Verisign, the company responsible for administering .COM and .NET domain names, announced earlier this year that retail prices for these domain name extensions would increase by 7% January 15, 2012. Thus, the wholesale price of a .COM will increase from $7.34 to $7.85, while the wholesale price of .NET will go from $4.65 to $5.11.

For consumers, this means that the domain names registrars will also increase their prices to maintain their profit margin. If you have one or more domain names that will expire soon, it would be advantageous to renew before January 15 to take advantage of lower prices.

Earlier this week, GoDaddy emailed its existing customers urging them to take advantage of their discounted prices before the new year.

Since the agreement six years ago between ICANN and Verisign, granting the latter the management of .COM and .NET domain extensions, the prices of .COMs have increased by $1.86. It’s not so bad when you only have one or a few domain names, if you have more, it might hurt a little more if you renew them all at once!