You don’t have to use a .ng for your enterprise. There are tons of other cool TLDs if you can’t find a suitable .com. My personal favorite is .io. And I should say this: If N15000 and obsession with .ng is reason you can’t start a business, you probably shouldn’t start a business in the first place.
You’ve got a point though.
Obviously it’s not but that’s beside the point, I think.
The point is how NIRA are shortchanging themselves in the long run. Hampering their own growth, but not so much that of the online entrepreneur as Nwabu alludes, just theirs. However, is in some sense a reflection of our own growth. On the larger scale.
I had a .ng domain for a primary business I dropped on second renewal due to cost. Only kept it for 1 year, and felt that was a bloody waste too. Didn’t think of touching .com.ng version either.
I had the .com version. .ng & com.ng were really vanity buys for me. Which I would have kept if they didn’t claim undue importance with pricing.
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I think 15K shouldn’t be a problem if you are really serious about starting a business in Nigeria. In dollars, that’s $50 > and if our economy and exchange rates weren’t so bad, it wouldn’t be as high as that. I also feel we should try having some pride in what’s ours, you need to see how much a .kw kuwait domain goes for, over a $100 and they don’t care.
I’ll personally take a Nigerian business that uses .ng more seriously than one that doesn’t. Also, like @xolubi said, .ng domains are really good for domain hacks where you have a present continuous name.
What you might have NIRA do is to have the price slashed for verified Nigerians with a National ID card NIN or something, but how they’ll do that is beyond me, cause majority of Nigerians have been put on hold in having theirs.
It’s easier to understand the place of web hosting. But domain!? “The name/address of a house (domain) more expensive than the house (web server) [going by shared hosting pricing]?” I’ve heard reasons like SEO, domain hacks, easy to remember, “branding”, etc. In the end, I think people should rather just buy the .ng domain and build their business than worry about a solid reason to support its price point or worth as it’s not exactly bound by a rule of thumb. Any day, I still think it’s either not properly priced or it’s not meant for small (broke?) startups… my 50 kobo though
The way i see it the Nigerian entrepreneur isn’t losing out as much as NIRA.
The former can always find a suitable .com - longtail - version.
The buying pattern you forget to consider is that most businesses first consider availability of the .com version before appreciating the availability of the .ng and .com.ng
Truth to tell, most local businesses who missed out on their names, wouldn’t mind paying a yearly $200 for the .com version and may even throw in their .ng into the sale.
At first it isn’t about the cost, its about priority, .com VS .ng, so if they lowered cost naturally adoption will pick up, every tom, dick and harry will want one, i’d get vanity domains for my surname and nicknames. What this does is to make the .ng extension commonplace enough for the below not to happen;
Not just me worries about telling people my business is online at mybusinessname.ng, 2 days later when they try to check it out they remember mybusinessname but not the TLD appendage, and mybusinessname.com gets all my introduction.
You have to be closet nationalist yourself to see any form of nationalism in a statement of fact. When all I was doing was to point out that .co.za had several years head start in terms of having a body in the country responsible for it. Plus we had a couple of registrars who tried to abstract away the trouble - skannet, gigalayer (before Mukoshy bought them), amongst others. Want to get a Liberian (.lr) domain name today? There you go - https://psg.com/dns/lr/lr.txt and this was the case for .ng too back in the day. That isn’t difficult?
Ultimately, before we burrow further down this rabbit hole, your saying .co.za is the most successful in Africa because of pricing, on a thread that asks why .ng domain names are expensive, and then blaming it on NiRA is exactly what I am disputing. Ignoring context and making up a straw man doesn’t look good on anyone.
@87_chuks, bless your wisdom.
@chuqdennis, which side of the argument are you for?
@feyisayo, First and foremost, our economy and exchange rate is so bad - the reality still remains and don’t even compare this to what’s obtainable in Kuwait, why would they complain considering their Per Capita Income relative to Nigeria’s.
You talked about “having pride in what’s ours” - does one need to pay unnecessarily high in order to allude to the fact? If I’m a Startup in need of a domain name and I found out that both the .com and .ng TLDs are available, will I cos of ‘pride of what’s ours’ decide to pay N150,000 (10yrs) when I can pay N20,000 for a preferable option?
My point is: if a universal TLD as the .com domain could go as low as N2000, and NiRA is looking at replicating their success with the .ng domain in Nigeria, why would they go so high in pricing knowing that there are other alternatives and some people may be forced to seek these alternative. If they are really out to promote the .ng TLD and not quick profit, why the exorbitant fee?
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I have a feeling sir, that the oga that asked this question wasn’t looking for points to make up his school project work, rather he wants to sample other people’s opinion and experiences.
[quote=“xolubi, post:28, topic:5406”]
You have to be closet nationalist yourself to see any form of nationalism in a statement of fact. When all I was doing was to point out that .co.za had several years head start in terms of having a body in the country responsible for it. Plus we had a couple of registrars who tried to abstract away the trouble - skannet, gigalayer (before Mukoshy bought them), amongst others. Want to get a Liberian (.lr) domain name today? There you go - https://psg.com/dns/lr/lr.txt and this was the case for .ng too back in the day. That isn’t difficult?[/quote]
Well this email template is how millions of domains were registered up until around 1998 and even up to 2007 when web based systems came into vogue. It helps to have web hosting companies whose job it is to simplify the process for clients.
For Liberia while you noted the technical contact did you post the admin contact or the sponsoring org ? Did you note that psg with the us govt nsf fund this technical service? I will respond to your second para separately.
Sponsoring Organisation
Data Technology Solutions, Inc.
First National Merchant Bank Plaza
Broadstreet
Monrovia 10-6053
Liberia
Administrative Contact
Mai Bright Urey
Data Technology Solutions, Inc.
