Domain Name Renewal

My domain name i3way.com is registered with godaddy.com and will be expired by Jan 2005. The renewal cost is US$8.95 per year. Very cheap and affordable. Indeed, Network Solutions charges about US$34 per year.

In Hong Kong, any domain name ending with .hk is charged at HK$200 (US$25.7) per year by Hong Kong Domain Name Registration Company Limited. Frankly, this is a high price to pay. That’s why I am not interested in having a .hk domain name.

In the past 4 years, the administration of my domain name has been handled by a friend who possesses good DNS knowledge. Now that I operate my own DNS server, I think it is time for me to handle all the admin jobs by myself.

Why godaddy.com charges so low and yet it can still run a viable business ? Here below is the answer.

"You are probably wondering how we can charge as much as 70% less than our competition and still be in business, right?

First of all, we run a tight ship. We choose our promotions carefully and ensure every advertising dollar pays for itself; we streamline our systems and billing processes; we don't have any frills (like the $5000 office chairs of some of the now bankrupt dot-coms). We also don't waste money on unnecessary things like toll-free telephone numbers that are often abused anyway.

Second, we're straight shooters. There are no tricks in what we do, just good, old-fashioned, reliable business principles. Quite often we're asked if we bait our customers with low rates and then charge high renewal prices. Anybody that expects us to do that will be disappointed. We believe in the old saying, "You can shear a sheep many times but you can only skin it once." So, your renewal rates will be no higher than the rate you paid when you initially registered your domain name, or what our registration rates were when you transferred your domain name to us (the only exceptions would be if the price the registry charges us increased, or if you took advantage of a limited-time, special price. And if the registry increases our cost, yours will go up only by the amount ours did, never more).

What's the end result of all this? Well, we're happy to tell you that we're a small but profitable company that expects to be in business for many years to come. All this, of course, is due to value-conscious customers like you."