Hurry, grab this chance to buy .net domains at Rs 9. Buy .com domain at Rs 19. Buy .org domain at Rs $1. If you are into website making and building or just a blogger you hear this every now and then. But, did you ever wonder why these domain registrars sell domains at dirt cheap prices? Should you buy domains at cheap prices? These are the questions that I will try to answer today. Why Domain Registrars Sell Domains at Cheap? An average price for a .com domain is Rs 600 or $10 at current market currency rate. Some registrars even charge more for a .com domain. The price may vary depending on the domain provider you choose which includes BigRock, GoDaddy, Name Cheap, 1&1 etc. Then there are domain extensions such as .Org, .Net, .Biz, .Online, .Tech etc. Then there are country specific extensions such as .In for India, .co.UK for United Kingdom, etc. Any of these extensions apart from the .com will cost you more than $3 and can go up to $20. Then why would any company will offer you a domain at just Rs 9 or $00.20? There are two possible reasons why a domain registrar will sell domains at dirt cheap price. One reason is the strategy to sell its services. The second reason is to sell domain buyers data to service providers who provide hosting and website building service. 1: The Bussines Strategy The business strategy is that whoever buys a domain will build a website. To build a website, you need to have a template, hosting space. And if you are a noob you will also require help in getting your website live and maintain it. No domain registrar simply only offers domain registration service. Every single domain registrar offers hosting service, website designing service, website maintaining service, SEO service, etc. Now when you open the domain registrar page that is offering domain at a cheap price, you will see that after adding the domain to your cart, you will see a bundled hosting and website building offer as well. Of course, you can skip it and as far as I know most of the pro bloggers or experienced bloggers do the same. However, if you are not an experienced blogger and do not know much about hosting and stuff, you are their potential customers. You will for sure buy whatever hosting service they are offering to avoid any hassle of finding a good hosting provider. So, selling the domain at a cheap price did allow them to sell their services to you. So, it is definitely a smart business strategy that most works on new customers and not so tech savvy customers. But, what if you don't? The second reason will be the answer to this question. 2: To Sell Your Data to Potential Buyers If I take my example, my all website are hosted on VPS from Digital Ocean or Linode and Contabo. So, I would never be their potential customer. Whenever I purchase a new domain, I would get a call from the domain registrar asking if I need any hosting or website building services. My answer would be no every time. So, I might be one of those customers, who are into their blacklist of not so good client. So, the next time I buy a new domain availing any offer at a cheap price from the same provider, I don't get calls but receive only text messages on my cell phone from some unknown website and hosting service providers asking to try out their website building and hosting services. If I open my mailbox, there would be tons of emails from the third-party website building and hosting service providers with business proposals. Once such incident happened with me recently. Though there were several such in the past, it never attracted my attention except for this time. I bought few domains at a cheap price from a well-known company called BigRock and of course skipped all the website building and hosting service offers on the menu. Unusual to the routine, I did not get any calls from them offering website building or hosting services. Two days went past; I started to receive emails from third-party hosting service providers. Though, occasionally receiving one or two proposals was a routine, in last two days there were more than 50 emails from random service providers. Worse was receiving text messages on my cell phone from some third-party hosting service providers. You can argue that an email address is publicly available in Contact Us page. But, your personal phone numbers aren't in the contact us page. Then how these people come to know that you have bought a new domain? The only thing I did in last few days that could have triggered this was buying a few domains. So, there is your answer. If you aren't of any value to their business, your data makes up for them. During such festive season offers domain registrar offer domains at a cheap prices. Thousands of people register for new domains to make most out of it. Now if the domain registrars cannot convince domain buyers to buy their hosting packages and website designing packages, they would simply sell the data in bulk to potential buyers who are into web designing and hosting services. Now these service providers have access to your data; they will contact you through text messages and send emails with business proposals. Some of these emails made their way directly to the spam box. Below is a screenshot of emails that I have received in a short while. Which means they have been marked spam already by the Google and other Email service providers. Still, these domain registrars deal with such companies and trade your data. And they do put on a note in bold letters stating "No Spam Policy" on their website. Now the question arises, Is it ethical to sell customers data to third-party sources without their permission? If you read their Privacy page, they claim not to sell your personal data to third parties and protect your privacy. But, I am not sure, if the offer pages include some fine prints that otherwise people ignore while buying domains at low prices. What to do? You cannot do much about these things. This is a usual business routine for the companies that have access to millions of user's data. For example, your telecom companies will share your private data with marketing companies if you are not a valuable consumer. A valuable customer is one who spends above Rs 100. Those who spend less than Rs 100 a month would not be of much value to the companies. The best you can do is create a new email account to avail such offers. Also, make sure you can avoid giving your personal phone number during registration. Never use your primary mobile number or email address for registration purpose for such offers. Privacy policy really doesn't mean much to such companies but are forced to include to save themselves from legal trouble. Though I have had bitter experience with one registrar as I have been a long time customer of BigRock and still choose them for domain registration needs, you can experience this with any other Domain name registrars. BigRock does offer some good offers on Domain and is relatively cheaper when it comes to Top Level Domain registration compared to other big wings, but there are still problems that need to be resolved for better customer experience.
