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Ask HN: Please help us with our Nigerian domains

3 points by vahakota ↗ HN
Brief history: We (3 developers) reserved a bunch of Nigerian domains when they came available last year and thought we would develop something on them. During the past year we failed miserably to allocate time to do anything to this and now the domains are expiring within 2 weeks, on the 15th-16th of April.

To be honest with ourselves, we really don't see ourselves doing any better during the next year on our own. Thus we have pretty much conceded to the loss of the initial registration fees and are thinking of just letting the domains expire.

It still feels like a waste to let this great collection of domains expire though, so any advice on what to do with the domains would be greatly appreciated:

boati.ng bowli.ng cycli.ng danci.ng fighti.ng fishi.ng golfi.ng hiki.ng hiri.ng painti.ng raci.ng ranki.ng saili.ng spanki.ng swi.ng

The renewal of these domains would cost us USD 218.90 per domain on our registrar 101domain.com, totalling USD 3502.40. This is a lot more than we initially anticipated the renewal would cost and in our current life situations we just are not prepared to reinvest that sum, even though there clearly is some potential with these domains.

Even the thought of donating the domains to “good use” before they expire has crossed our minds. We just don't really see how we should actually go about arranging this without having to take the risk of ending up paying the renewal fees ourselves in this short timeframe.

What should we do?

5 comments

[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 14.2 ms ] thread
OoTheNigerian
I know registrar that register at the rate of about $100 per domain.

Maybe transfer them to halve the cost and seek to sell them afterwards?

You may email me if you want introductions to the registrar

Cheers!

vahakota
Thank you for the suggestion Oo!

Dropping the cost to less than half would definitely make us reconsider just keeping the domains while we figure out what we can do with them.

BTW do you happen to have any knowledge on why registering and renewing the Nigerian domains cost so much more compared to other domains?

mukoshy
So far the reason for the cost is yet unknown, except that the registry decided to sell at that expensive rate. Possibly because of available clever domains like traveli.ng, shoppi.ng, flyi.ng etc and maybe they have some overhead operating cost because the country is still in alpha stage of internet penetration and knowledge.

Whatever the case, we hope they cut it down soon.

bushido
Woah! There are some good mainstream names there that should'nt be hard to work with and monetize (ex. hiri.ng).

Some sound as if they were for porn or alternate lifestyles (ie. spanki.ng swi.ng).

I'd personally find a cheaper registrar and take OoTheNigerian on his offer.

Also, if budget remains a concern, you could trim the list down a bit to the ones which you could work with in the future and let the rest go.

mukoshy
We offer available option for you guys, $112 at GigaLayer and transfer in less than 72hrs. We also accept international card payments and PayPal.

You can email hello@gigalayer.com or that. ;)