"Add Domain Name Privacy Protection for $0.99 a month? Domain Name Privacy Protection will STOP spammers, telemarketers, and identity theft criminals from gaining access to your contact information. Without Domain Name Privacy Protection, your contact information is available to the public."
Spammers? Use a gmail account for the email.
Telemarketers? I have thousands of domain names all using the same phone number and rarely receive a telemarketing call (not saying this can't happen of course). If you're worried about that get a google voice phone number.
"identity theft criminals"? Totally playing on fear (especially considering many people have their contact info on their website.) And you can always use another address in your whois as well w/o paying for privacy protection.
So in other words they are willing to make .95 total per year for the base domain but want to charge close to $12 per year for something that essentially has no base cost? That's my point exactly.
But of course if you are well informed and fully know what you are getting by reading beyond the marketing speak of course you can save money (as you can by knowing the ropes with anything.)
Also you can verify this but I don't believe that Omnis gives free web and email forwarding which would require you to buy a hosting plan unless you were knowledgeable enough to know how to get around this.
.com - $7.34 + .18 icann = $7.52
.net - $4.65 + .18 icann = $4.83
.org - $7.21 + .18 icann = $7.39
.info - $5.75 new + .18 icann = $5.93
.info - $6.75 renewal + .18 icann = $6.93
1/15/2012 Price change
.com - $7.85 + .18 icann = $8.03
.net - $5.11 + .18 icann = $5.29
.org (sorry don't have this right at hand as I am traveling)
.info (sorry don't have this right at hand as I am traveling)
----FIXED BELOW---
Ongoing fixed costs, in addition to other obvious fixed costs (hosting, customer service etc.) and not including startup ICANN fees (as an aside the startup fees are pretty low now. Back when we started we had to post a $100,000 bond which essentially meant putting $100k in a bank which we couldn't touch).
Icann Quarterly Fee, with drop pool: 1114.254 = $4457.00/year
Icann Quarterly Fee, w/o drop pool: 371.414 = $1485.64/yr
(If you are grabbing names in the batch pool or essentially attempting multiple name registrations but with only a small percentage of resulting registrations relative to the overall registration rate.)
Annual Registrar Acc Fee: $4000.00 ($1000*4)
---Additional Variable Costs---
Additionally, keep in mind that domain orders are typically paid for by credit card. So in addition to the above the registrar is paying a few % points on their cost of the domain.
So for example if the base cost of a .com is (on 1/15/12) $8.03 with a 2.5% cc fee we are talking about another .20 or a total of 8.23 in cost.
Lastly, registrars have to keep money on deposit with the various registries to equal the amount of registrations that they will do in a month.
So if they are doing $10,000 of domain registrations in a month they would have to keep maybe an amount on deposit with (for just .com .net) Verisign of, say, $6000 to $15000 depending on the time of the month.
So there is the opportunity cost of that money.
That money that is tied up that you can't do anything with and that you are either forgoing opportunity cost of borrowing. If borrowing (assuming you can) I guess you could assign a cost of 3.5% to 5% for this on top of the domain cost as an additional variable cost.
That's off the top. I'm probably missing a thing or two and will update the above.
Here's some background. Each and every registrar, whether they are selling 1000 domains a year or a million pays exactly the same for .com/net/ domains. The variable cost is identical and essentially set by Verisign/PIR/Afilias and ICANN. As much as large registrars want you to believe they make it up on volume that isn't what's going on. They are selling you extra services and things that you don't need. There is simply no way to make money in domains at the prices out there unless you do that. It's that simple. Now I'm not even talking about the pre checked boxes that Dave is referring to. I'm just talking about taking advantage of people who don't understand what they need and what they should buy. (Like getting privacy protection on a domain used in a business as only one example under the guise of protecting you against spam and protecting privacy!). Or worthless cctld's
Now of course there is nothing new about this. It's similar to many things in technology. Such as selling a computer and making people think they need a large fast processor even if the are only surfing the web or using the computer for email (as only one example).
(Note: On .org and .info PIR/Afilias sometimes run rebates if a registrar exceeds a certain level of domains from the previous year or time period. But as everyone knows the bulk of domains are .com)