Dynadot

analysis A Strong 2020 So Far In The .CO Extension

Spaceship Spaceship
Anecdotally, it seems that 2020 has been stronger than normal in .co sales. There are regular sales over $1000 reported on NameBio, sometimes multiple in the same day. I take a look at how .co has done compared to the past ten years, to see if this really is a stronger than normal year. I also look at the parameters of .co names selling for $1000 or more this year.


.CO Sales By Year

I first looked at the number of NameBio-reported .co domain name sales by year for a ten year period. For 2020, since we were at the 297th day of year on the date, Oct 24, 2020, I accessed the data, I extrapolated, assuming the rate will stay the same in the remaining two months. It turns out that even without extrapolation there have been more .co sales in 2020 than any year except 2016.

YearNumber_CO.png


Sales Volume By Year

Because NameBio is a mix of wholesale and retail domain transactions, a more useful measure than the number of sales is the sales volume. That data is plotted below. Again 2020 is strong in sales dollar volume in .co, although the changes from year to year are not dramatic.

DollarVolumeYearCO.png


What About 2020 .CO Sales Prices?

Interestingly, the average prices vary quite extensively, and 2016, which had the highest number of .co sales at 1699, and one of the highest sales volumes at about $1.3 million, also had the lowest average sales price of $777. That probably suggests that domainer acquisitions in .co were higher than normal in 2016.

The average .co price in 2020 is $1372, down somewhat from the previous two years when the average was $2622 in 2019 and $2468 in 2018, but higher than the average prices in the three prior years. Of course, average prices can be strongly influenced by a few high-value sales.

I looked at how the 2020 .co sales prices were distributed in the following graph. While some high-value sales happen, the majority of sales are in the hundreds of dollars range. Many of these may be acquisitions by domain investors, but I think there are a significant number of end-user sales in .co at these levels. There were 21 .co sales above $10,000 this year, and 51 sales above $5000.

Price_CO.png


Readers may find it interesting to compare these sales prices with the asking prices for .co that I covered in last week’s blog post. Keep in mind, though, that NameBio sales are a mix of wholesale and retail, so the relationship is not simple.

If we look all-time, rather than just 2020, there have been 18 .co sales at prices of $50,000 plus, although only 3 at $100,000 or more.


Top .CO Sales So Far In 2020

Here is a list of the 2020 .co sales above $10,000, as of Oct 24.
  • dance $58,000
  • upper $35,000
  • routine $31,000
  • circa $28,000
  • offices $22,467
  • declare $22,000
  • five $20,900
  • wholesome $17,500
  • CSA $15,692
  • medallion $15,000
  • period $15,000
  • conjure $14,500
  • IZI $14,292
  • founders $13,000
  • ruby $12,500
  • staircase $11,500
  • wings $10,690
  • NFQ $10,000
  • layer $10,000

How Long Are .CO Names That Sold For $1000 Or More?


I looked in more detail at the .co domain names that sold for $1000 or more in 2020. Supposedly at that price point the vast majority are retail sales to end users. In terms of length, the vast majority of these sales were from 3 to 9 letters long.

Length_CO.png


Interestingly, within that range, the average price did not vary significantly with domain length until 10 characters or more. Note these are average prices only for the sales at prices of $1000 or more.
  • 3 letters, $5051
  • 4 letters, $4232
  • 5 letters, $6344
  • 6 letters, $3585
  • 7 letters, $5364
  • 8 letters, $3800
  • 9 letters, $6067
For 10, 11 and 12 characters the numbers are tiny, but average prices were less than $2000.


What Type Of .CO Names Sell?

