Dot TO

[cocaseco]

So I may be the last one in the industry to know about these, but I don't see much discussion. There appears to be value and good names left. I recently registered ECOMMERCE.TO. The downside is the $50/year price tag with a 2 drink minimum.

TO is the domain for Tonga and their government wisely allow anyone to register under their ccTLD.

TO is a part of the English language with many words ending in to and it is also a common preposition. TO is also a common reference to the city of Toronto, the 4th largest city in North America.

On Flippa there is a history of some good .TO sales.

Yet you rarely see these being offered for resale. Is it just the high registration fee? Thoughts?

 

[Jason.tv]

actually just picked up my very first one ; pen / to

 

[Kate]

TO is the domain for Tonga and their government wisely allow anyone to register under their ccTLD.

Yet you rarely see these being offered for resale. Is it just the high registration fee? Thoughts?

Maybe it's because of the above ?

 

[cocaseco]

Maybe it's because of the above ?

Your answer is a restatement of my question? Are we getting paid per post here and I missed it? Thanks, but I was really looking for insightful discussion about the pros, or cons, with this domain, over and above the price issue. A $100 price isnt a barrier to entry for many people, sure I may not register 3 or 4 a day. But the level of discussion is not congruent to the possible value.

 

[Kate]

You've framed it quite well: .to is the TLD of Tonga simply, that's why it's not mainstream.
Even though it was made open to all early (around 1995).
Or you can look at it like a domain hack, but again, domain hacks are not for everyone.

 

[Coopey]

I remember it was used a lot at the end of the 1990s for free subdomains - e.g. jump.to/[user's-choice]. I used to see the extension as a bit tacky because of this - sort of like people look down on .tk domains. Perhaps that, along with sdsinc's points above, contributes to its lack of mainstream exposure?

 

[abdussamad]

ccTLDs that want to become like gTLDs have to be heavily marketed. You see this with .co and .me. The only exception is .io which became popular by word of mouth.

 

[hxp]

I live in Toronto and .to works extremely well. Especially for social sites. "blog.to", "dine.to", and "vibe.to" have been very popular here. We were also recently labeled "best city to live in, in the world" if that makes a difference to anyone. I wouldn't discount the extension.

 

[kubativity]

I have some experience with .TO names.

I picked up a few a number of years ago and I have sold a few over the years since.
In my experience these names are very hard to sell and since they have a high renewal fee, it makes it hard to get a good ROI. Recently, I sold gold.to and loan.to for a combined total of $5400.00
As you know, these are super-premium keywords, so this is indicative of how difficult this market is.

I still feel you can do somewhat well in this TLD, but you must be careful because every mistake is costly.

You need to buy 2 years up front @ 50 /year so every investment is at least $100.00.

Although many Toronto sites are using .TO as their extension, it is still very hard to sell these names to Toronto businesses. Believe me, I've tried. With a city level name, it is hard to find enough of a market of buyers to ensure a sale. For example, I have been trying to sell Furniture.TO to a Toronto furniture store for years now, but I have had little interest from local retailers. The highest offer I've received and declined was about 500. Maybe I should have sold.

I have been able to find some great keywords, and there are a few available still. My site Comedy.TO has become one of my personal blogs, since I love comedy and I had no success finding a buyer.

The other side of the market for .TO names are names that create a domain hack. Sometimes these do very well, but most great ones are already taken. Recently I dropped, and re-registered Visitors.TO, which is on flippa and I will be converting to an auction to see how it goes. I'll let you guys know how well it did.

For the most part, I have not picked up any new .TO names for a number of years mainly because they are often costly on my portfolio. I have kept the ones I like and dropped a number over the years. These days, with so many new extensions out, I feel there are stronger opportunities elsewhere. Having said that, I would still consider buying .TO names if I find one that I feel is valuable.

Overall, you need to be very careful with .TO names. One or two in your portfolio can give you a great opportunity, but if you have a lot they will drive into your ROI because of renewal fees and the difficulty selling them.

 

[Jason.tv]

Any Value in .TO cctld Domains? - Good read!

just finished typing a small draft, I will continue where I left off with some goodies, let me know if you want to add any information to the article and any link backs to you!

 

[cocaseco]

@kubativity Good information thanks. That $100 pricetag is definitely a barrier to entry, but like you said there are some gems. Its like buying the big boy lottery scratch tickets at $20 vs the $1 ones. Some people would never think of buying a $20 scratch game, but if you want to win the big prizes, you have to in the deep end of the pool. I do think one point where I might differ is that If I had sold two domains for a combined $5400, I would take my original cost of $200, double it for a 100 markup (50% margin) and see the other $5000 as something to reinvest in more domains. That would get me 50 more TO.s if I wanted, and I would still be cash flow positive on my P&L, and my inventory on the balance sheet would be higher for a overall more valuable company. Domaining is a funny business where crazy margins are the expectation, often with no concern for traditional business ratios or standards. Thats not necessarily wrong, its just different. I'm probably slower to adopt that philosophy due to my traditional business experience and I know I have had to remind myself of that at times.

 

[cocaseco]

@JasonTV thanks for the contribution. Agreed that they are increasing in popularity and good tip on the registration.to. I bought a couple that had seven digit price tags in the .com realm recently. I haven't tried to market them yet. Of course I don't expect anywhere near the .com price, they should still do well.

