Robin Majumdar 2.0

It’s official: GoDaddy to offer .ca domain name registration – GoDaddy Canada office in Ontario is open.

The news was somewhat buried in a GoDaddy press release announcing their sponsorship of Ron Fellows in the #5 GoDaddy NASCAR race vehicle…

I like verbatim quotes, so here goes:

The Go Daddy Group, Inc. is leveraging the sponsorship to officially announce entry into the Canadian market with its new subsidiary, Go Daddy Domains Canada. While Go Daddy already counts some of its 5.5 million customers in Canada, it’s working to serve even more. Go Daddy Domains Canada recently opened its office in Ontario, Canada. It is a certified .CA registrar and by race time, hopes to be offering customers .CA domain names.

So, what does this mean? Well, GoDaddy is now CIRA-certified and you will soon see a non-stop stream of email and web promotions announcing their ubiquitous 10-15-25% coupon code promotions for .ca domains.

I’m intrigued how much influence Adam Dicker, who is VP of the GoDaddy TDNAM domain name aftermarket division had in this foray into the burgeoning Canadian domaining marketplace. Adam is highly respected Canadian domainer most well-known for his DNForum.com domainer site. He was also recently involved in a pretty well-publicized scandal when he bid on domains listed in the TDNAM marketplace.

Is this good for .ca domain holders? I think so – GoDaddy will add some serious exposure for .ca domains and provide for some additional registrar competition.

The Canadian in me wants to support the real Canadian registrars though; MyID.ca, Namespro.ca and the others…

eBay Canada is having another promotion offering eBay listings for 5 cents today, April 9th, for items listed on eBay Canada only. Another twist this time around is that in order to get the $0.05 listing rate, you must specify a shipping price for your item. Mind you, you should always list a shipping price; eBay has done studies that show the bid rate is much lower when an item doesn’t have shipping specified.

The offer expires at 02:59:59 ET on Thursday, April 10, 2008 - yes we Canadians get 3 hours extra because eBay time is based on the West Coast Pacific Time zone.

The usual exclusions (motor vehicles, real estate) apply. This is a nice opportunity to save up to $5.60 in listing fees depending on the initial auction price you set!

Well, just a quick heads up if you have a .us domain name to renew; GoDaddy has a coupon code for .US renewals (or new .US registrations) that allows you to get it for $6.79 instead of the usual $9.99 and even the currently discounted .US renewal price of $7.99.

Just be sure to enter CJCBENTLD as the promo code in your GD shopping cart before checking out.

We used this for a .us domain name that had actually been *cancelled* (gasp) because it had fallen through our domain name auto-renewal system! Yes, it is possible to renew cancelled domain names at GoDaddy, but only if you’re quick about it. If you don’t do it, then it goes into RGP and renewing it manually through GoDaddy customer support involves a far heftier fee… more on that in another article.

Well, an early rise this morning and I spotted a few good GoDaddy promo code coupons for saving on domain name registration and renewals.

HASH3, cjctechb69 and oyh3 are still good promo codes for $6.95 (+ 0.20 ICANN fee) registrations and renewals of .com domains.

Well, there are all sorts of GoDaddy domain name registration codes that are always floating around, but they’re often either very restrictive (only new .com registrations) or not very generous… err, 5% - gee thanks and no thanks.

But now there is a working 30% discount code for ALL .com registrations (it makes them $6.99!) and it works for new .com domain registrations, .com domain transfers to GoDaddy from other registrars, and .com domain renewals. Is that clear enough?

Details :

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