I ordered a couple of copies of the book about domaining, “The Domain Game” by David Kesmodel. They arrived yesterday. There is a great post at Domain Tools that shows you all of the page references to different people / companies of interest.

David Kesmodel is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. His new book demonstrates how many regular people have become millionaires through owning some of the most valuable domain names.

Working in the industry myself for over 8 years now, I am specifically interested in the references to people and companies I know. Just skimming through it and I am very keen to read it. I am a very slow reader, however this could be the first book I ever read from cover to cover (unless the movie comes out before I finish). I’ll definitely throw a copy next to the toilet and have the other one with me for a few weeks.

Everything sold in a retail environment includes a “mark up”, the term is used to describe the difference between the cost of producing the product and the “juice” the retailer charges for the product.

Mark up often varies from store to store, but why? One assumes it is simply because businesses want to make more money. However, price variation occurs due to other factors such as distance, local area marketing, supply and demand etc.

Purchasing a computer in regional parts of Australia is likely to cost you more than in the city. However, purchasing fresh fruit is most likely priced the opposite. These price fluctuations are due to variables such as adding the cost of distribution and general supply and demand.

When it comes to purchasing “electrons” or something in the digital world, you might ask; “Why do prices at one domain name registrar have mark up more than 20 times that of another?”.

Well, in the digital world it comes down to things like marketing spend (recovering the cost to acquire you as a customer), customer service (helping you costs money, they want that money back), technology (some registrars software is substantially better than others, it probably cost them more to produce). Even with all that considered, you will quickly realise that the highest priced registrars probably just want the PROFIT.

The Australian domain name registrars mark up the price of com.au domain names anywhere from $5.40 to an amazing $117.45!

According to AusRegistry, Australia’s official wholesale domain name provider, there are currently 25 .auDA accredited registrars.

The Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) charges a fee of $4.95 with every com.au registration. The wholesaler, AusRegistry charges $17.60 per com.au domain, making the wholesale rate of a com.au domain name $22.55.

These prices vary for the different .au products, as per below:

Below is a table of the auDA accredited registrars and the current retail prices. As you can see, Intaserve.com is currently the cheapest com.au registrar in Australia. This list is produced in alphabetical order, is representative of the minimum 2 year registration term and includes GST. NameScout Corporation is incorporated in Barbados and does not charge GST.