E.Co Back Up For Sale But Now The Price Is $500K
2010 July 22
I just got a note from Sedo.com that the domain name E.Co, which was just purchased for $81K in June, is back up for sale with a new price tag of $500K.
After the successful launch of the .CO registry and the sale of O.CO to Overstock.com for $350K, the owners are looking for what might be the quickest, most profitable domain flip in history.
Ryan Colby is handling the sale for Sedo.
Loading ...
There have been more profitable quick domain flips
Will pray for them—greedy
It should be Eco.com
How are you going to say e dot co???
Elliot
Have there?
I mean lets say the domain sells by August 10 for asking price it would be a $420K profit in two months, you know of a quicker more profitable flip?
Might be the quickest, most profitable reported domain flip in history.
Guy.com was more profitable just off the top of my head.
MB – Yeah, but it was a private sale.
You back in the US?
Si
I think it may have a trademark issue…
Eh why not try. What is here to lose? If it doesn’t sell I don’t think the fact that it didn’t sell will diminish it’s value. Worth a shot, no downside.
Strike while the iron’s hot.
Top sales are all about timing.
.co may never be more “hot” than it is right now.
A lot of .mobi buyers had quick flip opportunities that they turned down (guilty!)
right after the Sedo auction ended.
I’m not comparing .co to .mobi — but again, reselling right now is worth a shot.
Strike while it’s hot
it’s absolutely make sense for this price,
$81K is under sold no doubt.
Aron…I think it’s going to get hotter…there’s still a bit of trepidation due to people getting stung by the .mobi, .eu, and .cm disappointments.
There will never be more interest in .CO than there is right now. Many of the biggest domainers understand that.
It makes sense to put e.CO back on the market after the o.CO sale, but in my opinion it was an isolated sale and $500K is a pie in the sky dream.
Brad
Such dogmatic certainty makes me think you must be a Coney Island gypsy fortune teller.
Actually I have seen the same thing with every new TLD launch in the recent past. There is far more money going into a new extension at the start that at any other time.
Brad
Well…I’m sure you have much more experience in the field than I do…I just think that history doesn’t always prove a rule. It could take time for the extension to mature and become common enough that people will want to pay top $. There are so many factors that make .co different than the other flop TLD’s that I think it is impossible to make a clear judgement right now. It seems to have a lot more potential from the outset to be a strong, lasting TLD for reasons mentioned ad nauseum so I won’t bother mentioning them again…okay I will at least mention the reasons that I feel that I made a strong investment going with .co
1) google has announced that it will be indexed like a neutral tld
2) .co.uk, .co.il, .co.jp, .co.etc… I don’t need to spell this reason out
3). it was an original choice for a tld back when the dinosaurs were roaming the internet so it is obviously highly desirable
4). it comes with a free toy
5). I spent some $$$ on these domains so it bloody better be popular
6). I like to pronounce it dot-cah
7). lots of new startups can get some snappy names and develop them
8). t.co and others will give it legitimacy in it’s infancy
Bulls,
$500,000 is a reasonable price given e stands for electronic (or any other e word or company). Overstock wanted to make “o” synonymous with “overstock” – stand to reason. Another company could do the same with e. One of the big free email sites like google or yahoo could purchase this for their free “e” mailing platform.
In addition, e.co is a supreme domain hack. “eco” is the well known abbreviation for ecology or ecological as in “eco-friendly” or “eco-awareness” or any other recognizable eco-prefixed word. At 81 Grand e.co was a bargain. Smart purchase by that company before .co hit the business sector full force.
eco.com has tremendous value, but once again e.co is an entirely different domain.
Christopher,
Some great point you make there. I agree history does not prove the rule. If you were to treat .mobi or .me or .tel as a company, which it is, you might say that those companies didn’t “make it”. Does that mean that every other extension or company will not “make it”. Wow, if someone in here has a crystal ball please please spook something out of it for me.
e.co is an unique domain and one of the few good .co domains so its value could be higher than $500M
The obvious ‘best’ buyer for this would be Ebay.
no, the best buyer is a solar panels or wind turbines manufacturer
James
My understanding was that eBay applied for and was qualified to bid in the Sedo.com auction where E.co sold for $81K
“no, the best buyer is a solar panels or wind turbines manufacturer”
Eco.org sold for $48K in 2008 I believe. I would much rather have that domain for $50K than e.CO for $500K for that purpose.
At least one good think about single letter .CO is you will not have the massive traffic loss to .COM since L.com don’t exists (except X / Q / Z)
Brad
@MHB – strange they went to the trouble of registering but weren’t willing to pay over $81k.
