Expensive renewals on premium domain names — MMX drops
Domain names will only have a premium for the first year.
Fresh top level domain name firm MMX has dropped premium renewals on its inventory of wholly-owned top level domain names.
Previously, its premium domain names came with a higher-than-usual first-year registration price as well as high annual renewal prices. Now, buyers will only have to pay a premium for the first year. Registrants will pay standard renewal prices for subsequent years. Renewal prices vary depending on the top level domain name.
The move comes following MMX brought in a fresh CEO, Toby Hall, early last year to re-evaluate the business.
“MMX is committed to delivering the most domain-investor-friendly premium name programs in the industry,” Hall stated. “We started the process of rebooting our strategy in July last year, when we alerted our many registrar partners that 100% of our premium names sold following January 6th 2017 would have standard, GA renewal prices. As an added incentive to strengthening our existing partnerships and building fresh ones, we are likewise revisiting the price tiering of all our premium inventory across the portfolio. The upshot of our fresh Premium Program is that all registrants will ultimately have access to much more affordable purchase opportunities with sharply reduced carrying costs.”
One of the chief complaints of the domain investor community has been that it’s difficult to invest in fresh top level domain names since they have to pay steep renewal prices each year to hold onto domains. It can often take a number of years (or more) to sell a domain to an end user, so the renewal costs add up. Also, it’s difficult to buy a domain name in a fresh TLD since of the need to verify if it comes with expensive renewal fees.
Rightside, another fresh top level domain name firm, recently disclosed that it was lowering renewal prices on so-called Platinum Names which cost $25,000 or more to register. MMX’s price change takes this a sizable step further, applying to all newly-registered premium domain names.
“The ultimate goal of the Program and the wider initiatives MMX is putting in place is simple: we want to demonstrate we are great partners to have in your corner,” Solomon Amoako, VP of Channel Management for MMX, stated. “If you’re a domain investor, a registrar, an aftermarket platform, a broker, or an affiliate, we’re here to structure deals that can provide excellent profit potential both for yourselves and your end-clients.”
