If you have customers who applied for domains during either Sunrise A or B that failed validation, you might wish to let them know in case they are still interested in obtaining any of those domain(s) for registration.

These domains would simple show as available after 16:00 UTC, and will be available for registration on a first-come, first-serve basis like any other unregistered .XXX domain is now.

ICM Registry says they will not provide a list of the names that are being made available.

I wanted to let you know some more about this and especially about how this fits in with OpenSRS and resellers.

Tucows has always been, at its core, focused on being the best supplier of Internet services to service providers around the world. We have approached Ting with that thinking in mind.

We have just completed a closed beta with a couple hundred participants. Over 80% of them were resellers. The closed beta was a great success in that we all learned a lot and there was a great spirit in the group with resellers bringing themselves to the beta as customers BUT keeping well aware that they may be offering the service to their customers one day. This made for a really productive process.

Over the next couple of months, we are going to continue refine the retail Ting experience – from purchase path to fulfillment to customer support. Meanwhile, we would like to start speaking with you now about the reseller opportunity. We would like you to help us design the best wholesale offering possible. We are also looking for a handful of you to participate in a reseller beta and be the first to offer Ting to your customers.

It is worth noting that the primary reason that Sprint has been so supportive of us in bringing this to market is that they share our view that you guys are fantastic distribution partners and together we bring an approach to the market that recognizes that mobile has moved from a phone and voice business to being about small computers connecting to a mobile data network.

Some of you have heard me say that this looks and smells to me just like the early days of the ISP business, which many of us lived through. And that means opportunity.

We have set up a simple form on the site for you to fill out if you are interested in partnering with us on Ting. We will follow up shortly with more information.

Please also indicate if you might be interested in a special discount on Ting for yourselves or your employees. We figure the best way to get you and your team excited about offering this to your customers is to get you to experience the service yourselves. It is also a great way to thank you for all the rest of the business you do with OpenSRS.

It is a big day for us here. We well know that Ting will not succeed to the extent it can without your partnership.

NOTE: If you missed the live webinar, we now have a recording available for viewing at any time. Click here to view.

Staying on top of where the hosting industry is headed is key in ensuring that you are able to react quickly and be successful.

Arming you with great information about the current state of the industry and where it’s going int he future is all part of what we do. If you’ve attended events like HostingCon, WorldHostingDays or Parallels Summit, you’ll know that we often offer sessions designed to share that knowledge we’ve gained with you.

Free Exclusive Webinar!

Coming up on February 2, 2012, we’re hosting a free webinar that we know you won’t want to miss.

We’ve arranged for Phil Shih, founder and managing director of Structure Research to provide a one-hour session titled, “A Look Ahead – Trends in Hosting for 2012.”

Phil Shih, Founder and Managing Director, Structure Research

Phil is a well-known speaker in the hosting industry. He has in-depth knowledge of where things are, and where they are headed based on his over ten years of looking at the hosting space. Phil was a long-time senior staff writer for The WHIR, and an analyst for Tier1 Research.

This webinar is just a start – we’re very excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Phil to bring you exclusive content like this throughout the year.

More to Come

As mentioned, the webinar is just the first of a number of many initiatives we have planned, some with Phil and some with other great partners – watch for blog posts and more great webinars coming up to help you stay current.

From day one, back in 1999, we’re always been very much focused on making sure that you have the products and services you need to succeed. That means having things like a huge range of ccTLDs and gTLDs, or partnering with multiple trust providers so you can always offer the right SSL or trust product for every customer.

Further extending and broadening that focus to include information and intelligence is just one more thing that makes us the best choice for companies looking for a wholesale Internet services partner.

Watch On Demand

Click here to view the recording. Like all of our webinars, it’s free.

Broadcasting live from the OpenSRS Webinar Broadcast Studios (aka Meeting Room 2)

If you missed the news about that launch, you can check out this post from Adam Eisner – we added dozens and dozens of new ccTLDs to the list of extensions you can sell through your OpenSRS reseller account.

Why ccTLDs? Which Ones Should I Offer? What are the Key Differences?

