Record Breaker: .CO Land Rush Auctions Ring Up Another $208,000 In Sales

2010 August 28
by Michael H. Berkens

The .CO registry just announced more results of recently concluded Land Rush auctions today and the results are very impressive. (You can see lists of previous results here & here)

52 domain are included in this report accounting for $208,000 in sales.

This list has it all, geo domains, category killers, 3 letter domains, hacks, even hyphenated domain names going for a several thousand dollars.

For those that believe in the extension, you can look at the sales of tshirt.co, tshirts.co and t-shirts.co which each sold in the $2-4K range and think those were great buys in light of recent .Com sales of those name terms.  Those that don’t believe in the extension will use one of the domain off this list to describe the whole process; fias.co, which sold for $3,600.

Land Rush auctions will continue to run for at least a few more weeks.

Just to be clear, this is NOT all the results for all the Land Rush Auctions, just the ones the registry released for publication.

Here is the full list of results that were released:

taobao.co $31,500
vehicles.co $18,500
shipping.co $11,000
caribbean.co $10,610
paydayloans.co $9,375
chi.co $7,110
paydayloan.co $6,425
nos.co $6,110
signs.co $5,600
guru.co $5,310
secure.co $4,350
doc.co $4,100
biodiesel.co $3,810
vacationrentals.co $3,700
tshirt.co $3,600
gamers.co $3,600
fias.co $3,600
tshirts.co $3,310
national-lottery.co $3,300
vips.co $3,100
rrr.co $3,100
insulation.co $3,100
halloweencostume.co $3,099
proactive.co $2,995
t-shirts.co $2,900
ooo.co $2,900
smith.co $2,750
naturalgas.co $2,550
mercardo.co $2,550
complaints.co $2,550
nate.co $2,300
officefurniture.co $2,250
ira.co $2,150
360.co $2,150
pillows.co $1,800
freecredit.co $1,650
comparison.co $1,592
worth.co $1,550
tire.co $1,550
pinnacle.co $1,550
georgiarealestate.co $1,550
handyman.co $1,350
casinoonline.co $1,200
alfres.co $1,150
estate.co $1,100
purse.co $1,060
probate.co $1,060
tvadvertising.co $1,025
italia.co $1,025
aviation.co $925
smart.co $905
sos.co $875
snowboarding.co $510
52 Responses leave one →
  1. 2010 August 28
    Deke permalink

    LOL…..a fool and his money. :)

  2. 2010 August 28

    Where are these being sold?

  3. 2010 August 28
    MHB permalink

    Bruce

    As I said that time they are in closed auctions, powered by Pool, but being held by the registry.

    If you had a land rush application in then your in the auction, if not then your not.

    No way of getting into the auctions now.

  4. 2010 August 28

    taobao.co alexa already rocks!

  5. 2010 August 28

    Oh well… Good to see these sales… That is what is going to take to make these domain move on the open market.

  6. 2010 August 28
    geek.pe permalink

    1 error in mercardo.co …$2550 is mercaDO.co …$3550…..
    the domain is mine. XD

  7. 2010 August 28
    Em John permalink

    MHB,

    Nice list. I think casinoonline.co was a steal there at $1250. Casino domains, in every extension, are so valuable because it doesn’t take much to get an ROI, considering the money spent on gambling. Definitely would have fetched 10-15 times that on the open market. Lucky winner.

  8. 2010 August 28
    Aniol permalink

    Banco.co for $2300 is missing on the list…

  9. 2010 August 28
    lakusa permalink

    Isn’t taobao a chinese trademark? its one of the most known Chinese websites. how come its been auctioned, any clue?

  10. 2010 August 28
    Josh permalink

    The sad thing to me is while the .com market is down still, the real solid investment is getting passed by less informed individuals.

  11. 2010 August 28

    Great prices indeed! Shipping.co was one of those for which I had submitted a pre-order for general availability.

  12. 2010 August 28

    Correction: FoolS

    *************************
    Deke permalink

    LOL…..a fool and his money.

  13. 2010 August 28

    Seven 3 letter domains went for between $1,000 – $7,000

    Holy cow, grab those 3 letter domains folks.
    They are not going to last forever.

  14. 2010 August 28

    yes, a record selling, but rare, .com has had (and will have) thousands SINGLE domains sold at prices like this, or much better

  15. 2010 August 28
    MHB permalink

    Aniol

    As I said in the post, the list does not include the results from all the auctions, these were just the ones provided by the registry.

    If you or anyone else were in an auction

  16. 2010 August 28
    domainer permalink

    hmm

    just amazed and its scary how you big guys are buying hype and dreams.. the crazy thing is most of the heavy bidding is by the .com players

    .co is columbia last time i thought

    the .com owners appreciate you guys bidding on .co and values on com only goes up

    you big guys critize the english .mx extension how this any different? ok typo traffic i see but typo mainly works on adult and drunk typing

    same hype around .mobi

    going get ugly and im on the side amazed and laughing

  17. 2010 August 28

    personally I think, that, the only .CO domains with a value, are those like (e.g.) mexi.co where the final .co is part of the name

  18. 2010 August 28

    Please post the first one you see developed.

