A complete price list for SSL products available to be sold through OpenSRS is available here.

All OpenSRS Resellers are able to sell SSL certificates from GeoTrust, thawte and VeriSign. If you haven’t sold SSL through OpenSRS before, there’s nothing you need to do to get started – it’s included and enabled on your Reseller account automatically. Take a look at the documentation for our SSL Service for more information on how to sell and provision SSL through both the Reseller Web Interface as well as via the API. Reseller Support is also just a phone call or email away.

The comparison looked at the Alexa 1 Million and counted publically facing SSL certificates. They found over 35,000 GeoTrust SSL certificates amongst the 165,000 total certificates found. GeoTrust led all certificate authorities, with the nearest competitor alomost 10,000 certificates behind.

GeoTrust points to the data as proof that more users look to GeoTrust as the low-cost SSL certificate provider of choice to secure and encrypt data transmitted over the Internet.

With increasing competition in the low-end of the SSL market, GeoTrust continues to provide cost-effective solutions for a variety of different requirements. From QuickSSL, through True BusinessID with or without Extended Validation, there is a GeoTrust-branded certificate to satisfy any buyer.

If you have an OpenSRS Reseller account, then you are also automatically able to sell SSL certificates from GeoTrust (and also thawte and VeriSign). For more information visit our GeoTrust SSL information page.

That puts .nl in fourth place in terms of ccTLDs for total registrations behind .de, .uk and .cn. Curiously, .nl actually leads all ccTLDs when you look at total registrations compared to the population of the country. In the case of .nl, there is one .nl domain for every four people in the Netherlands.

If you aren’t selling .nl domains, perhaps some of the stats around .nl domains will get you thinking about it:

• Since the .nl domain was created, a total of about 5.1 million unique domain names have been registered. Of these, roughly 1.1 million are no longer registered leaving just over 4 million .nl domains.
• Within the Netherlands, .nl has a 72% share of the domain name market. Next comes .com with 14%, then .eu with 8%.
• Over the last twelve months, the .nl domain has grown by almost 13%.
• The use of domain names to create personalized e-mail addresses increased by 25%.
• In the Netherlands, 38 people in every 100 have broadband internet access – more than anywhere else in the world.
• The average .nl domain name is 13 characters long, but the most common length is 11 characters.

OpenSRS is .nl accredited and we recently rewrote our connection to the .nl registry to take advantage of the new EPP interface.

For resellers who are .nl accredited themselves, you may not know that our OpenSRS Registrar Service platform offers a hosted solution to manage .nl domains using your existing accreditation. Of course, OpenSRS Domain Service offers an easy way to manage .nl domains for those who aren’t accredited.

.nl domains are priced at $8USD/domain year and anyone can register a .nl domain, regardless of where they live.

But wait! There’s more!

Better news! Not only are we lowering our wholesale price, but we’re also rolling out a .TV promo at the same time. Resellers who sign up for the .TV promotion and agree to do some marketing around .TV domains will see their cost for new .TV domain registrations drop to just $12/domain year from now until May 31, 2011. Signup here.

Like other promotions you are required to do some marketing/promotion of .TV domains on your website or through an email campaign. The discount will be paid in the form of a rebate deposited monthly.

To sum it up:

• The regular price for new .TV domain registrations is now $19/domain year for all Resellers, through May 31, 2011.
• We’re offering a .TV promo starting today – signup and do some marketing to get an even better price of $12/year for new .TV registrations through May 31, 2011.
• The lower pricing applies to new .TV domains only, but multi-year registrations do qualify. Renewals and transfers will continue to be priced at $35/domain year.

About .TV domains

.TV domains are made for websites with video. To help drive sales of new .TV domains, consider suggesting that new customers purchase the .TV domain to go with a .com or other domain extension to showcase videos, screencasts and other multimedia content. Many of your existing customers might also be interested in picking up the .tv version of their domain name as well.

With the increasing availability of easy to use tools for video content creation and sharing, demand for .TV domains will continue to grow. This special pricing on .TV domains makes it even easier for the average person to get their own place online to show and share video content.

Find out more about .TV domains:

• More .TV info and marketing materials for resellers
• Watch.tv blog
• Follow .TV on Twitter

On Your Site

The easiest thing you can do is add some messaging to your homepage (or the beginning of your domain search path) to let users know that .CO domain names are now available through your service. But success will mostly likely be driven by how you integrate .CO into your search results. Customers in the online world are a finicky bunch. Button placement, colors, menus and user interface all play a critical role in determining how much of a consumer’s hard-earned money you will earn. We mocked up a sample search result page to give you an idea where we think you could see results.

Identify .CO domain names as “NEW.” It may also be wise to have a help button a registrant can click on in order to learn about .CO and why it’s a great choice for their business. They key is to reinforce (.com-like) universality and credibility.

Place available .CO domain names at or near the top to grab a registrant’s attention and encourage them to act. (It is actually always a good rule to give better real estate to results that are available than result that are not.) If .CO is buried too low or even behind a “more options” link,  the customer might never even consider it.

