.co .CO - The Discussion, Showcase and Sales Report Thread

[ZOX]

Well, it seems like Colombia will be releasing .CO to the internet market:
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http://www.mincomunicaciones.gov.co...ge=./mods/contenido/noticia_user_view&id=1043
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This could truly be a big competitor to .COM (especially being a "typo").
I would say with proper guidance .CO could REALLY have a bright future!
...
Let me know your thoughts please.

 

[Dave]

No biggie

What was the reserve? Seems like it should sell between $750 and $1500 IMO.

$190 was the reserve and $200 is the current highest bid.

 

[courlsale]

Posted related question in appraisals earlier and have received some good feedback/insights from that (see synopsis after the list of names). Would appreciate any thoughts on potential end-users other than the obvious (i.e., regional tourism bodies, etc.) for the following group of .COs. Other insights also welcome:

~120 NZ GEO .COs including these large cities and regions (covering approx. 90%-95% of NZ pop.).

AUCKLAND.CO
WELLINGTON.CO
CHRISTCHURCH.CO
DUNEDIN.CO
HASTINGS.CO
INVERCARGILL.CO
NAPIER.CO
NELSON.CO
QUEENSTOWN.CO
BAYOFPLENTY.CO
CANTERBURY.CO
EASTCOAST.CO
FIORDLAND.CO
GISBORNE.CO
MANAWATU.CO
MARLBOROUGH.CO
NEWPLYMOUTH.CO
NORTHLAND.CO
OTAGO.CO
SOUTHLAND.CO
TARANAKI.CO
TASMAN.CO
WAIKATO.CO
WAIRARAPA.CO
WANGANUI.CO
WESTCOAST.CO

General consensus on appraisals forum is to keep the best (core, i.e., above) and sell the rest before renewal - theory is value prop as a huge group will be hard to sell (may not even exist). Feel free to check out appraisals post.

Appreciate the feedback.

 

[freedom30]

Any of you .co lovers think Cherry.co is nice? I backordered it along with 5 other bidders so I now have a chance to bid in the auction. How much do any of you think its worth? Is it worth me bidding? Does anyone want me to bid on their behalf?

...cherry is nice...yeah.

Depends on usage. I would think a site for retro cars and car parts but that's just me...

 

[DU]

No biggie

What was the reserve? Seems like it should sell between $750 and $1500 IMO.

Why? It sold at Sedo 5 months ago for $160 and it's just *another* domainer auction.

 

[trelgor]

Nice ad. Hmm, from a blog that gets paid by the .co registry.

Let's see, who's heard of any of these big .co startups? Show of hands.

Let's see if anyone has heard of a "big startup". At that point, they aren't. That's why they are "startups".

 

[Keith]

Why? It sold at Sedo 5 months ago for $160 and it's just *another* domainer auction.

Exactly...a "domainer" auction. Namejet and godaddy auctions have a funny way of ending on the high side. I don't really believe it's worth what I quoted

 

[the_poet]

Interesting results for .CO on Alexa

 

[bmugford]

Interesting results for .CO on Alexa

The numbers across the board are not very impressive.

Another way to look at this -

1362 of Top 1M Alexa sites use .CO, or 1 in 734.

All the extensions, outside .INFO, only add up to about 10K total, or 1 in 100 Alexa sites.

Brad

 

[the_poet]

@Brad

Yes, of course they're nothing amazing from an absolute point of view, but for a new TLD (it's the youngest), they look promising IMO. In order to include TLD's age, it's more interesting to look at the table sorting it by Domains/Months.

 

[emjohn]

"Impressive" is a relative term. Not impressive compared to what? .com? This is a comparison chart for newer TLDs.

The numbers across the board are not very impressive.

Another way to look at this -

1362 of Top 1M Alexa sites use .CO, or 1 in 734.

All the extensions, outside .INFO, only add up to about 10K total, or 1 in 100 Alexa sites.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

"Impressive" is a relative term. Not impressive compared to what? .com? This is a comparison chart for newer TLDs.

Forgot .COM, the .CO numbers are not even that impressive compared to .BIZ

The numbers across the board illustrate how much the Big 3 (COM/NET/ORG) + popular ccTLD dominate in awareness and usage.

Brad

 

[emjohn]

Once again that is relative. Feel free to make that comparison. But it has nothing to do with new TLDs.

Forgot .COM, the .CO numbers are not even that impressive compared to .BIZ

The numbers across the board illustrate how much the Big 3 (COM/NET/ORG) + popular ccTLD dominate in awareness and usage.

Brad

 

[the_poet]

Forgot .COM, the .CO numbers are not even that impressive compared to .BIZ

For a 10-year-old gTLD (not a repurposed ccTLD), I'd say .BIZ has done pretty poorly, wouldn't compare it to .CO or .ME

 

[rusty1000]

Not having reviewed the actual .co domains in the Alexa ranking analysis, my guess is that .co has benefited from being a popular extension for shortcut domains. I've noticed many large sites redirecting traffic from social media through a .co. So, though you could use pretty much any extension , .co is close to .com and has been marketed by the registry as a shortcut, and thus it's likely seeing a boost by this type of use. This is likely why it's domains/month seems high.

