Registrars with Domain Privacy - WTF?
 

I am sick of paying $4 or shit a year for Domain Privacy.
why doesnt any registrar step up and offer free Domain Privacy.
there is a lot of business to take, isnt it?
thoughts?

I've been looking for the same, namecheap is the only one i found that offers free privacy for the first year.
WG

I am looking into this. However, the margin's for profit seem to be small in the domain game. The profit is in upsells. Privacy, forwarding, hosting, etc.

Privacy would appear to be one of the easy money makers in domain game.

i can not believe that directnic still isnt offering anything
mike must have too much money to care
there can not be a reasonable reason
pathetic

Could be..

Moniker will work with you if you have some volume afaik...

If I offer free privacy for life, and reg costs $9 .. who is in?

A pack of 5 whoisguards costs $7.88 at namecheap, that's ~$1.57 each.

yes, and if you transfer your domain to namecheap you get free whoisguard for the first year

if more people do that, then the other registrars will realize they are losing business by charging too much for privacy

Its not smart. Why do you pay extra money?

They want.............................................. ................................"privacy".

Maybe an expert could clear this up...but a couple of years ago Al4a and I were buying domains and putting together a portfolio of domain names. Just buying and selling for profit. I was so busy with our tgp end of the business (I ran it all) that he took care of the properties we owned and our non-adult internet business.

Anyway, Al is a very diligent and smart person and he does extensive research and learns everything about any enterprise he gets into. He told me that the ACTUAL cost of a domain was something crazy like 35 cents or so and even less if you bought thousands of them at a time (some companies bought every combination of 4 and 5 character domains for instance back in the day and then resold them for millions)

So anyway, I'm pretty sure that there IS a big profit margin for domain registrars. And the privacy and other stuff they sell is the gravy. Similar to the back end of a car deal (warranties, service contracts, etc. when you buy a car)

I wrote to Richard of Namecheap ages ago asking if he would consider offering a one off payment for a blanket privacy across a whole account if the portfolio was big enough and he indicated that he would think about it.

All my customers get free privacy protection.... www.netdomainia.com

yaeh $4, that sucks

dreamhost its free

GoDaddy will give you free privacy if you register 5 domains at the same time. Good thing is, that when you're registering 5 domains, you can add free privacy to all of the domains you already have.

Registrars pay Verisign and ICANN wholesale fees, which are a lot more than 35 cents. I think the wholesale rate these days is about $6.50 to NSI and 40c to ICANN, so charging $7 - 7.50 for a domain doesn't leave a lot of margin.

My registrar offers it for free. :)

Thanks, I couldn't remember the exact numbers Al was telling me that day. It was a couple of years ago. :)

So when I use Netsol they DO make a huge profit, whereas the registrars who offer dirt cheap are looking to make money by quantity.

mind sharing the registrar? ;)

My figures aren't exact either, but they do give you an idea of the margins...

I pay $7.49 + $2 privacy fee with my registrar (discounted), so most of the profit comes from the privacy fee. (Which as the OP suggests, doesn't really cost the registrar much...)

1and1.com has free domain privacy :)

wow... that is great
they are big enough to consider pushing a lot of stuff over
thanks again... 1and1, here i come

No problem.. :)

Just beware, its not like I'm recommend them, just saying they have.. I'll try them too, but I heard some bad stuff about their security.. Not much info tough.. :upsidedow

Damn, I didn't know about that and pay for privacy on all my adult domains.

1&1 shows $6.99 a year but there is an asterisk that it is only for the first year, anyone know how much is it after that?

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/Ins...&__lf=Stati c
the asterisk is only after the .us domains which seem to be on sale

Thanks Trax, I missed that. With wholesale prices on .com's going up to $6.86 + $.25 ICANN fee Oct 1st, that will put their $6.99 price below their costs so they may be increasing their prices soon.

Very cool ...

namecherap for the win

good to know
i am definitely moving over a lot of domains right now
fuck godaddy and namecheap. i am also moving some away from directnic...
1&1 is way bigger anyways... feels more secure

im very happy about the turnout of this thread :)