Suggest a two year registration. (This is actually a suggestion for all domain names.) When the default is one year, most customers will register for one year. When the default is two, it is surprising how many customers will register for two years. So, a good suggestion might be to start with a two year offer (perhaps with a discount), but make sure it is very clear how to change the term to one year.

In Other Communications

Besides having your front-end tuned to convert, another important step is to communicate the .CO news directly to your customers. An effective way to do this is through an opt-in email marketing campaign. Assuming you have an email list of customers, here are some suggestions that have produced results for our resellers in past TLD launches:

• Don’t assume your customers know about .CO. Sending a simple email about the availability of this new TLD could be enough to drive additional business.

• You could perform a batch check on your customers’ current domains and see which .CO equivalents are available. Many customers will want to protect their name across all generic TLDs. For example: “Dear customer, we notice that you have companyxyz.com…we want to advise you that companyxyz.co is now also available….”

• If you have the data, you can also look through past unsuccessful domain searches and reach out to customers where the exact-match .CO domain is now available.

• In your marketing messages, it might be worthwhile to note that Google (and presumably other search engines) will be treating .CO domain names as generic TLDs. (This addresses fears that a .CO name will only get SEO results in Colombia!). You might also mention that the .CO registry is spending significant marketing dollars to make sure Internet users (your customers’ visitors) will know and respect .CO when they see it.

We will continue to monitor what folks are doing and what seems to be working to share with the network.

Please let us know if you have ideas or questions.

Last month we talked about the OpenSRS approach to wholesale domain name pricing and why we feel it’s the most transparent and reseller-friendly model in the industry. We’ve taken the same approach with our Sub-resellers program.

The OpenSRS Sub-resellers feature allows you to set up your own network of domain name resellers using our back-end. The popularity of Sub-resellers since its launch last year has confirmed for us just how valuable this can be. It has also reinforced how important it is to our resellers that they manage these relationships.

We built the Sub-resellers functionality with input from our existing resellers, and took a different approach than our competitors by giving full control to our resellers. Here are a few of the features that we believe make ours the most reseller-friendly sub-reseller program in the industry:

Flexible pricing editor.

Unlike some other options out there, our Sub-resellers pricing editor provides you with complete control over pricing. Whether you decide to price a group of TLDs at $12.99, or want to make sure you earn $2 on every sale, the decision is yours. You pick the price your sub-reseller pays. We provide you with the ability to create as many different pricing plans as you like, and the tools to view and manage pricing for your sub-resellers.

Branding options that put the spotlight on YOU.

We’ve placed a great deal of importance on branding. The Sub-resellers feature provides the capability to fully brand the experience to the needs of your brand and your customers. Email communication, logos, system messages, control panels and related interfaces have all been designed to be reseller friendly – to let you put your company and brand in front of your sub-reseller.

Sub-resellers is free and designed for your business.

Sub-reseller accounts can be created in seconds, either manually, or via the API. With no extra account setup costs, and multiple account funding options, it’s a simple way to rapidly grow your network. We’ll even manage the account funding on your behalf. There are no additional charges for this feature, and as an OpenSRS reseller it’s already enabled for your account.

I’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible with the Sub-resellers feature and we’re amazed at what some of our resellers have already accomplished in such a short period of time. The Sub-resellers option helps our resellers leverage the power of an alternate sales channel to increase sales, and to strengthen the relationships they have with their customers.

I hope this provides you with yet another example of our strong commitment to building the world’s most reseller friendly Domain Name Service on the planet and I encourage you to learn more about our capabilities.

See it in action at HostingCon 2010

If you’re going to be at HostingCon 2010 next week in Austin, TX, and you want to see more, you can request a meeting or just drop by our booth (link to hostingcon event page). If you aren’t going to be in the area, then we also have a half-hour webinar that walks through Sub-resellers and talks about different ways to setup and manage your own sub-resellers network.

Now that’s not to say that people won’t be lining up to get their preferred .CO domain during the Landrush phase – demand for .CO domains has been quite strong. Rather, it’s a way of saying that Landrush orders aren’t approved on a first-come, first-served basis. Instead, multiple Landrush orders for the same domain will result in the domain going to an auction in which all those who applied for the domain during the Landrush period are able to bid.

You can submit Landrush orders through OpenSRS and we’ll continue to accept them through the end of the Landrush period on July 13th, 2010.

General Availability is just around the corner

What will be a rush is General Availability (GA), which happens on July 20th, 2010. On that day, it’s a real free-for-all as registration officially opens to everyone at the regular price and whoever gets the application in first gets the domain. We’ll have more information about what we’re doing for General Availability shortly, but in the meantime, OpenSRS is already accepting pre-orders via the Reseller Web Interface (RWI) and the API.

As always, the .CO Launch Page is updated with all the information about the launch of .CO.