 

[kubativity]

Any Value in .TO cctld Domains? - Good read!

just finished typing a small draft, I will continue where I left off with some goodies, let me know if you want to add any information to the article and any link backs to you!

You have a typo. It's connect.to not connec.to

Also, you can add my sales: loan.to: 2400 (sedo), 3000 gold.to (private) to your article if you like.

 

[cocaseco]

Grabbed trucks.to today so we will see how it does. Could be Toronto Truck market or commercial trucks to somewhere hack in shipping industry. I noticed Trucks.ca went for 38K and Trucks.info went for $2700...so somewhere in between should be the price lol. Gonna hold it for awhile though.

 

[Jeeps]

Grabbed JPEG.to a few months back, primarily due to its potential as a hack for a jpg to [whatever] converter site or app, that kinda thing [Stack Overflow discussion of jpg vs. jpeg here for those interested].

 

[campout]

Is it complicated to transfer .to names in a sale? Do they have to be held at Register.to?

 

[Branded Domains]

.to are good..I own Mobiles.to as mobile.to registered by a Japanese company/person.at 1997.
after .io .to is hot domain sales at flippa my Mobiles.to is at $205 at flippa auction...easy to transfer within register.to with a provided key.

 

[JudgeMind]

I recently acquired some of these (listed below). Most of the reported sales on flippa have been geared toward domain hacks. That's what my focus was.

Buses.to
Charters.to
CruiseShips.to

 

[Branded Domains]

good choice of .to domains..

 

[cocaseco]

after .io .to is hot domain sales at flippa my Mobiles.to is at $205 at flippa auction...easy to transfer within register.to with a provided key.

$205 is hot? with a $50 regfee, its almost not worth doing at that price IMO.

I have several that I have been working and are still live leads, but no sales to date. These include cabs.to, conventions.to, trucks.to, roofing.to etc. The domain hack is a reasonable selling point, but the Toronto connection is even better IMO. But these do take a lot of work, more so than a dot com as you have to educate the buyer first. Many don't know and are understandably suspicious at first. That is if you want end user sales. I don't usually sell to resellers and so I expect a lot more money than $200

 

[Branded Domains]

the current bid is $1500...on my .to domain..it depends on end users....if they like any name ..they spend on it..
I liked ur cabs.to

 

[Nick]

I live in Toronto and .to works extremely well.

I tried to sell several hat stores, in Toronto, "hats.to" and I didn't even get as much as a reply. Google doesn't treat .TO as a generic TLD like it does with .IO or .TV:

Generic Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs)
Google treats some ccTLDs (such as .tv, .me, etc.) as gTLDs, as we've found that users and webmasters frequently see these more generic than country-targeted. Here is a list of those ccTLDs (note that this list may change over time).

.ad
.as
.bz
.cc
.cd
.co
.dj
.fm
.io
.la
.me
.ms
.nu
.sc
.sr
.su
.tv
.tk
.ws

I think this extension is severely over-valued. These are not intended for anything else except the country of Tonga.

 

[Branded Domains]

hi..if your domain didn't get sold it doesn't means other domain will not.
check flippa u will see lots of domains are get sold $1000 above
and average of $400 sell.
.to is very friendly with Google search...if you are saying not then why below domains got good Alexa rank which is better than .io and .tv..

• movie2k.to - Alexa Rank 209
• anonym.to - Alexa Rank 866
• kinox.to - Alexa Rank 1266
• asg.to - Alexa Rank 1999
• lurkmore.to - Alexa Rank 2659
• uloz.to - Alexa Rank 2964
• pho.to - Alexa Rank 4297
• cpz.to - Alexa Rank 5363
• goldesel.to - Alexa Rank 5433
• ilive.to - Alexa Rank 7459
• demotivators.to - Alexa Rank 9295
• toukoucity.to - Alexa Rank 10117
• kkiste.to - Alexa Rank 10605
• nakadashi.to - Alexa Rank 10828
• torrent.to - Alexa Rank 11683

websites get success with good seo,marketing and using social media..

and it depends on end user whether they like .to ,.io,.tv,ooo, or .guru.
So bottom line is you never know which domain get sold with high prices..
and I hope you will get a good buyer for your domains...

 

[Nick]

.to is very friendly with Google search...if you are saying not then why below domains got good Alexa rank which is better than .io and .tv..

You do realize that Alexa rank has nothing to do with Google, right? Alexa is owned by Amazon.

websites get success with good seo,marketing and using social media..

You're correct, but you'll have to do a lot of work to target everywhere outside of Tonga with .TO domains. Would you use a .com.au to target traffic in New York? Of course not. I gave you proof that .TO is not going to rank well outside of Tonga- I didn't just randomly make it up.

and it depends on end user whether they like .to ,.io,.tv,ooo, or .guru.

Sure, there's a buyer for everything. I'm not saying they aren't worth flipping, I'm just saying the end user is going to have very poor results without doing MAJOR MAJOR SEO optimization.

 

[Branded Domains]

yes seo is the base of any website....
but marketing and social factors are major counts too.
and most of the buyers of .to domains are from Canada.U can cross check it.
I have seen most of the winners are from Canada or US