Joel Disini, President & CEO of dot.PH, responds to our earlier discussion here last October entitled “Why dotPH is still expensive?“.
In his comment, left yesterday evening, he said:
Hi,
I just recently discovered this thread, and I thought I’d directly respond to the group. Hopefully, people are still willing to discuss this topic.
My understanding is that most of the readers here are Adsense/SEO people? If so, I’ll try to address my thoughts appropriately.
First of all, DotPH pricing at $35/year is the retail price. The wholesale price is a lot cheaper, and goes as low as $15/year, depending on your volume of registrations. This has been the case as far back as 2000, when very few ccTLDs were selling below the $35 level. The Registrar prices are located here:
http://www.domains.ph/PartnerApply.aspAs you can see, the discounts begin once you have at least 12 domains to register.
So it might make sense for some of you to join forces, and buy in bulk – so you can enjoy larger discounts – or work with one of our existing Registrars. We have over 150 Registrars – practically every ISP in the Philippines and Webhosting company is a Registrar. (Now whether they wish to pass on the discounts to you – that is entirely another matter).
If your need is to get lots of domains so that you can point them to your main website (so as to increase its Google rank), then perhaps we can discuss creating some price that favors the SEO community. If some of you recall, we actually gave a way 18+ character domains several years ago – for free. This way you can get domains with your desired keywords, then direct people to your main money site. Or you can monetize them with SEDO, DomainSponsor, or some similar domain monetizing company. We’ve also toyed with the option of lowering price for net.ph & org.ph – but we’d like to get more feedback first.
But if you are domainers and want to buy domains, hold, and sell them later, you might want to look at mail-only domains. These only cost $5/year and can be later updated to full functionality (once you pay $35/year). So this means you can speculate (if you wish) and grab all the domains that you think will be of value in the future. They you can sell them later at a profit.
I am currently at the ICANN conference in Portugal, and Tim Schumacher of SEDO tells me that the average resale price these days for domains is about 20k. That’s a pretty impressive amount. Naturally, ccTLD domains don’t sell that high – but once more and more Philippine businesses get online, you should find the aftermarket price for PH domains going up.
If you have ideas, please feel free to post comments on my blog at jed.i.ph (it is unmoderated). Or if you prefer, you can call/email us directly. (The contact details are here:
http://www.domains.ph/ContactUs.asp
.
This way, we can respond more quickly to your concerns.
He also wrote about it in his personal blog here.
the question is, why can’t we get rid of him cctld administrator with that hilarious pricing scheme?
What??? a crappy comment!!!.
He didn’t even answered why it costs $35/year. He’s just marketing his products
NOT EVERYONE IS AN ADSENSE/SEO PEOPLE
NOT EVERYONE IS A DOMAINER
NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BUY WHOLESALE (too expensive… again…)
Did this guy really cares about his country at all?
he’s promoting the wholesale price. wag daw tinge-tinge :D
so why is it expensive? I was lost with your flowery nincompoops sir, sorry.
I agree, he did not answer the question.
For us non-business people, or for Small businesses, the $35/year is VERY EXPENSIVE (emphasizing). As much as we want to get a ccTLD like .ph (and variations), we decided not to. We sacrificed getting more attention on google.ph results (to name one) just to avoid that expensive price.
Though we can say ‘thank you’ for making it expensive, coz if it wasn’t and we bought our domain of choice using .ph, we wouldn’t have learned how to get our desired results – we will be relying on ccTLD like .ph.
Well, I guess for everyone, forget about .ph, get .ASIA which will be opening publicly this year. After all, today is the generation of a ONE ASIAN COMMUNITY – social and business aspects.
his answer is lawyer-speak for “you’ve got not choice”
that’s what happens when you have monopoly power and are gouging your market
so why is it expensive again?
The post didn’t seem to answer that question.
Tsk Tsk … Ditto!
Did i missed it?
I cant see the his answer to the title question “Why dotPH is still expensive?”
WOW did he mis-quote the Sedo fellow.
Here is the ACTUAL quote:
“”The number of sales is growing really fast. So we are seeing a lot of the secondary market going into the long tail, a lot of small sales happening. So at SEDO, for example, to give you an example, we have an average price of about $2,000. And we have a median price of about $600. That means more than half of the names sell for less than 600. So there are just a couple of high-ticket sales, like vodka.com, which we sold a couple of months ago for 3 million. And those, of course, take the average price up.”
Average $2k, but median is $600.
So, I guess this means that the prices are still going to remain the same. :(
There’s still no reason why it’s expensive! Is DotPH paying fees to ICANN? Is running a ccTLD server system much more expensive than running a web hosting business? Domain names are practically an unlimited virtual real estate business with minimal maintenance costs that volume (because of affordable prices) ought to be enough to pay for the expenses.
Aside from pure corporate greed, I just don’t get the economics of selling .ph domains at $35/year.
For someone to be able to get the $15 tag price, an initial investment of $18,000 is needed, thats for 1200 ph domains.
I guess i have to look for 1199 interested persons to join me to be able to get a discounted price :(
Dotph should be the first one to encourage local entreps to use ph domains but with the $35 price tag? nakupo ,,, buhay nga naman
What an asshat.
A discount is not synonymous to cheap!
I’m just wondering how many sales did they already lose because of their expensive domain names. I for one would have also availed of a .ph domain if they sell at most the same as .com domain names.
Still doesn’t explain why they’re so friggin’ expensive. It’s funny how he says that “getting lots of websites” and “pointing them to your main website” will increase “Google Rank”. Mr. Disini, not everyone is interested in buying domain by the bulk nor able to pool enough people to by in bulk. You have to address the real issue. Your domains are too expensive. Why are they so? If you think about that maybe this discussion can get somewhere.
[quote]This has been the case as far back as 2000, when very few ccTLDs were selling below the $35 level.[/quote]
But this is 2007. Hello…
[quote](T)he discounts begin once you have at least 12 domains to register.[/quote]
Seconding Christian DeVera: how about for those who just want a single (or less than 12 domains)? Not very consumer-friendly, that discount, unless DotPH really targets the domainers/speculators out there. Very ripe for abuse, too. I can almost see spammers buying DotPH domains by the bulk, boosting the Philippines’ status as one of the top spam sources. (Then again, lowering the bar would also do that, but still, a cheap domain is a cheap domain is a cheap domain.)
I, for one, would want to have a ccTLD domain — it would be a source of pride — but I’m a cheapskate, so…
Well, thankyouverymuch for addressing the…issue — in Adsense/SEO people’s issue.
Thank you, Mr. Christian DeVera, for pointing out what’s wrong in his statement.
How about us people who also live in the Philippines and want hilariously expensive .ph domains but don’t care about those SEO, Adsense, money-making thingamajigs? *sighs*
Cheaper if you buy in bulk? What about the newbie kid who only wants 1 domain for his personal blog?
Me eat up ph domains. me look for money. w00t. (oh, wait…..someone else already did that =) )