In the webinar, Adam talked about how we ended up adding all these new cTLDs, including some very open and transparent discussion about why we chose the ones we did.

He also provided some great advice on how you should approach bringing new ccTLDs to your customer base – that included thinking about your location, and the markets you serve.

Plus, he took a few minutes to fully explain some of the differences between these new ccTLDs and the rest of the TLDs we offer.

The webinar runs about 30 minutes with some questions and answers. As with all of our webinars, we recorded it (video and audio) so you can watch it when it’s convenient for you. You can access the recording here.

Another Great Webinar in February!

While we’re talking about webinars, we do have another one already lined up and on the schedule for the first week of February. We’re super excited to have Phil Shih from Structure Research in to provide a look at the hosting industry in 2012. This is exclusive to OpenSRS and promises to be an excellent session.

Find out more about that here, and of course, registration is free.

Professional Canadians with committee experience and/or an interest in technology or the Internet are encouraged to apply.

According to CIRA, “the CIRA Nomination Committee plays a critical role in soliciting and selecting qualified candidates for the Nomination Committee Slate of CIRA’s Board of Directors Election. Its focus is to help build a Board of Directors that represents a wide range of views and interests, and ultimately contributing to the strategic direction of .CA and Canadian Internet policy.”

Applications will be accepted from January 3 to January 20, 2012. Visit http://www.ciraelections.ca for more information.

There is a real opportunity to be the trusted provider for your customers – and the provider they trust for everything they need, whether that’s domain registrations, hosting, email or whatever else you might offer them.

Do your customers know that you want all of their business, and do you go out of your way to help them move it to you?

Don’t Forget About Domain Transfers

One of the realities of getting started as an OpenSRS Reseller is that a lot of people already have a domain name. That reality makes your life easier because you don’t need to explain to them that having a domain name for their business is important.

Your customers and potential customers already know the value of a good domain and that opens the door for you to start selling things like a mobile website, hosting, web design, email and trust services to them.

But make sure you don’t overlook that domain when you bring the customer on board. Help the customer transfer their domains to you in any way you can so that you are able to offer a complete, end-to-end set of services.

Pro tip: Our retail division actually offers a concierge service that takes care of transfers for their customers. It’s something the customer is often happy to pay for, and it ensures that the transfer is taken care of successfully. Consider offering transfer concierge services to existing customers to get them to move their existing domains to you.

Helpful Resources

We provide a bunch of step-by-step guides that you can use to help those customers get their domains transferred to you. Transfers can sometimes be tricky and it’s important that you help the customer through the process so they don’t get frustrated and give up. You can grab the guides here.

Our Marketing Resource Center is full of helpful resources for domains, trust, email and publishing there for your use. Check it out.

Having the right information is a great help in making sure you get all the business that your customers want to entrust you with.

Thanks to Flickr user TerryJohnston for the photo, released under a Creative Commons license.

A few months back we announced that we acquired the German registrar EPAG. The reason for the acquisition was that we wanted to significantly bolster our lineup of country-code top-level domains. Today’s release is the first round of new ccTLDs that we’ll add as a result.

In total, there are over 100 new ccTLDs in the first round (including both second and third level domains). From a geographic perspective, we’ve now offer ccTLDs for nearly 80 countries.

Some of the more popular new extensions:

• Poland: .pl
• New Zealand: .nz
• Isle of Man: .im
• South Africa: .za
• Malaysia: .my
• Peru: .pe
• Tonga: .to
• Israel: .il
• Korea: .kr

Full List with Pricing

You can view the full list of the TLDs we offer along with pricing here. We’ve organized things by continent to make it easier to display them all.

If you don’t see a country that you were hoping would be on the list, sit tight — we’re still working on integrating everything that EPAG offers into OpenSRS and we’ll have even more ccTLDs to add to the list in 2012.

More Information

ccTLDs sometimes have residency and other requirements. To help you out with that, we’ve created a handy TLD Reference Chart that gives you all that information in a single document. We’ll be updating it as we add more ccTLDs or as requirements change.