VeriSign, GeoTrust and Thawte are all in the midst of a transition from 1024-bit roots to new, more secure 2048-bit roots. This change is in line with industry best practices to ensure the highest level of security. Browser vendors are also starting to require the use of SHA-1 and 2048 keys. For example, Microsoft has stipulated requirements for all Certificates that require that all new Root Certificates must have a minimum be 2048-bit RSA keys and not use MD5 as the hashing algorithm.

As a result of this upgrade, there are some changes to how SSL certificates purchased through OpenSRS are ordered and installed. Please note: currently installed SSL certificates are not affected by the changes. However, new certificates along with renewals of existing certificates will required 2048-bit Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) in the future, depending on the specific certificate brand and type.

The new 2048-bit root updates will go live on the following dates:

• Thawte (except SGC SuperCerts) – June 27, 2010
• GeoTrust – July 22, 2010
• VeriSign – October, 2010
• Thawte SGC SuperCerts only – October, 2010

2048-bit CSRs Please

OpenSRS will begin requiring 2048-bit CSRs at the same time as the root updates occur. You may already submit 2048-bit CSRs for all products. In fact, Extended Validation (EV) certificates already required 2048-bit CSRs. If you submit an SSL order with a 1024-bit CSR after the root updates take place on the dates listed above, the order will fail.

Installation Changes Required

Additionally, the SSL certificate installation process will change for all Thawte (excluding: SGC SuperCerts and Web Server with EV Certificates) and GeoTrust certificates (excluding True BusinessID with EV) issued after the go live dates listed above. Users will be required to install an intermediate Certification Authority Certificate in line with industry best practices. The excluded products listed already require the installation of this intermediate certificate.

More Information

For the latest information about the 2048-bit root changes, you may wish to view the Support Advisories issued by each brand:

• Thawte Support Advisory: view
• GeoTrust Support Advisory: view
• VeriSign Support Advisory: view

With just over a month to go until .co officially launches with the General Availability phase, we’re continuing to see a lot of buzz building around the new domain extension.

We’re nearing the end of the Sunrise phases of the launch where trademark holders get first dibs on .co domains that match their existing trademarks. Later this month, things really begin to heat up as the Landrush phase starts on June 21.

For many, Landrush will be the first chance for many to get their hands on some great .co domains. And as exciting as Landrush will be, General Availability will really ramp things up with a first-come, first-served registration blitz when the .co Registry officially opens for business on July 20.

e.co Auction

While t.co is generating some significant buzz around the tech community, another .co domain is also grabbing headlines. Between June 7 and June 10, .co is auctioning off another single character .co domain – e.co.

With bidding set to close tomorrow, the current price for e.co is already up over $30,000 and continuing to climb.

Proceeds from the auction of e.co go to the winner’s charity of choice which makes the whole thing even more of a win for all involved.

Are you selling .co?

OpenSRS is fully supporting the launch of .co as one of ten .co accredited registrars. We’re continuing to take Global Sunrise orders at the moment and we’ll be switching on both Landrush and General Availability pre-orders in the coming weeks.

If you haven’t yet started marketing and selling .co domains, it’s not too late. Awareness amongst the general public continues to build and CO Internet SAS continues to do a great job building buzz around the new extension. With General Availability coming next month, demand for .co domains amongst the general public should continue to swell.

If you are looking for more information on the launch of .co, we have a special page setup for you. All the information around dates, phases and pricing is there. And you can download a full package of .co marketing materials including web copy, flash banners and other images and graphics you can use to highlight your participation in the launch of .co.

Effective July 1, 2010, registry fees for .com and .net domains are increasing. These registry fee increases were announced by VeriSign (the operator of the .com and .net registries) in January, in accordance with their agreement with ICANN.

Here are the details:

• .com increases by $0.48 to $7.34 beginning on July 1st, 2010
• .net increases by $0.42 to $5.40 beginning on July 1st, 2010

Several years ago, OpenSRS transitioned to selling gTLDs, including .com and .net domains under a ‘cost-plus’ pricing model, meaning that the price you pay is broken down into three separate parts – the Registry cost, the ICANN fee (currently 18 cents), and an OpenSRS management fee. OpenSRS retains the management fee for providing the domain registration and management service. Changes to the Registry costs and the ICANN fee are passed through transparently.

The chart below shows the changes to our domain registration fees after the VeriSign fee increase on July 1st:

OpenSRS

Our transparent, reseller friendly pricing model is in contrast to the approach taken by other registrars, where there is often a single price per gTLD. In the case of eNom, this was recently announced as an across-the-board 55 cent increase to domain registration fees for the six most popular gTLDs. Below is their Basic plan pricing, broken down into its component costs, with the new pricing effective July 1st:

eNom

As an OpenSRS reseller, you have complete visibility to our costs; We won’t use one registry’s price increase as an opportunity to raise our prices on additional gTLDs. We believe that our transparent pricing model gives you comfort in clearly understanding how we approach pricing, and what you can expect in the future.

If you want to see more detail on the current registry costs and ICANN fee, you can see it here: http://opensrs.com/services/domains/domains-pricing

Up next, we’ll be writing about our more reseller friendly approach to sub-resellers. Stay tuned!