Some nice sales recently. But, it should be noted that if you look at who the buyers in are in the high price transactions, it's really just two individuals who are accumulating these co domains.
To quote Spock, fascinating!
If that's the case then this market is being ramped up. All domain investors have an interest in talking up the market however that does not equate to genuine interest.
Why are they paying what seem to me as outrageous prices for co domains? Who knows? And how long will they keep buying?
It depends on how deeply they've invested in the ccTLD to date.
Just thought I'd add some context to all the sales reports lest some newbie domainers begin to think that .co domains are actually generating this type of demand from end user developers.
The problem is that many newbie domainers seem to take these sales reports as being an indication of end user interest in the ccTLD. The reality is that .co will be lucky if it has between 15% and 20% development in the first year. At the moment, it would not be unthinkable that circa 50% of .co Landrush registrations are parked on PPC and are not developed.
I have serious doubts that these purchases will be profitable but I guess we'll see, I could be wrong.
It could take as long as five years before much of the junk washes out of .co ccTLD and a developed market and genuine secondary market (as opposed to domainers selling to each other) evolves.
Regards...jmcc
---------- Post added at 11:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:04 PM ----------
I dont know if renewals will be that big of a reality check - if people have some great 1 worded co domains, there is no doubt in my mind that they wouldnt pay an extra $30 to renew and possibly make the sale sometime on 2011/2012.
The reduction of the renewal fees might be one way for the .co registry to spread the Junk Dump over two renewal cycles.
Now, granted there are a TON of crap 3 even 4 worded domains that will not get renewed, but that does not "burst any bubble" or have an impact on the co market as a whole.
Yes it does but not in the way that you think. It hits end user confidence in the ccTLD because the registration volumes drop.
Everyday there are thousands of crap .com domains that drop and those dropped domains have no effect on the .com market overall - meaning good domains will always sell
Your mistake is in treating the .co market in the same way as the .com market. Tens of thousands of .com domains drop each day but tens of thousands more are registered each day. There are over 94 million .com domains registered and there are less than 1 million .co domains registered. The .com market has the momentum of a large market whereas the .co is still in its first year as an open TLD. Every new TLD experiences a post-Landrush slowdown where the initial rush of registrations gives way to a more steady registration volume. The .asia Landrush graph (
http://www.hosterstats.com/Domain-Landrush-Graph-asia.php ) is about the best example of this change. You can see the large spike in registrations for the first few months when the .asia Landrush started. However about six months after the Landrush opens, the new registration volume falls off. The first anniversary of the Landrush shows a large red spike of deletions. This is the Junk Dump. But the new domain registrations volume remains relatively stable. Then around the second anniversary of the Landrush, there's a hold 'em or fold 'em moment where many of the early speculators drop their Landrush domains. However there's also a secondary effect where people who have bought some of the first Landrush drops decide to drop their domains. This gives the second Landrush anniversary spike a stepped look.
The Godaddy effect, where the .co was boosted by the Superbowl offer might help but it might also have increases the possibility of a mini-Junk Dump a year or so later. The key issue now is for development to be kickstarted in the ccTLD and that's the hardest part of any new TLD launch.
Regards...jmcc
