If you have been following the tech news, you will know that as at yesterday, Nigerian Internet Registry Association (NIRA) opened up the registration of .ng domains to the public. This means anybody can now register domain names like hiki.ng, stro.ng and cable.ng for as low as N15,000 ($95) retail price. Who wouldn’t want that?
.ng is the country code top-level domain for Nigeria that was initially available only to large corporations like bi.ng, google.ng and thisday.ng at a whooping N75million ($46,800) or as third level version, i.e. .com.ng, .org.ng, .edu.ng, restricted to local companies, organisations or higher institutions.
Some of the challenges facing the public launch are that there are few domain registrars available, both in Nigeria the rest of the world, and the cost price is higher than the regular domain extensions (.com, .org, .net). Although the issue of price is not peculiar to .ng domains only (this is usually how land-rush happens. In some cases, new extensions go as high as $299 as was the case for .co. Early buyers like Overstock.com even bought o.co for $350,000), one cannot help but think that it could have been much cheaper.
In my opinion, the .ng domain should have been properly launched; NIRA either rushed things or were out not properly prepared. It is shocking to see that we don’t have an official logo for the .ng like other country extensions do (nic.co, registry.pw, registry
We at Gigalayer saw a spike in sales, specifically for the .ng domains, selling over N370,000 worth of names in less than 12 hours. This is a good sign that companies, individuals and domain squatters are hungry for the .ng extension. GigaLayer brings you .ng domains at N17,900 ($110) slightly above the retail price, but the shoppi.ng has been exciting for many of our customers. We have automated systems, online payment and everything to allow you purchase in matter of minutes.
Thank you and don’t forget to grab.ng.
