Tag: .co domains

Sitting at 383,122 .CO web addresses registered to date, .CO is fast becoming a popular domain for speculators who have been gobbling up the web addresses since late July. 

The record pace of registrations for a country code top level domain, that soon will be global thanks to Google, is grabbing the imagination of Domain Investors looking to put their investment properties up for sale and make a quick profit on websites like Flipping.co. 

On the other end of the spectrum, some domain investors have argued the .CO will go the way of the .BIZ (a failed domain that never took off), but that argument could become harder to defend as a number of well-established companies like Twitter (www.t.co) market the domain and the number of registrations begins nearing the number of .BIZ and .US registrations, two domains that have been open to the public for years.

A closer look at .CO auctions

How are sales of .CO going on the aftermarket?  The domain is holding its own already, putting a challenge to other secondary domains.

Flipping.co, the first established aftermarket website dedicated to .CO domains, has several active auctions at any given time.  Right now there are over half a dozen including:

HomeInsuranceQuotes.co
Fighting.co
Carcinoma.co
Laid.co
ManagedCare.co
Rmt.co
Fishfinder.co

At Sedo, sugarcane.co, pkv.co, and bidrivals.co all have bids.

Join the .CO Community on Facebook

There is even a .CO community on Facebook, that has partnered up with Francois Carrillo’s Flipping.co.  The communty has quickly grown to over 350 supporters, and offers promo codes for registering discounted domain names.

Many of the .co domain names registered in the last week were web addresses purchased by speculators in the quest for quick profits. 

The .co domain, which reportedly has over 366,000 domains registered to date, could prove to be lucrative.

No matter your opinion of the domain, everyone from Twitter to Mike Mann to Francois Carrillo have walked away with .co domains. 

.Co domains, like any new domain, are deemed by many to be risky, but that hasn’t stopped the swarm of speculators, who are quickly turning profits on websites like Flipping.co and Sedo.

The .co has only been available a short time after being released to the general public on July 20th, but Sedo and Flipping.co both have several current auctions with active bidding.

Active .co Auctions

Yesterday, I wrote about Flipping.co and the website’s active .CO auctions.  Now here’s a look at active .co Sedo auctions that have recently appeared online.

car-insurance.co – current bid $1,200 USD
touchscreens.co – current bid $2,500 USD
oprahwinfrey.co – current bid $500 USD
sugarcane.co – current bid $187 USD

While these few names represent an infinitesimal fraction of the hundreds of thousands of domain names registered, the .co domain could revitalize sales for new domain investors who weren’t part of the .com landrush, which has had numerous rags-to-riches stories since the nineties.

Already marketed by well-established online companies like GoDaddy (www.x.co) and Twitter (www.t.co), there is no doubt that the .co registry has done a better job marketing the domain to companies and individuals than any previous country-code top level domain.

What sets apart .CO from other internet domain registries is they have created an outstanding marketing campaign that relies on ambitious web developers to promote the domain.

Instead of paying huge lump sums of cash in expanding their already expansive marketing campaign, the .CO registry simply granted premium domain names to their .COFounders.

But it’s not Twitter and GoDaddy that will help build the popularity of the domain, it’s the grass roots investors like Elliot Silver, a successful domain investor, who recently announced he would be building and launching Bahamas.co as part of the .CO Founders program.

What .co is saying?

The .co company website regularly includes news stories about its domain – including those of Elliot Silver who has been writing about the development of Bahamas.co.  The current home page links to Elliot’s blog which includes a story titled Don’t buy .CO’s for Typo’s.

Elliot’s tweets even made the company’s website recently.

Unlike most companies and individuals, that were granted a premium .co domain free-of-charge, Elliot is chronicling the development of Bahamas.co.  Here’s a look at his latest post:

Just a quick  evening post to let you know where I am at with the development of Bahamas.co and the steps I’ve taken so far. I want to show you how development doesn’t have to be time consuming.

1) Posted a coming soon page on Bahamas.co and submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools. It’s nothing fancy, but I figured that I might as well put up a placeholder for now. As you can see, it’s already been indexed in Google.

2) Held a logo design contest on 99Designs.  I invited some designers I thought did quality work, and others participated as well. Hey – why don’t you take a minute and vote for your favorite logo?

3) Found a few templates I like on ThemeForest.net, which will be modified and customized to my liking. I don’t have much time to get the site live, so the custom option is going to have to wait. I plan to have a travel search function eventually, but for now a template is going to have to suffice.

To keep updated on the latest development with Bahamas.co, visit http://www.elliotsblog.com/. 

You can see a list of other .co websites participating in the .CO Founders Program here.