Here come the price increase notices.

It’s that time of year again, when domain name registrars send out notices to their customers about .com price increases. We actually got a reprieve last year as VeriSign didn’t increase prices. But they’re back this year, to the extent allowed: 7% for .com and 10% for .net at the wholesale level.

eNom sent a notice to its customers today with .com increases of 55 cents across the board effective July 1:

Tier / OLD Tier Pricing / New Tier Pricing
PREMIER $7.95 $8.50
VOLUME $8.95 $9.50
BASIC $9.95 $10.50
ALTERNATIVE $10.95 $11.50

The wholesale price for a .com will be $7.34 to VeriSign and $.18 to ICANN, or $7.52. Throw in overhead and domain names remain a very low margin product.

Go Daddy informed clients of the price increase a couple months ago, but I haven’t seen its new pricing.

One surefire way to save money: renew your domains before the June 30 deadline.

Has your registrar announced its new prices? Please note the change in the comments.

Domains to watch in tomorrow’s auction.

The extended auction for last week’s DOMAINfest Global power networking day in Fort Lauderdale ends tomorrow at 3:15 EDT. After looking through the list I came up with 5 extended domain auctions I think are worth a look. There were plenty of good domain names, but many of the ones I got excited about had reserves that I think are too high for investors.

CharterPlanes.com $11,770 – I’m not quite sure on this because I’m not sure if the lingo is “charter plane” (singular), “charter a plane”, “plane charter”, etc.

Cosmetician.com $3,420 – great for licensing or training program

EmployeeFeedback.com $590 – an entire category of surveying/HR company

FireAnts.com $9,420 – I think this is one of the best domains in the auction. The price is a bit higher than where it would be a no-brainer, though. If you’re not from the South you might not understand how big a deal fire ants are. My first experience with them resulted in a trip to the hospital. There are scores of companies selling services to fight the ants (lawn services, pesticides, allergists).

Kidnap.com $11,770 – at first glance it might be difficult to see what to do with this domain. It would be good for a kidnapping insurance company, but is also somewhat brandable for a game.

Some of the domains I picked for the live auction didn’t sell. Now that I know the actual reserves for them, here are the ones I think are still worth a look.

Collapsed.com $2,000 – valuable if you have a site idea, possible gaming domain.

Petroleum.net $5,770 – as I stated before, it’s a bit rich for a .net. But oil is rich, too.

Bidding takes place online here.

Registry nixes domain trade-in plans — for now.

Last month VeriSign submitted an evaluation request to ICANN for a so-called “Domain Name Exchange”. VeriSign has withdrawn the request according to the evaluation status on ICANN’s web site.

The service would basically allow domain name registrars to return unused domain names in exchange for others. This would be ideal for companies that sell web packages for less than a year at a time. For example, a web host might offer a monthly package that includes a domain name. If the customer cancels after a month, the web host is stuck with the domain for which it already pre-paid for a year.

In its initial request VeriSign noted that some members of the Intellectual Property Constituency might be concerned about how the service could be gamed into a sort of domain name tasting service.

Although it’s unclear why VeriSign withdrew the request, it could be that the timing was untenable given current intellectual property concerns with new top level domain names.

The definition of a cash cow.

Just how valuable is VeriSign’s monopoly on .com and .net domain name registrations? With rumors that the company is seeking a buyer for its security group, leaving it basically with just registry services, the monopoly is being thrust back into the spotlight.

At latest count there are roughly 87 million .com domains registered and 13 million .net domains. As of July 1, the price VeriSign charges on .com will be $7.34 and .net to $4.65. Do the math:

.Com domain base x $7.34 = $640 million
.Net domain base x $4.65 = $60 million

The base of domains changes from month-to-month thanks to new registrations and expirations. But there’s a lot of money in this monopoly. For the right to run these registries, VeriSign paid $18 million to ICANN for the non-profit’s 2010 financial year for .com and 75 cents for each .net transaction.

To put the value of this in perspective, Trefis has an interesting modeling tool. You can change the trendline of what you think will happen to overall domain registrations (not just .com and .net) and see what this would (supposedly) do to VeriSign’s stock price.

There are two main threats to VeriSign’s monopoly. The first is that .com will be forced to be put out to competitive bid. There’s a lawsuit pending to try to make .com lower its prices (retroactively) to what they would have been had .com been put out to competitive bid. A competitive bid would likely drive the .com price down to anywhere from $2.00 to $4.00 per year.

Second — albeit a stretch — is a proposal circulating to share the duties of back end registry services. This would create true competition at the registry level, which was one of the requirements of ICANN in the Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. government. ICANN interpreted that to mean introducing new TLDs. But the real solution was probably much simpler.

Company shuts down web site of specialized “shot cup” seller.

You can say goodbye to Jager Bomb Shot Cups. Well, at least you’ll no longer be able to buy them at Jager-Bomb.com.

Mast-Jaegermeister AG, known for its strong liqueur, filed a complaint against the owner of Jager-Bomb.com with National Arbitration Forum. As it turns out, Jaegermesiter has trademarks for the term “Jager Bomb”.

As early as 2002, consumers began to mix a cocktail drink called the Jager Bomb by combining Jagermeister and Red Bull. Complainant subsequently filed trademark registrations with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) and holds numerous trademark registrations for the JAGER BOMB mark…

The respondent, John Marzlak, registered the domain name in 2004. Marzlak didn’t respond to the complaint.

So far Jaegermeister has not filed a complaint against the owner of JagerBomb.com (no hyphen), which just leads to a “coming soon” page. The company has filed and won two previous UDRP cases for Jagermeisterpoker.com and Jagermeistered.com.