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Remember when Oluniyi Ajao asked us Why would you use a .ng domain name for your website? and Loy Okezie reported that ThisDay, one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers, bought thisday.ng for N7.5million ($50,000 USD)?

Well now you too can experiment or get rich and famous with a .ng domain name. The .NG Registry as part of its Nigeria @ 50 independence celebration is offering 50,000 .ng domain names within 50 days. According to TelecomPaper:

The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), manager of the Nigerian web domain .ng, has released 50,000 free domain names for Nigerians as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the country. Registration of free domains will run until 21 March. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will provide the funding for the project.

The agency is committed to training a substantial number of Nigerian youths as web developers in readiness for an envisaged increased demand for the services of web developers with the registration of 50,000 .ng domains in the first quarter, and the target population of the .ng registry with 250,000 domains by the end of 2011. The project will be launched this month by NITDA, which will also sponsor the capacity building effort of NiRA and setting up a data centre and co-location facility to support the activation of the 250,000 domains.

While the free domain name offer lasts, registrars will register domains at no cost to registrants for a period of one year. The offer of free domains is restricted to the following second level domains (SLDs): .com.ng, .org.ng, .name.ng, .mobi.ng, and .sch.ng. Recipients are expected to renew their domains at the usual fees at the expiration of the one-year period.

As part of that celebratory offer, Web4Africa will register the .ng domains at no cost to Registrants for a period of one year. Excited? The check the details of Web4Africa's offer and get your free .ng domain today!

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During the Tandaa Symposium on Taking Your Business Online the the Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC) who manages the dot KE country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) name space showed this slide on the number of .ke domain names.

Intriguingly, the total listed here, over 14,000 .ke domain names, is a huge leap from the numbers that Moses Kemibaro presented in July when he asked Are Kenyan .KE Domain Names Really Expensive?.

It seems the market has voted with 5,000 domain names registered since Moses pulled his numbers. Congrats to .ke! Though I still think if the price were less, you'd see an even greater .ke domain name adoption, and KENIC would not need to ask "You are Kenyan! Are you dot.ke?"

If you are a web entrepreneur, you should be very interested in the size and health of your market and your competition. One number that should be prominent in your business planning is the total number of domains purchased in your country. This can tell you the size of your competition and the health of your domain hosting system.

Online Africa has just complied the total domains purchased in each African country for the week of August 2, and the list has a few surprises:

While Zimbabwe's web hosting companies only maintain 2,033 websites, they sold 208 new domains, far outselling Egypt, with 20x greater market size. Uganda had a net loss of 29 websites from local hosting companies, making it the worst performing market in this sample week.

Kenya's poor showing at #7, behind much smaller Ghana, might be a wake-up call to question .ke domain name prices. Rwanda, with all its Internet hype, ranked along side DRC Congo and Togo in sales.

Now one week does not make a year, but the numbers do show where ICT penetration is high and where investment and competition should be strong. ANd where local web hosting companies should really be working harder.

Recently, Moses Kemibaro present the marketing plan for the .KE top-level country domain, managed by the Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC). In his presentation, he asks an intriguing question: Are .KE domain names really expensive?

Now I wasn't at the presentation to hear his thoughts, but from the slide show, I will assume that he feels that .KE domain names are not that expensive. I respectfully disagree.

.KE domain names are way overpriced

The real question that Moses should be asking is, "Are .KE domain names relatively expensive?" See, its not that .KE registrars are making 75% profit, like .com registrars, its that new web entrants, which they're targeting with the me.ke marketing plan, are going to be price sensitive.

At $5 or less per year for the more widely known .com domain name, the $45 per year fee for a .KE domain is crazy expensive. Add to it that young Kenyans (the assumed me.ke target market) have less to spend on domain names, and I say that KENIC should be trying to price personal .KE domain names at $2 or $3 per year.

Give me.ke domain names away!

In fact, I say that KENIC should be giving away the first year of a me.ke domain name. Why? Because the owners of a me.ke domain will invest in it, to make it real and respectable - its thiername.ke after all - and when year 2 comes along, they'll pay $5-10 to keep their new address alive.

A great example of this marketing plan as a successful business strategy is 1&1.com, the giant German web host. They give away the first year of a domain name and add on many important features for free, because they know that once a person (or business) invests in a domain name, they'll want to keep it.

And I should know. I've owned wayan.com, wayan.org, wayan.net, and wayan.us for a decade now.