Africa.com has become the latest site to sell Subdomains and according to the registry trademark holders have already grabbed a bunch.
According to Ope Odusan, Managing Director, Africa.com:
“The world’s largest and most high profile brands have been among the first to acquire domain names ending with the new extension .africa.com.
“In the first few weeks since we started offering domains, trademarks owners have quickly picked up their domains including twitter.africa.com, starbucks.africa.com, ibm.africa.com, evian.africa.com, standardbank.africa.com, lego.africa.com, marksandspencer.africa.com, emirates.africa.com, philips.africa.com, miele.africa.com, and the list goes on and on”
In addition to trademark domains, according to Mr. Odusan generic premium subdomains have been sold including I business.africa.com, design.africa.com, capital.africa.com.
Premium domains seemed to be priced at $200 a year to $5,000 a year although most are priced at $200-$750.
Regular registrations, those domains not classified as premium domain names, are priced at $39.95 per year.
If you want to check out what is available and register domain names you can do it here.
There will be a .Africa new gTLD extension which may help or hinder this subdomain program for Africa.com
It is a continuation of the emphasis on the registrations of domain to the right of the dot.
What do you guys think would you rather own a domain like sports.africa.com or sports.africa?
Looks like they are using CentralNIC infrastructure. And it breaks:
I wonder how much did they pay CentralNIC for a solution?
Namely.PRO offers the same for free.
Hi Michael:
I admire the Triple Distilled, Premium British Bullshit they’ve composed for the DMCA page.
They’ve polished the sales pitch; however, it’s still very much a CentralNic Scam, peddling Sub-Domains.
It might be advisable for the CentralNic Executives; and their dubious “ICAANN Accredited registries” [Emphasis on Lowercase “r”] to read below … From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Racket (crime) A racket is a service that >>> is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist. <<<
Conducting a racket is racketeering.[1] Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party.
A prototype is the protection racket, wherein a person or group indicates that they could protect a store from potential damage, [ INFRINGEMENT ] damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion.
Regards, Graham.
none of them resolves.
I’ll take sports.africa
sports.africa.com it’s to confusing
MB,
This type of activity to go for the money combined with the xecrecy of what new GTLD registrys’ intend to price their domains at has me wondering what is to become of the $10 hand reg and what relevance lower tier domainers will have any more going forward in terms of registry marketing efforts?
Simply put are we witnessing a price marketing paradigm shift that will alter the makeup of the domain industry and change who and how they invest in domains?
MB,
This type of activity to go for the money combined with the secrecy of what new GTLD registrys’ intend to price their domains at has me wondering what is to become of the $10 hand reg and what relevance lower tier domainers will have any more going forward in terms of registry marketing efforts?
Simply put are we witnessing a price marketing paradigm shift that will alter the makeup of the domain industry and change who and how they invest in domains?
Scott
As far as “secrecy of new gTLD pricing”
Many applicants have disclosed in the public portion of the new gTLD application that you can view on ICANN’s site what the approximate wholesale and/or retail cost of a particular domain will be.
For example since we are talking about .Africa in UniForum SA (NPC) trading as Registry.Africa application they state:
Initial registration fees are estimated to be in the region of US$18 per year.
file:///Users/michael/Downloads/1-1243-89583_AFRICA.html
Of course A registry cannot control what a particular registrar is going charge people to register the domain at retail and like with .xxx prices will be different at different registrars.
As far as “Simply put are we witnessing a price marketing paradigm shift that will alter the makeup of the domain industry and change who and how they invest in domains?”
I think I have been saying that for 3 or more years
Funny enough help@africa.com is available while they use this email address for the contacts 😉
Overall, a nice layout and great service.
So why not?
Given that .africa may not be available for years to come due to the fight of the various parties in Africa, I would think a window of opportunity has opened up for consumers to register Africa.com for their african identity. I see no problem with it.