    One, any one.

    Heck, post one that was even bought by a company for TM protection.

    Other than that it’s just the registry selling to speculators who hope to sell to other speculators.

    Am I misguided… maybe even disgruntled?

  19. 2010 August 28

    Rob said… “the registry selling to speculators who hope to sell to other speculators”

    it was exactly my doubt expressed in this comment:

    thedomains.com/2010/08/27/moniker-com-releases-live-auction-list-for-german-domainvermarkterforum-september-3/#comment-56987

    .

  20. 2010 August 28

    Rob said… “bought by a company for TM protection”

    yes, you will see, that, 99.99% of the .CO domains bought by companies will be soon ONLY redirected to their .com websites!

    .

  21. 2010 August 29

    (just) $208,000 in sales for a TLD that wanted to compete with .com … success or fias.co ? :)

  22. 2010 August 29

    End users are not up on things like new extensions and sunrise periods and landrush auctions and all the other bs that goes along with a new extension. They just want to build their business.

    Even if there had been thousands of end users (or even 3 end users, let’s pretend) who would be inclined to give .co a spin and develop sites on it, by the time they get anywhere near the extension all the best keywords will be taken by domainers and it will be a 100% circle-jerk without our community.

    The .co registry know this. They’re just enjoying milking it while they can. The registry is half-run by domainers anyway FFS. The .mobi registry knew this too – Pinky (lol) wasn’t off selling .mobi to telcos, he was attenting domainer (sucker) conferences. Did we all forget flowers.mobi so soon?

    I think I’ll save this comment and add it to the inevitable .cm or .om or .oc or whatever else we’re all throwing money after 3 years from now when the cycle repeats.

  23. 2010 August 29

    can’t believe these YOYOs let these .co domains go so cheap!!! tshirt.co and caribbean.co etc… cheap derelict prostitutes selling them!! they will resell from much much more one day!!

  24. 2010 August 29

    a TRUE record will be the first .CO sold for $1,000,000 :)

  25. 2010 August 29

    It will be quite some time before we witness a $1Million dot co domain sale. But, I know the executive staff at the dot co registry and I’m confident in their work- They’re marketing to business owners. Once they fully embrace the cctld it will go viral. Congrats to those that invested.

    Best,

  26. 2010 August 29
    whatever permalink

    I am happy for any success here but mis-using TLD names can only lead to tears for domaining community IMHO, as selling a misrepresentation as far as meaning.

    Folks use ccTLDs correctly, there’s plenty of room to harvest that.
    .ca in Canada
    .us in USA
    etc etc

    Why play around when it’s right there..?

  27. 2010 August 30

    “.us in USA”

    I’ve some good .us but they’re hard to sell like all others

    .

  28. 2010 August 30
    DPS permalink

    These sales are really encouraging. I have the following registrations in the .CO space. Have development plans for a few and the others for a near long term investment. What do you guys think?

    ADMOBILE.CO
    ADSMOBILE.CO
    ADVERTISINGNETWORK.CO
    BICEPS.CO
    BUSINESSIDEA.CO
    BUSINESSMODEL.CO
    BUSINESSNAME.CO
    BUSINESSNAMES.CO
    DURGA.CO
    GRABIT.CO
    HOLIDAYPLAN.CO
    HYPERLINKS.CO
    INTERNETMILLIONAIRE.CO
    LOOKMEUP.CO
    MOBILECREDIT.CO
    MOSTVISITED.CO
    PETFOODS.CO
    PROMOTEDADS.CO
    RENTINDIA.CO
    TAXFILE.CO
    THROAT.CO
    TOPSPOT.CO

  29. 2010 August 31
    Em John permalink

    GooStation,

    Take a look what NBC has done. Type in NBC.co. A cloaked redirect. That’s great news for .co supporters. I think the National broadcasting COmpnay looks pretty good with the .co extension. Makes sense.

  30. 2010 August 31

    DPS, do you *really* want to know what we think, or do you want someone to pat you on your back and tell you you made a great investment? If you want 100% honesty then the names are crap and you wasted your money. Most of them would be crap even if they where .COM

  31. 2010 August 31

    “NBC.co”

    yes, as said, the #1 goal of 99% of .CO buyers is typosquatting protection (and redirect to .com)

    .

  32. 2010 August 31

    “If you want 100% honesty then the names are crap and you wasted your money. Most of them would be crap even if they where .COM”

    I not completely agree, since, despite I don’t see any name in which .co is part of it (e.g. mexi.co) if DPS sells one or two of these domains for $1,000 or more, they’ll worth the price to buy and may give a small profit, however, these names don’t seem good to reach big selling prices

    .

  33. 2010 August 31

    Geostation.com a $20m domain? What is wrong with you people? The name means nothing and that is what it is worth.

