. For the longest time, these names were $79.99 to register. Fantastic, category-killing one-worders were available, simply because the extension was very backwater and grotesquely epensive. A couple registrars dropped the registration fee to $4.99 (I think) for a period of time during the summer and the keyword gold rush was on (99.99% of these will never see any development- just interest amongst "domainers")... And what will happen when renewal comes around next year and the $79.99 bill is on the doorstep?

The large majority will drop, but they will have hooked just enough people in with words like horses.im or fans.im or hats.im to convince them to renew- and their promotion will have worked. Of course, IM will never amount to anything, but I believe .in will, so that's the critical difference. As long as renewal fees remain reasonable, I'm on board to speculate.
 
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When the inboxes start getting full of spam from cheapo .in/co.in registrations as happened with .cn then you have a real credibility problem. China have acted but with a heavy fist, I don't see that happening with India and you can already see prices suffering, even top of the range premiums are hardly getting interest-sad!
 
When you think about it, it really won't matter whether the promo is a good idea or not-its not a good idea to hold bad .in domain names. .in is still a budding TLD and unless you play to develop, you're better off with strong keywords and names in short supply(e.g LLL.ins, one word .ins,geos,numbers etc.).$13 renewal fee is still steep, so it makes it more imperative you register solid names in the first place. I believe my confidence in .in is not unfounded, so i'll watch and see how things in this year.
 
A couple registrars dropped the registration fee to $4.99 (I think) for a period of time during the summer and the keyword gold rush was on (99.99% of these will never see any development- just interest amongst "domainers")... And what will happen when renewal comes around next year and the $79.99 bill is on the doorstep?
You're right! I registered a couple of premium keyword .im's in July at $4.99 and resold them at $15 each. I think it's very difficult to profit from these kinds of domains in the long run.
 
When the inboxes start getting full of spam from cheapo .in/co.in registrations as happened with .cn then you have a real credibility problem. China have acted but with a heavy fist, I don't see that happening with India and you can already see prices suffering, even top of the range premiums are hardly getting interest-sad!

Totally agree with wot. There is a fine line between being affordable and cheap. Cheap domain registrations not only attract businesses trying to come online, domainers but also spammers. Once the reputation is dented it is very difficult to resurrect it back.
 
I still believe more promotion is needed, as
1>majority of people in india are still confused as if to register a .com vs .in, .net vs .in, .info vs .in and .co.in vs .in
2>as well as i see many good .in drops of SEO-rich search term based domains whose results come up for more than a billion in numbers and they could catch up on traffic easily if developed but domaining game rules dont care for SEO,
3>only fear is that .in should not be termed as a spammy cctld like .info which is also going around same promo prices now.
 
The difference in prices for new regs and renewal fees should be lesser. I believe people would be quite comfortable with new regs between $5 to $7 and renewals need to be brought to less than $10.

Hope someone at IN registry notices this :)
 

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