These new ccTLDs are available in the Domain Manager of OpenSRS Control Panel, as well as via the Reseller Web Interface (RWI). By default, searches won’t include the laundry list of all the new ccTLDs, but you can enable those that are of interest to you in the settings area of the RWI. Check out the FAQ for help with doing that.

Documentation including the API docs has been updated to get you started and we’ve started compiling a list of frequently asked questions that we will continue to update as we get feedback from resellers.

Most of our offices will be closed from the afternoon of December 23, 2011 through to January 2, 2012. We’ll be back in the offices on January 3 all ready to serve you in the new year. As always our dedicated team of Technical Support reps continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.
Here are the specific hours by department:

Please note: during this closure, there will be no orders or requests processed for the following Service Bureau ccTLDs: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk and .mx.

Happy Holidays to you, your colleagues and your families during this holiday season and the new year!

To celebrate the launch, we’re also offering a .PRO launch promotion providing substantial savings off the usual registration fee. From now until February 15, 2012, .PRO domains will be available with a registry cost of $1.99/domain year for new registrations (the regular registry cost is $7.34/year). Resellers do need to sign up to take advantage of this promotion. Sign up here.

Remember that because .PRO is a gTLD, it’s priced using our ‘cost-plus’ pricing model so you’ll need to add your OpenSRS Management fee and the ICANN fee to determine the full cost for .PRO domains.

What is .PRO?

.PRO is an exclusive top-level domain reserved for use exclusively by licensed business and service professionals and entities internationally. All applicants meeting the following qualifications may register a .PRO domain name:

• Provides professional services
• Admitted to or licensed by a government certification body or jurisdictional licensing entity recognized by a governmental body that regularly verifies the accuracy of its data
• In good standing with the licensing authority

You should be aware that registrants of .PRO domains may be asked to provide information related to their professional eligibility.

Documentation and Marketing Help

OpenSRS offers second-level .PRO domains. They can be provisioned and managed through the Domain Manager in OpenSRS Control Panel and via the OpenSRS API. Consult the documentation for more information.

Look at our .PRO information page for more details including a marketing kit containing the .PRO logo and some banner ads for your use in marketing .PRO domains to your customers.

So we took our own advice and integrated premium domains in the Hover search results in early August.

The design approach was a bit different than anything else we had seen in the industry. Rather than break these domains out into some distinct section of results, we simply included them in one long list of available domains. That seems more consistent with the way we shop for products and services that will ultimately play the same role. “I can have this low-end brand for $15 or that deluxe model for $2,400.”

Check out the search results for sandwich.com (in a new tab, so you can get to the shocking results below!). A roll over the star explains that this is a premium domain. A click goes to a detailed page with a video.

The results are shocking. We have sold 29 premium domains in 4 months at an average price of $1,530.

(I also have to mention that just about anybody reading this post has a better base for premium domains than Hover does. About 20% of Hover customers claim to use their domains for business purposes.)

So to put that in the context of your own business, that is 1 premium domain sold for every 853 new available domains (“regular domains”) registered. Said differently, we have collected $1.79 in gross premium domains revenue for every new available domain registered. With your 10% commission, that would be an extra $.18 in margin for every new domain name you register.

For us, that starts to look like real money.

Plus, our customers are thrilled with their new domain names. And, not surprisingly, almost all of them are renewing these domains far into the future and buying additional services on them. Makes sense. These are heavily invested customers. (I am not claiming causality there, stats geeks. The premium domains do not make them more serious about their businesses. But they certainly get them even more excited about their businesses and make other expenses seem less steep by comparison!)

Finally, this has been mostly passive stuff so far. We have not yet begun to really sell these domains. We are just starting to have fun with database marketing. Imagine looking at every organization name among your base to see if any exact matches are available as premium domains. Imagine just looking at every domain name that has a hyphen in it (a classic compromise) and finding the exact same domain name without the hyphen available as a premium domain. As always, we would love to pull these sort of lists for you so you can reach out to these customers with a killer pitch. (By the way, you do not even need to implement the API to do this.) Please let us know if you are interested in these sorts of efforts.

So, in conclusion, once in a while, we are right. And when we are, I will always tell you about it.

Sell premium domains!