Future .AU Values - .com.au and .au

[eBranding.com.au]

I am keen for Domain Investors to stop trying to "stand up for" or "speak for" small businesses.

I think you're forgetting that a quite a few of us are both domainers and small business operators. I ran my first business long before I knew what 'domaining' even was - so I reckon it's fair enough to voice an opinion as a small business owner.

The impacts of introducing direct registrations (.au) will go well beyond just my domain investment portfolio, which of course on its own may be pretty significant. I've already spent quite a bit of cash on proactive brand-protection ahead of .au introduction, and frankly that's going to pale in comparison to the future and ongoing costs that I'll wear - such as additional trademarks.

Having to purchase .net.au domains through private negotiations, drop catches and registrations has been an absolute PITA, but what else can be done when the implementation approach is up in the air? I feel sorry for the businesses that don't know this is on the horizon, it could be an absolute nightmare for brand protection if the implementation is anything like early discussions indicated.

Additional registration fees is just the starting point for businesses, both large and small. CarSales.com.au and REA both flagged a number of issues, but it's not just the big players that will face these issues; for example, lots of SMEs have trademarks.

As a final point, it seems ridiculous to suggest that as domainers we should stop speaking about the negative impacts on small businesses, when you've been spruiking the benefits of direct registrations for small business owners, as a registrar and drop-catcher, at some length recently in this very thread.

 

[neddy]

(That's a confused smiley).

I like that Andrew! Have saved it to favourites.

This thread is kind of déjà vu to some of the old Netfleet threads (when Anthony worked there).

 

[findtim]

domainshield you would have noticed there is a developer section on DNT and as one that is active in that area of dnt i can tell you that much more goes on then gets posted. we all have similar goals and problems and pure honesty to we share out of google eyes is fantastic, we tell each other prices we charge, new services we offer, marketing ideas etccccccccccc, i'm not goingt o post online i charged $xxxxx for a website and give a link to it but we do offline as we are not in competition.
so please do not tar us all with 1 brush and we ARE standing up and speaking for our client base because god knows auda isn't
tim

 

[neddy]

DomainShield as a less offensive version of David Goldstein?
(That's a confused smiley).

Interesting that you mention David Goldstein. In the early days of the Names Panel when people were trying to play by the rules (me), I did a couple of generic articles on Domainer suggesting that people do the auDA survey etc. Those articles got a mention on the Goldstein Report. He also covered the story I wrote on Netfleet back in October.

Since positions on direct registrations have been taken, he's never spoken to me again - nor has any article of mine about anything ever been given a mention. Given that auDA sponsor his newsletter, you'd think at least one or two of my articles may have been worth a mention. (That's a wink).

 

[snoopy]

just for curiosity i just found 4 LLL's avail for hand reg .com.au, i only had to guess @ 10 to find those 4 + i'm sure i have seen recently a bunch go through drops without even a bid.

tim
edit, i have a NL.com.au , i got it simply to have a short email address for one of my laptops to send to eg: t@NL.com.au is so much better then another@white.................................................... when doing repetitive stuff nobody else will see

From what I recall about 50% were untaken. Even in .com probably half have no market at all other than domainers.

 

[findtim]

where you claim you have listed your own email as the registrant email address which by the way is a clear breach of auDA policy.

just clearing this up
--------
MANDATORY
Contact person or role (eg. "General Manager") nominated by the registrant. In
the case of individual registrants, must be the registrant himself or herself. In the
case of corporate registrants, must be a principal, employee or member of the
registrant.

MUST NOT be the registrar of record or their reseller, unless the registrar or
reseller has received express written consent from the registrant in that regard
(refer to section 4 below).
--------
"unless the registrar or reseller has received express written consent from the registrant in that regard"
this is what i was talking about ,
section 2.4b says
"b) do anything which may have the effect of concealing the true identity of the registrant or the registrant contact (eg. by using a private or proxy registration service), unless specifically permitted otherwise by another auDA published policy."

so in light of that i firmly believe i am doing it all correctly. every domain my clients own has their name/company name at the top with their ABN.
but i'll phone auda monday for clarification.
tim

 

[findtim]

just clearing this up
--------
MANDATORY

ok, so i phoned auda and got clarification, so technically domainshield is right and so am I !!
bottom line is what i am doing is ok, and i do have the clients consent via email but auda want it on paper with domain names listed and a signature and stating EXPRESS PERMISSION for me to do so, so i have all that except it on paper with signature and will clear that up now.
but other then that i need change nothing in my system of managing domains for my clients.
tim

 

[chris]

ok, so i phoned auda and got clarification, so technically domainshield is right and so am I !!
bottom line is what i am doing is ok, and i do have the clients consent via email but auda want it on paper with domain names listed and a signature and stating EXPRESS PERMISSION for me to do so, so i have all that except it on paper with signature and will clear that up now.
but other then that i need change nothing in my system of managing domains for my clients.
tim

Thanks for clarifying that Tim, I know that it's common for web developers to register client domains, so good to know the drill.

