co.com

[Paul123]

Hi everyone.

Just interested on your thoughts about the fairly new co.com ?

Do you think it will take off over time or be a non runner ?

Best,
Paul

 

[hawkeye]

..Have you seen any sales ? End user adoption ? Getting traction somewhere ?
...

Not a fan of this extension, though admittedly I own 2, but Googleing - site:.co.com does return quite a few websites.

 

[Paul123]

First off thanks for your replies. I only joined the forum yesterday and already find the advise here invaluable.

Now I would like to throw this into the pot.

Mobile.co.com was sold for $25K. Since the .co.com domains became available for anyone to register in July 2015, there have been 121,000 registrations.

Is this a good omen or just standard for the industry ?

Best,
Paul

 

[Kate]

Mobile.co.com was sold for $25K.

Sales happen in pretty much any extension.
A fluke does not make a market.

What are the odds you will be making a sale like that ? They are very remote at best. Sales like these may sound impressive (even when they are legit...) but they are not representative at all.
Hint: there is a new phenomenon with so-called new extensions (again, .co.com is a subdomain and not a fully-fledge extension), whereby the registries have become the new domainers. Most of the time they are the only ones that are making sales.

As a buyer you are the end of the food chain usually. These names just can't be flipped easily.

Since the .co.com domains became available for anyone to register in July 2015, there have been 121,000 registrations.

The volume of registrations is not the sole measure of value. The health of an extension also relates to the proportion of developed domains.
Some registries are even stuffing their zones to artificially inflate the figures (examples: .xyz or .xxx).

Should we invest .asia .tel .mobi ? After all, these extensions have higher registration counts. But the raw figures alone don't tell the whole story.
There are so many extensions and pseudo-extensions to choose from, that a thing like .co.com should stand at the bottom at the list.

 

[Name Trader]

I think a .co.com domain would make for a reasonable domain name for a website. surname.co.com for example would be a nice domain for doing business from, if your surname is taken in most other extensions and has multiple registrations in .com (like mine). but it'll cost you about $40/year to use it. It probably has extremely limited resale value. You will also lose traffic to typos.

Also, being a third level domain, you are prone to the vagaries of the owner of the second level domain, and you are paying a premium price for these priviledges

I'd probably still prefer an alternative .com though. I own the "e" & "i" prefixes of my surname.com It's the best I could do. Even for one of these I had to wait for the 10yr registration to expire Every other short version of my surname, such as surnameco.com et al, were taken, and mostly in use.

 

[Paul123]

Thanks everyone for your input.

What do you think of the .io compared to .co.com ? Better or worse ?

One other thing - is it worth investing in LLL .io's ???

Best,
Paul

 

[Kate]

It's like comparing cancer to ebola or whatever... It's best to focus on real extensions, where there is at least a chance of making some money.

 

[Name Trader]

Personally I would never invest in .io's, and I think the new tech startup companies which have chosen an .io address are not optimizing their web addressing options.

 

[Paul123]

Thanks for the advise. I clocked a 3 letter IO domain which is up for grabs. It seems decent enough and costs $99. Not linked to a brand but is used to describe a type of person. Could be useful for a small business - if I could flip it and get a few quid more than I paid it would do me. The advice here is not to bother or take a punt ?

Best,
Paul

 

[Kate]

I could be wrong, but I think that if some startups are using .io it's not just for the 'geekness': it's because they know they can find good keywords available for regfee.
The fact that they would register a .io that, doesn't mean they will buy a .io from somebody, at an inflated price. If you see what I mean.
The above advice applies to any oddball extension.
You know what they say: it's already hard enough to sell good .com.

 

[Name Trader]

@Paul123 I agree with @sdsinc. I don't see an aftermarket in .io domains. YMMV.

 

[Paul123]

Thanks for your advise. I am sure you are both right although checking out the .io's on Flippa they all seems to be selling for a profit ?

Best,
Paul

 

[Name Trader]

Well heck, if it's so easy go and register a few domains and then tell us what you sold them for on flippa. It depends about your attitude to perceived risk, imho.

 

[towhidzaman]

There are reasons why .io domains have recently become so popular with businesses, individuals, and shrewd domain investors...

They're short, sound good, and .io domains perform well in Google's search results. The reason for this is because they've been added to the geotargetable domains list.

Microsoft bought Doc.io for $24,600 and Elasticsearch just bought es.io for $30,000. groups.io and mega.io both just sold a few months ago for $10,000 each.

And Many of the companies which use .io also have venture capital funding, so they're likely to be the future large and influential companies on the web. As an example:

Tuition.io raised $6 million.
Keen IO raised $2.35 million
Intercom raised $6 million
Greenhouse raise $2.7 million
And many more

But it's not only startups that are getting in on the act. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo also have .io domains.

Microsoft snapped up Doc.io for $24,600. Google owns Coupons.io, Yahoo owns Player.io, and Disney owns go.io, amongst others.

Private sales are also happening direct to companies. Like with App.io when they rebranded to a .io domain.

Even the US government is happy to use .io domains.

Blog posts have been written on the new-found popularity of .io domains. Such as this post: The Rise of .io Domain Names for APIs. And this: Artisanal Websites: The rise of .io domains for well crafted web services

Wikipedia also notes: ".io domains are popular with new startup companies."

So hey, as long as you can make money, why not buy and flip them. It sure does working for a lot of people

 

[wcpthree]

It just seems like the market is extremely flooded. Hence, .sucks...

 

[DigitalDeepak.com]

Someone would have to pay me to own a .co.com. Yuk!