Here are some other features I noted for .co domain names that sold for $1000 or more in 2020.
  • Of the 168 names with length 4 characters or more, about 17% were plural.
  • None of the names included a hyphen.
  • Just 2 of the names were alphanumeric, 123hyphens and fitness360.
  • None were numeric.
  • While most were English language, there were a number of French names such as fleurand chateau, and multiple Spanish names including couture, kinogo and farmacy. German words include klick and regen, while katapult is a word in several languages including Dutch.
  • There were not many two word names that sold above $1000, but a few. Among the higher value two word sales were PopKey $6666, OneClick $5000 and SewingMachine $4330.
  • No particular sector seemed to dominate. There were a few Cannabis/CBD names, such as kush and WeedHub, but not a many. Nor did technology, or cryptocurrency, education or health dominate.
  • There were a handful of first or surnames that sold, such as Penelope and Glen, and a few place names such as Brooklyn.
  • I was surprised how many made-up or creative spelling words were in the list. Here are a few, but there were many others as well: microtek, tagg, agro, starr, and xplor.
  • While many sales were very common words, less common words also occasionally sell for good amounts. For example, Nikul Sanghvi of hypernames sold syzygy.co for $4750. It is an astronomical term, with roots back in ancient Greek, meaning three or more celestial objects in a straight line. The term does have numerous uses outside its astronomical origin, however.
  • For the English language words in the list of sales over $1000, I went through by hand and classified as noun, verb, adjective or adverb. Not surprisingly, almost 73% were nouns.
Type_CO.png


Why Is .CO As Popular As It Is?

Surveys found that 4% of 2020 startups are using a .co domain name, while 3.7% of Y-Combinator companies use .co. While those numbers are still much less than .com, .co has done better than most generic country or new extensions. Why is that?

There are undoubtedly many reasons, including the fact that .co is a shortened form of .com, although that can be a negative as well. I think another reason is that the registry has done better than most in promoting the extension. For example, there is a nice set of case studies with a great graphical interface that allows you to find businesses using the extension in any part of the world. They also have a well written and presented section on why use .co. I think other registries would do well to emulate what they are doing. Those considering an extension want to see examples of companies already using the extension.

Generally speaking, it seems to me wise, if you have decided to invest in .co at all, to mainly consider relatively short single-word, or brandable near-word, .co domain names in situations where there are numerous potential users and where the .com is either developed, or offered at a price that would be outside the budget of many users.

NamePros member Nomad91 recently announced a $10,000 sale of the domain name complex.co to a business that already had the same word in .com. It will be interesting to see if that happens regularly, as it would be a sign of increasing acceptance of the importance of the extension.

It should be kept in mind that .co is the country code extension for Colombia, so unlike an extension like .io, there is a significant population for which it is the country code.

If you want to do your own analysis, here is the full list of NameBio-recorded 2020 .co sales, while here is the list restricted to sales at $1000 or more. As the link will be updated to the current date, it is likely it will include a few additional sales to those analyzed here.

UPDATES: The list of non-English words and brandable words has been updated after information kindly provided by readers. Also the Y-Combinator percentage was adjusted to 3.7% from 3.8%.

Sincere thanks to NameBio for the incredible database that makes analyses such as this both possible and easy to do. Indeed we are fortunate to have NameBio. Thank you Michael.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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true. good here too.
but 2019 was ok too

oddly... io is looking bit less hot for me
 
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.co is on the rise for sure. Let's hope it's here to stay. Thank you for your great work @Bob Hawkes . By the way, Klick, Katapult and Regen are all german words. Will be interesting to see if .co succeeds at establishing itself with other languages a well.
 
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Excellent read, thank you.

Gives my 5G.co more hope !!

- V
 
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@Bob Hawkes ,
Thanks for sharing this one!
The numbers are very promising, and it looks like .CO is here to stay!
I can confirm that at Epik alone, we exceeded 100K new registrations within the last few months.
We run a lot of promos, because we get massive amount of requests for this extension.
We actually have a promo going on at the moment! :)
 
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@Bob Hawkes ,
Thanks for sharing this one!
The numbers are very promising, and it looks like .CO is here to stay!
I can confirm that at Epik alone, we exceeded 100K new registrations within the last few months.

That is where you should of stopped.....

The rest is, as you said promo......you have your own thread to do that....

Anyway, back on topic....very nice breakdown (again) by Bob....
 
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That is where you should of stopped.....

The rest is, as you said promo......you have your own thread to do that....

Anyway, back on topic....very nice breakdown (again) by Bob....