 

[findtim]

futher to that it was explained that if the owner ever complained to auda i could say " well i have a piece of signed paper" but i'll go fix it up OR, well the guy owes me $2k for website work and thats why he is complaining.
so auda could then say to owner " sort it out"
i have heard of people being left with outstandings and the owner has moved the site so th designer has no leverage
tim

 

[DomainNames]

The .au market has already become massively fragmented and literally millions of links are no longer using .au. These millions of links and billions of clicks are not being resolved by America and .com either they are being handled by countries like Montenegro and Libya (.me, .ly). These country codes are being used by big brands like facebook (fb.me) and twitter (contributor to popularity of bit.ly urls).
The benefit of having access to .au as an extension is to give local brands an opportunity to use their own brand and their own country extension on social media to hopefully reduce the fragmentation and loss of traffic/control being caused fb.me, ow.ly and aus.pm

Hi, I hope you have rethought some of your earlier positions on the claimed benefits of another competing .au extension now. The SEO , increase traffic and ranking claims of the new extensions are all proven invalid now. Google has even jumped in to dismiss such claims as they see it used globally by registrars etc and the now 3000 global extensions.

Government can stick with gov.au Everyone understands that.

Our existing Australian com.au , .net.au, .gov.au, .id.au, .asn.au, .org.au are already our "au" country extension
branding.. people use it on social media already very well! .... more extensions means more problems. Australia can stick with what we have so we do not become fragmented and as chaotic as many have overseas. Our existing names have global acceptance and success. ( except .id.au probably which failed)

 

[johno69]

My primary personal email uses id.au

 

[DomainNames]

My primary personal email uses id.au

You are one of 12,803 with an id.au.

They offered the first 50,000 free to try and make it work.... That didn't work.

.id.au In my opinion was another bad additional extension idea which got passed. Lot's of money wasted to promote and advertise it and mostly a failure for the amount of actual registrants.

 

[snoopy]

You are one of 12,803 with an id.au.

They offered the first 50,000 free to try and make it work.... That didn't work.

.id.au In my opinion was another bad additional extension idea which got passed. Lot's of money wasted to promote and advertise it and mostly a failure for the amount of actual registrants.

Agree, AUDA has never successfully launched a new extension. They have no knowledge of what it takes, neither does Ausregistry who brought us .melbourne and .sydney. Both organisations "inherited" a highly successful extension in .com.au.

Even when .id.au came out around 2001 everyone (except AUDA) knew it was absolute rubbish and would fail, even back then. Other bad ideas included .info.au and .biz.au.

https://www.auda.org.au/news/auda-to-consider-new-names-for-au/

With .id.au the obvious thing to do back then was allow people to register personal names in .com.au without ABN's etc. Instead of the obvious AUDA's great idea was an extension nobody would want.

 

[Scott.L]

$10 Million in the bank, I'm sure auDA will flog the crap out of marketing the NEW .au, selling the .au to the market, especially those newbie start up niche markets like "incubator" programs and "grass root" targets like, TAFE business, Small Business Networks...ect
I wouldn't doubt for a second the auDA have a marketing plan, Business Plan, Implementation roll out...Blah, Blah, Blah
all these glamorous resume wrapped candidates are coming out of the wood work because .au is something NEW and resistance only increases their profile, the challenges and the rewards, get a pat on the back...spew...

 

[snoopy]

$10 Million in the bank, I'm sure auDA will flog the crap out of marketing the NEW .au, selling the .au to the market, especially those newbie start up niche markets like "incubator" programs and "grass root" targets like, TAFE business, Small Business Networks...ect
I wouldn't doubt for a second the auDA have a marketing plan, Business Plan, Implementation roll out...Blah, Blah, Blah
all these glamorous resume wrapped candidates are coming out of the wood work because .au is something NEW and resistance only increases their profile, the challenges and the rewards, get a pat on the back...spew...

I'm sure they'll spend money on it, but they also did a lot of marketing of .id.au as well, likewise a lot of money was spent marketing .melbourne (by the Melbourne City Council), until the realisation set in that nobody actually wants it. Pretty sure the same thing happening with .net.au a while back.

AUDA doesn't actually need to spend any money on marketing anything, their cash stockpile should simply go towards a reduction in the $3.85 fee they charge registrants. The best way AUDA could increase usage would be to lower the cost of a .com.au domain and free up the red tape around eligibility. Instead of that they are off on tangent once again, bringing in something new that is not needed instead of maximising the utility of the extension people actually want.