com.ph? Why not?
Monday
Apr 24, 2006
The ccTLD (country top-level domains, like .PH) namespace isn’t exactly competitive, given the rock-bottom prices of generic TLDs such as .com, .net, and .org (or “CNO”). A .PH domain would cost about 500% to 1000% more than your generic .com or .net domain. So the ccTLDs usually lose out to the CNOs, in terms of market share. And the registrars and registries usually lose the business to GTLD registrars and registries.
That’s unless your domain spells out something cute or novel, such as Tuvalu’s .TV (for television) Micronesia’s .FM, Armenia’s .AM (for FM and AM radio, respectively), which media companies are snapping up left and right, or if your namespace can be used to spell words, such as del.icio.us, with the .US namespace (you can also have mal.icio.us, and other interesting names).
At around the turn of the century, the administrators of .PH (my former employer) marketed the idea of .PH being the domain for “Phone,” in a now-defunct marketing scheme called dotPHone. It’s an interesting play on words, actually. The registry’s name is dotPH, and the product was supposed to be dotPHone—you can dissect that into dotPH, PHone, PH one, Dot Phone, and probably other permutations. However, the idea didn’t fly for some reason, and perhaps one is the Philippine government’s (some bureaus in particular) did not seem to be too comfortable with offering .PH domains to non-Filipinos. Or maybe, the idea of a domain for phones just didn’t catch on too well with the telephone-using public (and that was the time of the dot-com boom, pre-bubble, and “m-commerce” was a concept yet to be developed).
Anyway, I digress.
I think it would be a great idea to start banking on popularizing com.ph or even .ph domains among the Philippine blogging community. I mean, majority of Pinoy bloggers are likely on blogspot.com, or even friendster.com. A small minority is on i.PH—a .PH domain, but not necessarily a “free” domain (as in free speech, not as in free beer), since it’s attached to a hosted blogging solution. I’m thinking of something along the lines of Manolo’s quezon.ph. Won’t you readers think a yourname.com.ph blog domain would be cool? And what if transfer were to be painless and hassle-free?
Of course this comes with cost considerations, but I think if the price is right (especially if it’s free or near-free), then Filipino bloggers would catch on to the idea well.
Any takes on this idea?
Comments
Greg Moreno
April 25th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
I also wanted to have my own .ph domain but I decided not to because of the cost. But I also believe that the relative price of .ph compared with .com has a bigger impact than the absolute price.
If the price of .ph and CNO domains are the same, a lot of Pinoys will go for .ph even if it costs 1,500 pesos.
Unfortunately, a .ph domain is relatively too expensive compared to a CNO domain. So now a Pinoy might think he will pay too much if he go for a .ph. Imagine, one .ph domain costs three CNO domains. If a Pinoy is willing to spend 1,500 pesos, he might consider buying 3 CNO domains (covering .com, .net, .org) rather that a single .ph.
If the price difference between .ph and a CNO is only 1 or 2 hundred pesos, cost will not anymore be a big factor. The benefit of having your own .ph domain will outweigh the extra 2 hundred pesos. Of course, this is just a pricing theory and from what I’ve learned, pricing is more of an art than science
I am also speaking from an individual standpoint. For me, 1,500 is too much but for a business entity, even for a small enterprise, it may not be an issue. As an individual, I am price sensitive because I need to produce this amount but for companies, they have ways to source the money either passing it to their clients, or tax incentive.
I guess dotPH is banking on companies – who are willing to pay the higher amount. Let’s assume the real cost of a domain is only 500 pesos. If dotPH offers a .ph for 700 pesos, the profit is 200 pesos (I am simplifying things here.) To reach a profit of 20,000, 100 people must buy a .ph domain. But if dotPH offers it at 1,500 pesos, they only need 20 buyers to reach the same profit as with 100 people on 700 pesos price tag. Same profit, less clients (and less client to support, to maintain, to monitor, etc.)
Sometimes, to be profitable, you don’t need to have more customers. Just get more money from few customers.
What dotPH can do is offer discounts to individuals in exchange for something. For example, a .ph for non-commercial use or single user blog website in exchange for an ad.
J. Angelo Racoma
April 25th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Yep, right now, it’s about three times the annual cost, and the minimum is two years. So the cheapest you can get .ph domains for is PhP 3,500 for two years. In contrast, I got my .net domain for only about PhP 500 for a year.
But something tells me that will change in the near future.
Raymond Olavides
May 9th, 2006 at 4:58 am
Here goes my thoughts on this.
J. Angelo Racoma
May 9th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Great thoughts, Raymond. I tried leaving a comment on your site, but it doesn’t seem to publish anything I submit—I had issues with the CAPTCHA verification also.
audienceone
May 10th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Sorry about that, experience a setback with the custom hack I used for the blogspot account.
audienceone
May 10th, 2006 at 1:34 am
*experiencing rather…
one19
August 14th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
“But something tells me that will change in the near future.” (pricing for .COM.PH)
I’ve heard that line from dotPH themselves and I’m still waiting. So long as they keep their prices at $35, I don’t think it’s a good idea at all to promote .COM.PH. I don’t want to be feeding a monopoly (specially if they don’t play fair).
A logical move would be for them to at least reprice at $15. That’s a fair compromise considering that CNO domains are approximately $8-$9 a year.
By the way, the actual costs for CNO domains exceed $6. So companies offering domains for less than that (e.g. Yahoo $2.95 domains) are basically trying to reel in customers and hope to get additional services.
Rodelio Lagahit
July 29th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
CNO’s now cost $ 5.95 (www.1and1.com)
No improvement from dotph pricing yet.