The Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR) has released their latest Domain Wire report, which gives some valuable insights into the ccTLD industry. As a domain reseller you should be keeping up to date with all the latest domain name trends. This ensures you stay one step ahead and are always ready to offer your clients the fastest growing TLD or the newest domain name extensions.
The report starts with a comparison between gTLD and ccTLD registration figures. The ratio is 60:40 respectively. gTLDs have reached 139.4 million while ccTLDs now stand at roughly 90.6 million registrations as of the end of April 2012. ccTLD registrations are now growing slightly faster than gTLD registrations. As a domain name reseller you should be thinking about offering as many ccTLDs as possible as businesses become more and more aware of brand protection and rush to you to register all the domain extensions you can offer!
.de registrations still rule the roost, with over 15 million registrations. The .uk ccTLD now boasts over 10 million registrations and .nl is in third place with just under 5 million registrations. There are 254 ‘active ccTLD extensions’ according to the report. With the New gTLD process progressing well this number is only likely to increase; yet more potential for profit as a domain reseller. .co domain names, that you can also resell with Domainbox.com; have seen the fastest rate of growth by a substantial margin, growing nearly 48% over the last 12 months. However, the .co domain extension has been branded a gTLD and may not warrant inclusion in this report. Within Europe, the fastest growing ccTLD was .me, great news for the Montenegro based personalised domain extension. In 2011 ccTLD renewal rates were averaged at 77.8%, slightly ahead of the average gTLD renewal rate, which stands at around 73% over the same period.
CENTR also included some statistics on global internet usage. African internet usage has gone from just 4.5 million in 2000 to 139.8 million in 2011. The Asian market now accounts for 45% of all internet users, with Europeans making up 22% and North Americans 12%. This is great news if you are a domain reseller. You can provide your clients the domain names they need to get some exposure in these markets, which have seen such explosive growth over the last 10 years. This trend does not look like slowing down any time soon!
All in all the report makes a great read for domain resellers. The industry is still growing, ccTLDs are becoming more popular, gTLD registrations are still holding firm and renewal rates are staying high! The perfect set of conditions for a domain reseller to operate in! If you want to keep up with all the latest developments in the industry please follow our Twitter, Facebook and Google+ profiles.