Nick,
I disagree here, as I've mentioned the promos that we're doing is based of the high demand of the community, which reflects the way the market is looking at the extension, and how much availability there is for names with high-value.
I think you misinterpreted my comment. You can see that I didn't add links to our promo, specifically for that reason!
Have a lovely day!
 
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Nick,
I disagree here, as I've mentioned the promos that we're doing is based of the high demand of the community, which reflects the way the market is looking at the extension, and how much availability there is for names with high-value.
I think you misinterpreted my comment. You can see that I didn't add links to our promo, specifically for that reason!
Have a lovely day!
We can agree to disagree then....

Have a good day to....
 
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Thank you very much sir for sharing the important information
 
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Thanks, @Bob Hawkes - again well-researched article. Also, there are some ccSLDs that starts with .co like .co.uk, .co.in, etc. that use .co for commercial purpose - and, it's an added advantage for .co registry.
 
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@Bob Hawkes ,
Thanks for sharing this one!
The numbers are very promising, and it looks like .CO is here to stay!
I can confirm that at Epik alone, we exceeded 100K new registrations within the last few months.
We run a lot of promos, because we get massive amount of requests for this extension.
We actually have a promo going on at the moment! :)

yea but with best co being prem...and more and more domainers jumping on co... out of those 100k new regs...a remarkably tiny percentage will sell...the rest is wasted cash... but..thanks for playing part in letting people waste bit less of it with yer promos

I think we ve basically reached point where there is nothing more left to reg... good expired co go to auctions... plus I think co registry is making more and more prem too..

honestly there was time I was looking for co promos...no more
 
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As always, a fantastic analysis @Bob Hawkes - really interesting. Thanks for the mention too.

It's cool to know that Farmacy, Klick, Regen and Katapult are also non-English words. They were bought and sold on the basis of being brandables or made-up (e.g. I registered Farmacy as a play on 'fresh food as medicine'). They were also sold to North-America based businesses, rather than European markets.

A quick correction too: syzgy.co should be syzygy.co - not an everyday word but has a great meaning.

Finally, this is great advice...

Generally speaking, it seems to me wise, if you have decided to invest in .co at all, to mainly consider relatively short single-word, or brandable near-word, .co domain names in situations where there are numerous potential users and where the .com is either developed, or offered at a price that would be outside the budget of many users.

... I would also add .IO into the mix. It is the primary alternative for .CO - if I am looking for a valuable .CO, I am also checking to see that the .IO, .NET, .ORG are not unregistered or available for cheap. In addition to those extensions, if the .AI is taken or developed, that also helps justify a higher .CO price.

Btw, you're putting together some amazing content recently - thank you :)
 
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A quick correction too: syzgy.co should be syzygy.co - not an everyday word but has a great meaning.
Thank you and I hope you won't tell my astronomical friends I spelled it wrong! I once got a Christmas card with a beautiful picture of an annular eclipse taken by the sender, and the single word syzygy on it. When I noticed your sale on NameBio I immediately recalled that. So no excuses for me spelling it wrong! I had not realized the many ways the word is used outside the astronomical community until doing a bit of research for this article. My apologies, and I was able to edit it in the article. Congratulations on so many of the great sales in .co, and thank you for all the sharing that you do with the domain community at NamePros.

Bob
 
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Another fantastic article Bob. Love reading every piece of it. I think one part could be added in detail which has been strong in sales as well and that's 3L. Nonetheless, it was great to read and I believe 2020 is going very strong for .CO domains and I've been investing heavily in this extension especially this year. I hope to share about that within this year.

Thank you!
 
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Very helpful, thanks for sharing.
 
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just out of curiosity. .. how many here have modified their strategy for co such that they now invest more to buy prem names... how are sales going for u? I assume the selection of prem co to buy slash reg is quite large?
 
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Thank you for sharing the excellent works.
 
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Proof single word domains in another extension can make you some nice cash. .com will always be king but for many end-users, it is not possible to pay millions for the .com so they opt for another extension that makes sense, I own single word domains in other extensions for my projects so I am speaking as an end-user too.

BTW, "agro" is used by gamers to say aggressive gameplay.
 
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