Beating a Dead Horse (I): .CO
There are 26 valuable domains in the .co extension – the single letter domains.
These are the only domains in .co for which there is not a corresponding .com domain.* It is no surprise that there is where most of the action is in .co.
For any other domain, I see the .co extension as being the absolutely worst extension – worse than .net, .info, .biz, etc. – because it has no separate identity from .com and is just a pale shadow of it. Any site built on a .co domain for which a .com domain exists will bleed huge amounts of traffic and ‘mindshare’ to the .com.
I don’t get the .co domain interest. The .CO registry has done a brilliant job marketing the extension. But people who think this is the second coming of the .com goldrush are probably going to realize that they’ve been buying fools gold instead.
Time will tell…
* There are a couple of single-letter dot-com domains registered – X.com and Z.com. It’s possible that Spanish language domains would have local value in Colombia in the .co extension.
Old man you think you know it all. Being a cybersquatter and click fraud artist maybe. But you know nothing about new companies using domains for legitimate business. I’m glad the pigs like you will run from the .co space so finally companies like mine won’t have to deal with Chicago-style thuggery to get the name for our business that belongs to us by right, not you,
Oh god..totally BS site..time waster
Rgs,
Daryl
Creative CEO
http://www.BullShitWebsites.com
Hi Nat
I’ve just read through your first few blog posts and it’s been an interesting read.
The traffic and ‘mindshare’ loss to .com that you suggest, is the area that has me the most concerned with .co domains.
I have quite a few .co domains, but haven’t developed any of them as I’m just not comfortable putting the time into these while I still have niggling concerns about the extension. In fact, I have used .net and .org domains where I have had the same terms in .co, simply because I know the end user recognition and understanding of these is so much greater.
I registered a number of .co domains (around 40) and have had a few tire-kicker offers on a number of them. One which has had quite a bit of interest though is a Spanish word: Robusta.co, so I agree that Spanish words could do quite well for .co domains.
I’ll only be keeping about half of what I registered in .co and realistically I’ll probably develop less than a handful of sites from those. There are a few that will sell and cover the holding cost of what I keep, but I’m not likely to see a big pay day from them given the previous offers I’ve had.
I still feel that .co has potential for some sites and brands, but for most of my ventures it’s just not the right fit.
Cheers
Luke
Luke,
Thanks for sharing your experience. What is your goal in developing your .co domains? To build a business on them or to sell the developed sites?
I’m curious as to who is buying .co domains for five-figure prices and what they plan to do with them. Are they investors hoping for a bigger payday down the road, or end-users who plan to launch their businesses on these addresses?
My concern is that if any money is to be made in .co it is to the ones who came early to the party, not the ones who show up later when the game of musical chairs ends.
Nat
Nat,
There were a few strategies behind my .co domain purchases, I’ll try to explain each of them below.
I’m planning to develop a few of the .co domains into sources of (relatively) passive income based on a business model / system that I’ll also be using on some of my .com domains.
I have a few .co domains that were defensive in nature, that is I bought them solely to prevent potential competitors using them. I have these forwarding to their .com counterparts. I won’t be selling these and they won’t be developed independently as I already have existing sites/domains for these.
Some of the .co domains were purely speculative. That is, I got them based on the premise that they would be a good investment for a later sale. Offers to date have not been in the range I’m looking for and the plan is to hold some of these for a couple of years and look to sell them at a later date. This will just be a handful of the .co domains I have currently. It won’t cost much to retain these and I think it’s worth holding onto them.
In retrospect, a number of the speculative domains aren’t as promising as I had imagined at the time and I’ll let them drop. I’ve already let a number of my .co drop.
One area I’m keen to explore the potential of is geo sites on .co domains. I have a few geo .co domains and at some point I’ll look to develop one or two (e.g campania.co).
In hindsight I would have targeted some other areas and not bothered at all with some topics. I didn’t put a lot of money into .co domains and I won’t be registering any more, but I think I’ll do alright with what I keep.
I tend to only buy or register .com/.net/.org domains, but I don’t think it hurts to dabble in other extensions as long as the investment is kept at a smaller, manageable level. That said, I buy less and less of the ‘other’ extensions these days.
That was a much longer reply than I intended!
Cheers
Luke
Matt Cutt in a statement described that the domain extension dont matter whether you are using .com. .biz or .co domain. Depend is how you are optimizing your website. I am using .biz domain extension for all of my websites and all are getting huge traffic and i am getting good response, even my websites having good rank in search engine and at upper level than .com domains. Search engine want quality not extension for your website optimization.