I was excited to hear that Godaddy would be promoting the new .Co domain extension during the Superbowl. Especially considering I am using them myself and I have also invested in many of them. Bob Parsons was trying to build the excitement about the “new Godaddy girl” who was set to promote the .co’s during the commercial.
I have to admit that he even had me curious and I was anxious to see who the new girl would be. Well, needless to say that when I saw that it was Joan Rivers, I was quite shocked. The commercial was pretty funny, and I was totally caught off guard. It was Joan Rivers for those of you who missed it.
.Co Domain Sales Increase After Godaddy’s Auction
With all of the millions of people watching the Superbowl, I suspected that the .Co domain sales would increase overall. I even told people that I thought the sales of my own .co domains would increase. So have they? Did the commercial make an impact?
Without a doubt, yes it has. Up to this point, I had steady sales and offers, but nothing amazing. I think I had sold around 12 or 15 .co domains up until the commercial aired, and had an offer every few weeks. However, from a couple of days before the Superbowl, up until today, my sales have been very consistent. I am receiving sales almost daily, and offers every other day or so. Just today I sold another one, and the week before I had sold 3 premium .co domain names from my own portfolio.
I have been very pleased, and I am so glad I invested in the .co domains. I feel that they really are a great extension. I will probably regret selling some of them so cheap! Some will probably be resold for thousands and thousands, but oh well.
I have also used a few myself, and I am excited about the future potential of the names and the websites I will make around them.
Update: .Co Domain Sales–Failure or Success?
Now that the .co domain names have been unleased for about 2 years now, I thought I would step back and say whether or not I thought the .co domains were a success or massive failure (personally and in general). In general, I feel the .co domains did pretty decently. I don’t think they were a smashing success, but at the same time, I wouldn’t classify the launch as a failure.
For me personally, I was a very modest success. I acquired about 160 premium .co domains to sell (and I kept a few for my own properties). I made several thousand dollars total from the investment, which is okay. However, I had big dreams that I would be able to rake in 6 digits from all of them. I barely hit 2 digits in sales. But hey, it was worth it, and it is always nice to dream, right?
So overall, I’d say the .Co domains were alright. They probably did better than the .me, .mobi, .ws, etc. Of course, this is just speculation and I have no statistics or facts to back it up. But the .co extension just seems better in my opinion than those others.
Will .Co Domains Ever Increase in Value?
I think it is quite possilbe that .co domain names will indeed go up in value in the long run. They will never be as profitable as the .com in my opinion. But they will probably be considered more valuable than they are today. I think it is a nice extension, and does represent businesses well. That is one of the reasons why I invested in them myself (and kept some).
Domain Investing Is In Decline
It’s funny because so many big domainers have made posts indicating that they feel domain investing is dead. I wouldn’t say it’s dead, but rather, not nearly as profitable as it once was. Let’s face it: The primary driving factor for high prices in the past was based upon 2 factors. Factor number one was type-in traffic. People would go directly to a domain via type in, and thus, high quality .com domains could get thousands of hits a month by doing nothing.
The second factor that made domains super valuable was the “scarce resource” factor. There just weren’t too many extensions or options for you. You either had a .com, .net, or .org, or you didn’t have anything. Now the market has been saturated with excessive extensions, hypenated options, etc. This has watered down the value of domains in general, as many people today feel content to go with a different extension.
Lastly, people today are interested in websites, not domains. Investors are likely to want a functional and popular website with a stable business model, as opposed to a simple domain name.
And when you add in the fact that the tax man is finding ways to tax intangible items, registration fees and restrictions, and other nuances, and I think domainers will be forced to really get creative.
More than ever before, I’ll get an email from some domain sales agency trying to unload some .com domain on me. I always tell them I am not interested at all. Getting these sales emails kinda re-inforces the idea that domains just aren’t what they once were. Back in the day, people would be coming to you. Now domainers seem to be sending email solicitations trying to beg people to take domains off their hands.