Hello, I'm new to the forums and thinking about registering my own domain.I've recently seen a lot of .nu s and had a few questions about them.

Why are they so much more expensive then .com/.net/etc?

I've noticed most you have to register for 2 years instead of 1, why?

Is there a major difference between them and .com/.net?

Where would be a pretty cheap place to register one?

I did a quick search on the forums, but didn't get any results so if this has already been discussed just a simple link will work. :)

Thanks in advance,
Christina

Are you living in Niue? If no - forget about this BS!

They are so much more expensive because the money you use to pay for the domain, helps the Niue Islands in a way *I think*.

I have one .nu domain and I registered it at Netrillium.com (http://netrillium.com).

As a general rule (there are some exceptions, such as .uk) country code domains are more expensive than global domains because they serve a smaller market and the overheads per domain are higher.

The Niue registry is trying to target a worldwide market (with some success, especially in Scandinavia), so its prices are actually lower than those of many other small-island TLDs that only target their own internal markets.

FYI - The .nu domain has been successful in Scandinavia mainly because "nu" means "now" there. (At least in Swedish, and I think Norwegian as well. Not sure about Danish.)

As for the difference between .nu and .com/.org, etc... Like Lubeca said: .nu is a country-code top-level domain while .com/.org/.net (etc) are generic top-level domains.

(If you're curious about the details, here is a good place to start: http://icann.org/cctlds/.)

Thanks for all the info everyone! :)