Since then, a voice over actor who uses Wiivoice.com, a man who started one site that turned into a network of 2,500 sites, a person who has connected with friends through new media, and other people have been the weekly winners of Verisign’s HowDoYou.com contest that is running until August 31, which gives people the chance to win one of ten iPads, $2,500, $5,000 or $10,000.
Since mid June, one lucky winner has picked up an iPad for telling Verisign how .com changed their lives.
Globally, the exact keyword "angels" was searched 823,000 last month. That according to Google's Adword Keyword tool.
While the competition among domain auction sites is growing, Sedo’s GreatDomains has been stepping up its game. The next Premium Domains auction is scheduled to start at GreatDomains on August 19th, and the list of names up for auction has grown to over 100 domains.
Headlining the event, is Angels.com, a name that is appraised at $897,000 by Valuate.com, a web site that provides free online domain appraisals. The reserve price range set by the seller is 100,000 – 249,999 $US – far less than its estimated value, but far higher than any other names listed at auction.
The domains in the next reserve price range down at 10,000 – 24,999 $US, include: oxi.com, mp3s.net, and purifier.com.
The reserve price ranges seem to be lower than what some might expect the asking price to be, as purifier.com has an estimated value of $40,000.
GreatDomains Steals and Deals
The auction also has its share of steals and deals, with a large portion of domains listed with no reserve price or a reserve range between 1 – 499 $US and 500 – 999 $US. While the “steals and deals” may be considered not-so-great, the auction has its share of “great domains”.
Here’s a look at the current lineup of all the domains.
Groupon offers daily deals for restaurants, spas, massages, theaters, hotels, and a slew of pampering products. According to the website's own statistics, it has sold nearly 9,000,000 Groupon coupons - saving a total of $383,879,904
With its traffic base nearly 7 million visitors in July 2010, Groupon has attracted plenty of attention, not only by the media and venture capital companies, but by domain name speculators looking to cash in on the company’s popular name. But not all domain names were registered after Groupon’s astronomical rise in popularity, many domain names were purchased years before.
So who owns the best Groupon domain names in terms of traffic? Is it Groupon? Below we take a look at several Groupon related domain that could make or break the owners.
Grupon.com
In August 2009, while Groupon.com flirted with almost 1 million visitors according to Compete, Grupon registered just under 200 visitors.
But as Groupon has risen to nearly 7 million visitors per month, Grupon.com now takes in over 2,000 visitors per month to its parked page. The domain was first registered in 2004.
Goupon.com
In July 2010, Goupon.com had an estimated 1,973 visitors. It’s trajectory followed the same path as Grupon.com, with traffic in the hundreds in August 2009. The domain was first registered in 2007.
Groupon.net, Groupon.org, Groupon.co
You may expect that the .net and .org would benefit off the .com’s traffic, but that’s not the case in this scenario. Neither Groupon.net or Groupon.org register any significant traffic. In fact, Compete hasn’t collected any data from the names. While Compete isn’t the most accurate analytics tool, even if it was off by thousands, neither site is even shows a blip. Groupon.net operates an asian web site called BIZHARD, which appears to be running malware. Groupon.org redirects to Groupon.com through an affiliate link, but doesn’t appear to be owned by Groupon according to registrant records.
Now the .co on the other hand, which re-directs to Groupon.com, does register traffic. In June 2010, the web address experienced over 1,500 visitors. And it’s been getting traffic for months. While it’s negligible, it appears the .co typo does better than the long established .net and .org domains.
One person decided to register a number of typos, but the risky bet hasn’t paid off, as none of the names register any traffic according to Compete’s tracking statistics. Chances are, the owner may elect to drop these names when they come up for renewal.
Groupon
The slump in traffic to other domains, hasn’t stopped Groupon Inc from registering other web addresses. The company also owns Groupons.com, Groupon.info, Groupons.info, Groupons.net, Groupons.biz, Groupons.org, Groupon.biz, and Group-on.com – most of which redirect to the company’s main web site.
The company even launched a blog, LiveoffGroupon.com, where Josh Stevens writes about living off groupons while traveling nationwide.
Despite the site’s popularity, looking at the traffic numbers of other websites and parked pages, it’s hard to argue that owners of alternate domains and typos have actually benefited.
Coupons.com (which also owns coupon.com) sits at 10,000,000+ visitors per month, from a high of over 15MM in November. The site launched it’s own “daily deal” service in March. If you’re wondering whether the popular phrase “Daily Deal” is developed, it is. The founder, Boyan Josic, launched his own group buying service, in a space that is becoming more and more crowded.
On July 20, 2010, Overstock announced it had purchased the domain name O.CO from .CO Internet S.A.S, the official .CO domain registry. The single letter domain, now re-directs visitors to Overstock.com
Currently ranked as the #1 .CO domain sale of all time, the single-letter domain o.co was purchased for $350,000 by Overstock.com.
In the company’s press release, Overstock stated the company purchased the domain in order to enhance its’ “brand recognition and retention, align with current marketing initiatives, and make it easier for shoppers to find the company’s products and services online.”
Market Awareness
As big sales of .co domains like o.co and e.co continue to drive market awareness of the new domain, the demand and sales for .co domains will continue to rise – which has already been seen in the volume of registrations early on.
This month the .CO domain registry is on pace to hit 500,000 registrations – and the publicy reported sales of property.co by Sedo for $25,600 and Mike Mann’s sale of cruise.co for $25,000 this week, could be signs of things to come.
Top .CO Sales of All Time
Expect more big sales in the coming weeks as the .CO registry has auctions scheduled during the first 3 weeks of August for .co domains that received more than one application during the landrush phase.
The Chart
Here’s a look at the top publicly reported .CO Domain Sales of All Time. Some of the previous sales in 2006 which appear in Namebio, like Hollywood.co and Lyrics.co are typos. The domains are actually for the sale of .co.uk, not the .co.
If you have changes or additions to the chart below, please email [email protected]
It's not just 3-character letter domain names selling for big bucks. C4S.com was acquired for $25,350 via Moniker by the operators of Clips4Sale - a web site which allows producers and sellers to offer clips for sale, images for sale, and videos for sale.
While many domain buyers focus on keyword domain names, there’s an entire market for 3-character domains, that rings up sales.
In 2010, there have been dozens and dozens of mind-blowing sales, with cgm.com leading the sales charts this year after selling for $365,000 at Sedo in June. For numbers on publicy reported sales of 3-character domains, check out NameBio.com.
With the expiring domain aftermarket flooded daily with thousands of domains, you may be missing out on opportunities that could better serve your domain portfolio.
Domain Aftermarket
If you haven’t kept up with expiring domains, there are hundreds of 3-character domains on the drop.
Over at NameJet, the exclusive aftermarket vendor for 10 of the world’s largest registars, there are hundreds of 3-character domains in a variety of extensions, including .com.
And several of the domains have few or no bids.
Currently, ads.info leads the pre-bidding with 54 bidders.
UIT.org, leads the .org 3-character domains with 38 bidders, while js9.com and psl.net are on top of their categories with the most bidders. The following .COM names have fewer than 10 bidders at the time of this posting:
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