 

[IncomeBooster]

Beside all these numbers that don't look very impressive for the new TLDs (for .me and .co in the first place), I think that choosing .me or .co domain depends on the niche of the particular project. If startup is targeting people who are familiar with technology and online business than such domain is more likely to become accepted and popular. On the other hand, if project is targeting audience who are not familiar with online business, than having a com,net,org domain is a big plus (about.me is exception that proves the rule)

 

[jmcc]

The last web survey of .co I did earlier this year did not show any real development in the ccTLD. Over the last few weeks I was even wondering if I should suspend coverage of the ccTLD. In real terms, .me has a far clearer value proposition in that it is the ultimate personalised domain. The .co ccTLD, while developing slowly, has yet to gain that instant affiliation with people. Over the last month, I've built an Irish search engine with a 2 million page coverage. The results are dominated by .ie (Irish ccTLD) and .com results. In real terms, there are only 729 identified Irish hosted .co domains and most of these are parked. That's 729 out of about 392K.The old rule of .com = global and .ccTLD = local still dominates the market and no amount of fanboyism is going to change that.

Regards...jmcc

 

[gourdy]

There are 3 .co domains selling on Sedo with at least 1 bid and I own simular names close to those or even shorter. I know some of the pros avoid sedo but is it worth buying a featured listing in hopes of getting noticed by those specific bidders? Noob to this.

 

[elmoney]

sold occo.co for $45 at Bido

 

[the_poet]

@jmcc could you provide the number of registrations in the namespace?

 

[jmcc]

@jmcc could you provide the number of registrations in the namespace?

In the Irish domain space on Irish hosters? These are the 01 May 2012 figures for the Irish market.

IE: 178,813
COM: 155,157
NET: 15,131
ORG: 9,100
BIZ: 2,864
INFO: 3,195
MOBI: 1,125
ASIA: 85
US: 347
CO.UK: 17,118 (identified)
EU: 8,946 (identified)
DE: 173 (identified)
ES: 412 (identified)
FR: 102 (identified)
CO: 720 (identified)

COInternet has not published a domain count but was at around 1 million domains last year. The Top 50 .co hosters for 01 April 2012 (based on 670,205 .co active domains tracked) is here http://www.hosterstats.com/Top50-webhosters-co.php

Godaddy is the main hoster for .co domains but that's to be expected as the primary market for .co is the USA and Canada. There is coverage of other markets (Europe other than Germany and the UK) but it really has only started to branch out into these markets. The ccTLD has a lot of growing to do yet but the critical factor in any TLD's growth is development and use. Most ccTLDs (ones that are successful) have a high rate of development and usage that's often over 30% of registered domains being used for websites. This means that the registrants are actively using the domains for e-mail and developing websites. Domaining in a healthy TLD is only part of the bigger picture. Most of the growth will be driven by usage by small businesses - the Mom and Pop stores. PPC will also make an appearance but in a healthy TLD, the PPC is often partially transitional (where domains are parked on PPC until the websites are developed) rather than people buying domains purely for PPC and never developing them. The .co is still relatively young in domain market terms but while the million plus registrations sounds impressive, it is a global figure. The real contest is in the country level markets where the axis of all of these markets is the .com/.ccTLD core. This pair of TLDs will account for over 80% of the market in most countries and it is something that .co and most new gTLDs will not be able to beat. What worries me about .co ccTLD is that it is now approaching a critical decision time for many registrants where they will have to make the decision to renew or drop the .co domains they've held for the last few years. While there have been some high-value sales, much of the activity seems to be domainers selling to other domainers. That's fine for a Year 1 market or even a Year 2 market but there needs to be usage and development to sustain the value of the TLD for domaining. That usage and development starts at the bottom and works up. It is the small businesses and individual developers that create value and confidence in a TLD for the end-user. The big companies make for nice press releases but most people ignore them because most big companies are active in every TLD but their primary brand identity is often .com or a localised .ccTLD version of the brand. The .co, in trying to target startups is using a clever way to develop a profile but it is betting on some of these startups becoming the next Facebook. But even that does not translate to small business usage of the TLD.

Regards...jmcc

 

[rusty1000]

jmcc is right. Massive two year drops will start hitting this summer. The registry told domainers to take a hike and are now giving free domains to high schoolers. Doesn't look good.

 

[the_poet]

Massive two year drops will start hitting this summer.

Last year this thread was full of similar posts, there were actually much more than this year

Things will be exactly the same as 2011: junk will be dropped while valuable domains will be renewed (as usual).

 

[rusty1000]

Last year this thread was full of similar posts, there were actually much more than this year

Things will be exactly the same as 2011: junk will be dropped while valuable domains will be renewed (as usual).

ha, you're right, it was.

As for the junk. Most holding what they believe is gold are likely holding turds.

 

[bmugford]

Last year this thread was full of similar posts, there were actually much more than this year

Things will be exactly the same as 2011: junk will be dropped while valuable domains will be renewed (as usual).

I thought I read that normally year 2 and year 3 have a bigger exodus.

There are more people ready to renew that mediocre domain in year 1 than in year 2 or 3.

Considering .CO has very limited actual usage, that means the vast majority of domains are held for resale.

There are not even 1M sellable terms in an alternate extension like this. There is still a lot of crap out there to be dropped.

Are new registrations going to outpace the drops? We will see.

Brad

 

[the_poet]

I thought I read that normally year 2 and year 3 have a bigger exodus.

There are more people ready to renew that mediocre domain in year 1 than in year 2 or 3.

Considering .CO has very limited actual usage, that means the vast majority of domains are held for resale.

There are not even 1M sellable terms in an alternate extension like this. There is still a lot of crap out there to be dropped.

Are new registrations going to outpace the drops? We will see.

Brad

What I believe is that, this summer, a big factor will be played by the registration fee. Unlike summer 2011, when reg fee was $20-$25, this year GoDaddy is selling new registrations for as low as $7.99, so I'm sure many low quality domains will be dropped and re-registered.