That said, stranger things have happened – someone else at the company may have seen the o.co story and push to get it (e.co).
@ BreakingNewsBlog.us – “no, the best buyer is a solar panels or wind turbines manufacturer”
Not for me it wouldn’t – unlikely to help the domain space, whereas Ebay getting it could trigger a rush by massive corps to grab single letter .co’s. Now with the resultant exposure that several Overstock’s and Ebay’s could endow the extension with….that’s never been seen before with any new extension so no-one knows where that could lead to.
But as Mike implied, it’s a long shot them going for it.
Um, maybe it’s a decent buy for eBay but is it worth the trouble for them to rebrand and reeducate everyone to use e.co instead? eBay is already doing ok with traffic on their current brand. Who doesn’t know eBay.com? 500k + marketing costs better spent somewhere else, rather than reinvent the wheel.
I get it a little Better with overstock because they actually have already been trying to train the world that the letter O is their thing so why not try to bolster that goal. They cant really buy O.com now can they.
For eBay I think it’s worth a buy for a drop in that hat “relatively speaking” but not for something that is gonna affect financial reports. Also if they just buy it to have it but don’t really reducate the public to use e.co then it’s not really gonna do a thing to bolster the .co extension except get some domainers excited about it. .co doesn’t mean a thing to the real world if the public doesn’t recognize it as a real place. That being said IMHO t.co may be used and handy but I doubt it’s going to give anybody the idea that there is this whole new place on the interwebs called .co and you should visit it sometime. Something that everybody gives a crap about has to happen in .co terriory for people to recognize it’s existance.
Brad,
.org vs .co? Why compare? Two different beasts.
@jp
If Ebay where to purchase the E.co, I believe everyone would agree that it would not be an overnight transformation. In fact if I was them the transfer would take 2 or so years.
I would develop E.co to also link the the main site. I would send out the normal Ebay alerts with the new changes. I would also have those HUGE banners on the Ebay front page (that you always see when you first sign on) that shows E.co is the a new way to find Ebay. Sooner or later you can make Ebay.com the redirect and E.co be the main domain.
So there is no need to really re-brand it, just make subtle changes and it will catch on sooner or later.
That is just my opinion.
Cheers
I don’t see the need for eBay to buy e.CO and even if they decided to buy it, there is no way they are rebranding their site e.CO. eBay is such a globally recognized brand that would obviously be a terrible business decision to rebrand the company.
Brad
@Slate
Ok sure that might work, but for what? Do u see this changing the lives of the major shareholders of eBay in their lifetimes in a positive way?
@JP – “Um, maybe it’s a decent buy for eBay but is it worth the trouble for them to rebrand and reeducate everyone to use e.co instead? eBay is already doing ok with traffic on their current brand. Who doesn’t know eBay.com? 500k + marketing costs better spent somewhere else, rather than reinvent the wheel.”
The free publicity they would get from the mainstream press would be worth more than the half mil – ditto for nic.co (anyone see what I’m getting at here?). I imagine the registry wanted Ebay to win it originally.
Besides, everyone knows Coca Cola but it doesn’t stop them spending $squillions on awareness.
Eh, sure would be nice for nic.co, but then aren’t we really the only ones that watch that news anyway. People buying an selling crap on eBay are not a likely to read that news. I think it would sell $500k worth of registrations in .co but to speculators for the most part IMHO. would big news about nic.co and eBay burn into the public’smind that there is this place on the interwebs called .co and that you should check it out, prolly not.
You wouldn’t have to rebrand Ebay…you do what twitter did – take your new concept or branch and mark it with a shindiggy little domain name like t.co. e.co would work great for a “green” ebay, selling products that are only green ie eco-friendly.
@ jp
I dont see any potential game for Ebay buying E.co other then a name shorten-er.
Well, A little bit of prestige of holding one of the few single letter domains available also.
There can only possibly be 26 .co single letter domains available. They are not going to release the .com ones. I dont know about any other extension and the availability of single letter domains.
There will be a lot of prestige of having a truly rare domain name.
Let me put it this way, (I am only speaking for myself) if I owned a multi Billion dollar company, and I had the opportunity to spend less then what I pay one of the executives for the ability to own one of only a handful of single letter domains…. hells yes I would buy it!
Even if .CO extension only makes it to any true notable popularity. Its still a single letter domain name and that is PRIME real estate on a generic TLD.
o.co sold for that much money because they are branding around “O”. remember the o.biz auction? there’s no such a big company as overstock branding around “e”. so there won;t be any flip i believe.
I think a for profit school like University of Phoenix will buy it and turn it into an online college.
E == Education
c0 == College
They are probably richer then eBay.
How about that?