30 Million Domains No Profit

July 2, 2008

From Data Center Knowledge:

Go Daddy said this week that it is now managing more than 30 million domains.

I was actually thinking about the domain registration business the other day and what the actually costs associated are. GoDaddy is charging $6.85/year (plus the $0.20 ICANN fee) for a .com domain registration. If they are paying Verisign the list price of $6.42/year per .com name registered GoDaddy is making $0.43/year per domain (a 6.7% margin).

With 30 million registered domains that is 12.9 million/year in Gross after $192.6 million/year payment to Verisign. Who's the real winner here?

To bad there are those pesky things called merchant fees. At a best case 1-2% of the sale price for Visa/Mastercard (higher for Amex) that margin goes away really fast. Ever wonder why the GoDaddy shopping cart is so cluttered with all those up sells?

Transform your business without wasting money.

We help you identify, audit and implement technology changes within your business to create leverage points to scale your company faster.