The recent launch of .CO as a global – albeit national – TLD has created a new breed of domain registrants: those with tight budgets.
Gone are the days that domainers could go around asking for the sky when offering a .com to a small, medium or even large corporation.
Bob Button, a domain investor and self-professed “TLD God” manages a portfolio of about 500 quality domains.
His timing of contacting a British company based out of Nottingham was met with unnecessary disrespect.
“I pretty much offered them a short, generic dot com that could do wonders for their long-tail, dashed dot co uk”, said Bob. “I was told to f*ck off and the CEO literally told me ‘Screw you yank, we have the .CO’ – can you believe that?”
Many companies waited for this exact point in time when they would be able to register a .com equivalent all over again, without having to spend much money. By registering the .CO they are now able to respond to high offers with a resounding no.
“I wasn’t expecting this kind of nasty attitude, call me naive or something but a ‘no, thank you’ would have been just fine with me”, added Bob, shaking his head.
With over 300,000 registrations in the first week of its public availability, the .CO TLD looks quite healthy from here.
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Screwing goes both ways!!!!
but Whoever holds the dot com gets to screw harder……
Well, it’s often the case when these “business letters” sound more like extortion attempts from people who have no business but buy domains and then sell them to people who would otherwise buy them for $10 or less.
Domainers are just glorified domain squatters.
Time to develop those .co domains and sell the .com if you have it.
I hope .co new era will be working good…
savetheearth.co
Companies, even multinational ad agencies still think they ‘know’ the value of a domain better than others…
I recently received an offer for one of my domains which have over 135,000 exact word combo searches monthly, with cpc of $ 0.50
The offer I received was below my meager parking income. The offer came through a system admin for the agency.
When I pointed out this discontinuity, their attitude was hoary….being totally unwilliing to appreciate the benefit to a number of major verticals; where they could be making a boatload of money for ‘creative services’ were they so humble as to consider an approach other then their preconceived notions of value of a memorable, self descriptive domain
They were simply unwilling to negotiate, it was their way or the highway.
Too bad, but not surprising. The ‘legacy’ ad agencies, such as this one, scrambling to buy ‘digital agencies’ for hundreds of millions are still ignorant of the fundementals of success online…typical of these behemoths…no wonder there remain so many opportunities for the smart, more savvy competitors
roflmao! Fun post!
There are a lot of hopeful domainers out there plunking down $40+ to stake their claim in .COville
It’ll be interesting to see what the drop engines look like in a year when the buzz wears off & domainers sober up. The one thing missing from the .CO extension, IMO, is the “M” on the end.
FloName – Domainers that don’t spread their eggs across several TLDs are simply amateurs, especially when they denounce – or turn a blind eye – towards investment opportunities.
The .CO TLD is alive for just a week with more than 300k registrations. No, it will never be a .com but it will never be a .tel either.
If you haven’t been told to “screw off” a few times then you probably haven’t sent out enough prospecting emails or made enough calls. It kinda just comes with the territory, sales that is, not just necessarily domain sales.
Webdomainer – thank you for the candid analysis, it’s definitely not an isolated incident.
Tom – more calls doesn’t mean more leads, one has to be selective 🙂
I’m content to have my fantasy portfolio of .co’s. They are placed squarely next to my fantasy portfolio of .me’s, .info’s, .biz’s, .tel’s, and .mobi’s.
It’s much cheaper this way. And…I don’t have to be embarrassed to admit that I have 5th tier tld’s in my real portfolio.
Well, I cannot disagree about the ‘Screw you’ thrown by the CEO to the domainer.
I own thousands of domains myself, and I keep most of them for development.
For most of my online life, I’ve been an affiliate marketer with quite good results, and I started “investing” in domains because I realized that owning an appropriate domain for my primary business was as important as the “product” itself.
In 5 years I’ve sold like 2 or 3 domains and only because I was offered a good REASONABLE price. Otherwise I would’nt have bothered…that’s not my business plan.
I’ve never tried to inflate the price, even if one of the domains was sold to a Swiss financial institution.
I cannot understand how some self-proclaimed King, Prince, or Caymanian, can even try to offer a domain for an outrageous price.
I cannot understand how a guy who has won one domain for $79 on backorder at Namejet can dare to offer it after 1 month for US$13,000.
You call him entrepreneur? That’s a vulture.
This industry will get respected when there will be some sort of moral rules.
And don’t start that BS about “one can price his domain name how much he wants”.
Yes, that could be true, but don’t dare to call yourself entrepreneur or business man.
Ame,
That’s true about Namejet and a lot of people do it which I agree is somewhat unfair. However. If he was smart enough to pick it up and everyone else missed a gem, what’s the problem? It happens all the time in the physical world. Someone sells a guitar for $40 and finds out later it is worth $25000. It’s actually happened a number of times to various friends of mine. Sometimes luck comes into it.
New extensions are a little different. .co is unprecedented in its introduction. Some entity has to set benchmark prices to get it off the ground and that’s been done with recent .co sales and sites like flipping.co. Some may also say that domains are worth what someone is willing to pay you for it.
.co is a site developer’s dream: I can get the name I want at reasonable prices (most important), make a site , optimize, voila.
@em
Believe me, it was not a gem. It doesn’t have much searches also. No PR. No Backlinks. NOTHING.
I just tried to ask the guy (one of those who has a blog, to show off he is making millions on parking) and he replied $13k.
I wouldn’t expect an asking price of $100 but I guess $1,500/2,000 was enough speculation already.
$13,000 is simply outrageous.
Never said more more calls = more leads, but at the most basic level this is 100% correct. Even companies you “selectively” contact based on valid research (ie. finding out what keywords they are advertising on) may react negatively to a well written professional email message. My point is forget the people who tell you to screw off and just get on with doing what makes you profitable.
i contacted one of the designersdigest.com domain name owner few days before the lunch of .Co domain name, But i didnt receive any reply from him but luckily i registered designersdigest.co and then i received an email from him.
“Dear Kevin,
Thank you. Yes, this domain is for sales (6 years old).
What is your offered price?
If you want to hire a domain broker to fix price please go through http://www.sedo.com who will give you exact domain pricing (paid service).
If you have any question please feel free to contact.”
Regards
Pandu
So what should i do. I already registered .co so is it good to go for .com as well?