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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?"

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.