  34. 2010 August 31

    …anyway, I feel that .co is for 99% a flop… :|

  35. 2010 August 31

    @Bruce

    it’s GooStation not Geostation

    if GoogleTV will be a planetary success, you can’t call a global website (with hundreds millions users) about it “Google-TV” while, “GooStation” is a fusion of “GoogleTV” (the system) and “PlayStation” (the TV device) without infringe none of these TM

    .

  36. 2010 August 31

    GooStation.com is still not worth $20 million. I mean C’mon… What are you basing this on? I own googwire.com… Is that wirth a million? No! It isn’t even worth $100. I am just saying base your thoughts on facts not a fantasy about price.

  37. 2010 August 31

    Lol, in the unlikely event that name is ever worth anything to anyone, you just admitted it *is* based on their trademarks.

  38. 2010 August 31

    And? Of course it is… That was back in the days when I was stupid about regging domains. Only keyword with income are worth money. Think about it, would you buy a name for $20 million without the site making a cent?

  39. 2010 August 31

    “you just admitted it *is* based on their trademarks”

    no, it doesn’t use any trademark… if so, every single group of letters is a trademark infringment, like (e.g.) ple.net for Apple or veri.org for Verizon etc.

    “Google” is a trademark, not goo or oog or gle

    “PlayStation” is a trademark, not “station”

    .

  40. 2010 August 31

    “GooStation.com is still not worth $20 million.”

    all domains names to be used for sites aimed to be seen by huge numbers of people (like office.com or insure.com) ALWAYS have an high value

    the only question is IF my domain is the best for a global website about the GoogleTV’s services, games, news, etc.

    I believe it is the best, but, if you have a better domain name, just register it… :)

    .

  41. 2010 August 31
    DPS permalink

    @DP – Thanks for the ‘honest’ feedback! Anyways I will keep these ‘worthless’ domains for sometime and see how it goes. Cheers!

  42. 2010 September 1

    .CO will surprise you all. .CO will eventually be worth more than .COM It is the same thing with less typing. And less typing is valued more, therefore worth more. Here is a directory of some developed .CO sites:

    http://www.developed.co

  43. 2010 September 1

    Over time, value of .COM will go down and value of .CO will go up. I hate to own a lot of .COM s and have to admit this but it is the truth. Just look at the domains, there really is no difference except for the fact .CO is better because it is like an accesskey to the .COM s.

    Plus, people need to realize, that .CO is being registered globally. And this is huge, gigantic, enormous. I see people registering from all over the world. This is different than .us where virtually all are registered by us citizens.

  44. 2010 September 1

    Yep, it will rock just like .CC did, .CC is just like .COM after all, except one less letter and, added bonus, you don’t even have to lift up your finger and type a second letter, just hit C again. In fact, you should sell all your .CO names to buy the obviously far superior .CC. The level of delusion in this thread is beyond reason. Good luck to you in your quest for a legitimate reason, other than hope, of why “it is different this time”.

  45. 2010 September 1

    Admit it. You are jealous of the .CO s There are 2 distinct advantages of .CO over the .COM One was mentioned above. It is shorter. And the second is it comes as close to .COM as possible so naturally when the domain you want has been long taken the .CO is a natural fallback.

    I see too many pluses with the .CO to not take a huge advantage. Many of these holdouts will be the ones registering next year when all the delicious ones are taken.

  46. 2010 September 1

    I think as more .CO sites are developed like angel.co we will see an acceleration in .CO registrations just because of increasing awareness. What do you think?

    This only points to one direction in the value of .CO real estate. And it is Up, straight up.

  47. 2010 September 2
    Jody permalink

    Sheep to the slaughter.

    To give an honest evaluation you have to realize 20 developed .co’s is laughable, sure it will become thousands but .Com has over 100 million developed sites used by thousands of businesses, the Fortune 500s and 2000+ times the traffic.

    End users won’t give a fuck about this extension unless it’s an exact match of their brand. There will be some plays to flip to domainers but someone is going to be left holding a bag of dookie. And building a business on one of these might be the worst idea of all. Think I’d rather open a hardware store in between Lowe’s and Home Depot.

  48. 2010 September 7
    first.COdomain permalink

    I just bought LLC.co for $5200

    dumbest purchase I’ve ever made, dead on, or a steal??? LLC.com is a huge domain (Short for limited liability company)

  49. 2010 September 9

    @first.COdomain

    I think it is a steal. It’s short and it has meaning. Plus I personally think it is better than the .com version because it is even shorter. Less typing is always better in my opinion.

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. Record Breaker: .CO Land Rush Auctions Ring Up Another $208,000 In Sales - NamePros.com
  2. Sunny Saturday Afternoon Update | Elliot's Blog
  3. Domain Sales Updates, .MX Follow Up and More | NameTalent.com – Domain Name Publication – Consulting, Brokerage and Domains for Sale

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