First National Merchant Bank Plaza
Broadstreet
Monrovia 10-6053
Liberia
Email: murey@liberia.net
Voice: +231 227083
Fax: +231 227083
Technical Contact
Randy Bush
PO Box 128
Kapaau Hawaii 96755
United States
Email: randy@psg.com
Name Servers
hippo.ru.ac.za
146.231.128.1
2001:4200:1010:0:0:0:0:1
rip.psg.com
147.28.0.39
2001:418:1:0:0:0:0:39
fork.sth.dnsnode.net
77.72.229.254
2a01:3f0:0:306:0:0:0:53
NIRA screwed up IMHO when it adopted the two tier pricing structure of dot NG being 10 times more expensive than dot Com dot NG. Whats the basis? In a poor country like Nigeria? For an org thats supposed to grow internet development? Their pricing is wrong along with other things. Which org has executives owning companies that are registrars of the domain they are managing? Isnt that conflict of interest?
About Co.za I mentioned many things that helped that registry. One was infrastructure, two was local hosting companies, three was proper domain pricing. They had their act together on all fronts Nigeria didn’t.
You’re still comparing apples to oranges. .co.za is best compared to .com.ng. Of course I may eventually eat my words when the South African registry supports second level registrations. Until then, comparison is moot.
@Chaigogo LOL, my school project? NO, I just asked because when i look for names on the web on (namecheap, whogohost, smartweb) i keep getting the N13,500, N15,000. like you said: [quote=“Chaigogo, post:29, topic:5406”]
will I cos of ‘pride of what’s ours’ decide to pay N150,000 (10yrs) when I can pay N20,000 for a preferable option?
[/quote]
Never when i am running a startup just giving it a test run, a business am not sure will succeed just have a compass in the back of my head telling me it is a good bet, and i am burning all the small seed capital on domain name, what about shared hosting or even cloud hosting if it is a scalable app, or the cost of electricity and the almighty broadband cost. I am just saying this from the standpoint of an entrepreneur who has very low capital (like myself) and want to build/test run an innovative product at a low cost, Well for now .ng is an option there is .com or .com.ng what am just concerned is that this people say they are the government agency so as they make .ng N15,000 over time if their sales is not much as they expected due to users migrating to .com and .com.ng what if they changed the .com.ng price, “Because we know this Nigeria our beloved country where the price of a commodity goes up and never falls downward ever.”
You are clutching at straws now. The comparison is not ONLY Co.za to Com.ng it includes dot NG itself.
But lets do the math. Dotcoza was 5 bucks equivalent in 2007 when they had around 500,000 domains. Dotcomng was priced at 12 bucks equivalent in 2007 and until last years devaluation was more expensive than both coza and dot Com.
Meanwhile someone at Nira believes that dotng at 50 bucks is worth 5 times what dot Com is worth and 10 times what coza is worth. Lest I remind you all, Standard Bank,.Mtn, Naspers, Shoprite are far bigger than any Corp nigeria can boast of and they pay 5 bucks for their domain.
No. It was pretty much my first response to you.
Nice point @Nwabu, really good points.!
@xolubi Just to further disprove your theory about the format used to register domain names as being responsible for the slow growth in domain names in Nigeria guess what? Right up to 2011 Uniforum the company that was responsible for the co.za SLD used a text based email template as a posting on mybroadband.co.za testifies :
“Many webmasters and website owners have voiced their frustrations with Uniforum’s outdated domain name registration procedures…Uniforum currently requires new website registrants to complete a basic *.txt file to register new domains which must then be mailed to coza-admin@co.za in plain text format.”
So, we have come full circle.
Emphasis mine.
We generally agree on the same thing, but miscommunication has helped turn this into some form of pointless debate. OP asked a question and I answered it as best as I could. Whether the exact price point set by NiRA is reasonable or not is subjective and I shouldn’t have let myself get dragged down that road.
For high level context on what the sentiment was as at late 2011 when second level registrations were rolled out, there’s a shot from a NiRA slide.
Another ccTLD with the same price model as Nigeria’s would be Libya’s. http://register.ly/
Good morning guys. I’ve patiently read all the submissions here.
Starting with the OP, @udemesamuel. Yes, there is something special about the .ng domain names and the slide posted by @xolubi above just said it all. The internet is approaching maximum utilisation and very soon most domain names will begin to take action forms e.g. travelli.ng, swimmi.ng, hiki.ng, cooki.ng, fundi.ng, etc. Nigeria/NIRA is fortunate today and in the future to have such a domain space associated with us. Speaking from NIRA’s point of view, NIRA simply positioned herself to make maximum returns from global registrants. The vision of the .ng domain transcends Nigeria. It is meant to be a “global” ccTLD. It’s meant to be a foreign-revenue earner. It wouldn’t make much space to price .ng domain names as low as those of .com because it will encourage dubious domain squatters to hijack everything.
That is the reason, NIRA offers .com.ng and .ng. .Com.ng domain names is meant to be for the masses - cheap and accessible, while .ng is premium - for the discerning. Small businesses should not make registering .ng domain names a priority unless .com.ng isn’t available. In my case, I would have readily gone for furnish.com.ng if it was available. What NIRA would have done is find a way to offer .ng domains at discounted rate to Nigerians only and charge foreign registrants full value, but the process of verification would have made the registration process tedious for both the registry and registrant.
NIRA should ramp up their awareness for .com.ng and .ng domain spaces as a matter of priority. They should encourage companies with *ng.com to switch to *.com.ng or *.ng. They should invest in global advertisement and woo foreign registrants.
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The Elephant in the thread here is whether URLs in general will continue to be important in a future that is app or bot-centric. Because if that happens, it won’t matter that you own an expensive sleepi.ng domain.
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