UK : reducing portfolio costs

[WebWord]

Ok , nominet domain GOVT REGISTRY sells domains like .co.uk , and .uk ( i believe for £70 ) BUT
resellers such as 123REG, uk2 etc negotiate BULK deals for millions of purchases and pass on the savings so we could all buy domains for £3/4/5 per year etc

Prices are rising in march though to minimum of £6.99 + vat - as i understand things this is lowest price you will ever be able to buy a domain for in future per year
I have 80 .co.uk domains , eventually in next few years i will need to buy the .uk equivalents

So thats 160 domains x £6.99 ... thats £1120 a year ...arrrghhhhhhh

Any thoughts on how costs can be reduced , i like to plan ahead ?

can you run your own DNS server , is it hard ? any free DNS servers etc ? i might sound like i know what im talking about , but a LITTLE knowledge can sometimes be dangerous :- would / can this save money

[Andy Langton]

I'm not sure that your information is completely accurate.

The wholesale price of a .uk is going to increase to £3.75 (it's nowhere near £70):

[nominet.uk...]

There's no "fixed" price of £6.99 as far as I'm aware.

You might be interested in this petition, incidentally, and there's further information about the price rises also:

[egm.uk...]

[RedBar]

One of my UK registrars has just informed me today an increase of about USD 3.50 per annum from March 1st however they also advise that it is possible to pre-pay for 10 years at the old price for new and renewals by 29th February.

My new UK full cost will be USD 10.90 or a best reseller rate of USD 6.54

I don't have that many UKs plus it's a 100% tax deductible expense therefore I'm not particularly concerned.

[engine]

WebWord, if you have a whole stack of them and they are not doing anything to earn you money, why keep them? Even if the price hasn't gone up, you're still paying for 160 domains, do do what? If they are doing something, then, as Redbar says, it's a tax-deductible expense.