Want to be the first ISP in town to offer every country code domain available, more than 211 different domains? It's a niche market, and it's one that 1GlobalPlace is serving handily, with a broad range of affiliate and partner programs including a full-featured API.

by Jeff Goldman [July 25, 2001]

Want to be the first ISP in town to offer every country code domain available, more than 211 different domains? It's a niche market, and it's one that 1GlobalPlace is serving handily, with a broad range of affiliate and partner programs including a full-featured API.

1GlobalPlace is now a solid international player, but it had the humblest of beginnings just three years ago. CEO Marc Holtenhoff founded 1GlobalPlace back in 1998 as an extension of his Masters thesis for the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, and what followed was something of an entrepreneur's dream.

"I took the thesis and turned it into a business plan," Holtenhoff said. "It was a grassroots, out-of-mom's-house kind of thing. I started with very little seed capital—less than $10,000—and grew the company through internal cash flow to about twenty or so people. Then we raised some institutional money from Reuters and from a VC in Germany called TFG, we opened an office in Europe, and we've continued to develop product and grow the company since then."

Holtenhoff says the idea for the company came from the experiences he had while studying in Denmark. He noticed that people in Europe were using local extensions rather than gTLDs, but that nobody in the United States seemed to be aware of anything other than .com.

He recalls that starting out was difficult, mostly because of the challenge of impressing upon US businesses the importance of the domains. "There was a huge education process involved," he said. "It's only in the last six or nine months that we've seen some significant, mainstream awareness that there is something other than .com."

Diverse options
1GlobalPlace offers four distinct partner programs: three of the programs deal with 1GlobalPlace's registration business, while the fourth enables an ISP to resell key aspects of the company's enterprise-level Corporate Services offering.

The most basic program offered is the Affiliate Program, administered by Commission Junction. Affiliates simply place a banner on their site, which clicks through to 1GlobalPlace where they then receive a commission for each domain registered. Commissions range from $7.50 to $500.00, depending on the price of the domain.

The next level is the Alliance Partner Program, which is essentially a co-branded registration offering. A link on the partner's site takes a customer to a separate page, branded for the partner, but which also reads "Powered by 1GlobalPlace." Pricing is similar to the Affiliate Program, with the partner receiving a commission for each domain registered.

The Alliance Partner Program is by far the best solution for ISPs seeking a balance between functionality and ease of implementation. Holtenhoff notes that most ISPs can sign up for the system in the space of five minutes, then leave the rest of the work to 1GlobalPlace. "It completely outsources the whole procurement, registration and search to us, but they get commissions on the orders," he said.

A number of ICANN-accredited registrars are currently partnered with 1GlobalPlace through the Alliance Partner Program, including eNom, Inc., Dotster, and Parava Networks.

The recently announced Business Partner Program allows partners to use either e-mail templates or an XML-based API to privately label the entire registration process, enabling their customers to register more than 211 different domains in 125 countries. The API includes a real-time search engine to check availability in each foreign jurisdiction, and can be set up to include not only gTLDs as well, but all new TLDs as they're released.

One key advantage of the Business Partner API is the ability to resell the domains and manage key data at different levels. "We've provided the technology with a multi-tier structure for them to extract their data from our database at the end user level—whether that's one, two, three, four, or five levels away," Holtenhoff said. "It allows them to do management for their end clients, and that's one of the limitations of a lot of the APIs on the marketplace: it's great between the API customer and the API vendor, but what happens if you're the reseller and you have end customers who want to do their own management? So we've provided a platform that allows them to provide management and online reporting tools as well."

There's no volume minimum or setup fee for the Alliance or Affiliate programs, but the Business Partner Program does require a significant licensing fee-depending on the client, the fee averages around $3000 a month. Bulk pricing for the Business Partner Program varies according to volume.

Not just a registrar
The fourth partner program extends into a different area of 1GlobalPlace's offering. Ultimately, the company really comprises two businesses, a domain registrar and a professional services company. Because of the complexity of the global domain market, Holtenhoff explains, it's not enough to simply let customers buy domains.

"There are 248 country code prefixes," he said. "On any given day, around 200 or so are actively accepting registrations. This changes; it's a very dynamic market. Some extensions close down for a couple of months, then they come back and they've changed ownership. Of those 200 or so active country code domains, half are unrestricted, but the other 110 or so have various restrictions."

"They will require a local tax ID number; a local trademark; a local address; a local contact that they verify; and in some cases, you actually have to host your domain name on a server that's physically in that country. And many countries limit the number of domain names you can have: one to a tax ID number, five to a tax ID number, one per company. There's a lot of obstacles in the way."

In order to help customers deal with the complexities involved, 1GlobalPlace's Corporate Services arm works to overcome any obstacles to international domain management. They have their own contacts in a number of different locations worldwide, and if that isn't sufficient to resolve any conflicts, they'll work with the customer to set up the necessary infrastructure-and they'll continue to manage those requirements on an ongoing basis as well.

This kind of offering is aimed at enterprise clients working directly with 1GlobalPlace—but for an ISP that has a larger client for which they're managing an international portfolio of domains, 1GlobalPlace does offer a partner program specifically targeted at enterprise services.

The Enterprise Reseller Program gives the reseller access to 1GlobalPlace's enterprise management software, called CAMP (Corporate Asset Management Program). The software enables administration of international domains on a large scale, aiding in the management of each country's specific requirements.

"Let's say you have a large ISP that manages all of Proctor & Gamble's domain names," Holtenhoff said. "They want to set up some type of structure that will allow not only reporting but the ability to modify the assets. This is something that we market directly to corporate clients, but it's also for people who have large corporate clients with these types of needs."

Early bird early on
Holtenhoff is confident that 1GlobalPlace's early arrival to market will continue to stand it in good stead in the future-and he may well be right: the challenges of the international market do make 1GlobalPlace's three-year lead an important one.

"If you look at the big players like the VeriSigns of the world, they currently offer about 30 countries or so," Holtenhoff said. "They're starting to get into it, but they're late to the ccTLD game. It's not just a matter of putting it up there: there's a lot of complexities when you get into foreign jurisdictions."

In terms of additional services, Holtenhoff believes that caution is best. 1GlobalPlace doesn't currently promote multilingual domains-or any other service that's still in flux. "We're waiting for a standard," he said. "Most of the multilingual domains aren't resolving. For our clients who ask us to, of course we can do it, but we won't promote it or endorse it until we see there's a standard."

The niche that Holtenhoff has found for himself is strong; four of the top eight ICANN-accredited registrars outsource their ccTLD registration to 1GlobalPlace. "People look to VeriSign and Register.com as the default, because they're the big players with the most mindshare," he said. "But they haven't met the market demands as well as we have, and we've been able to carve out a niche part of the business."

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Related articles:
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	[May 25, 2001]	VeriSign Shuts Down TLD List
	[May 11, 2001]	ICANN Proposed Budget Leaked on the Web
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