I tuned into the show just in time today to catch Patrick and Morgan interviewing Lori Anne Wardi, Director of the .CO Registry. I thought the discussion was very interesting. I’m just going to jot down some mental notes (paragraph below) I took during the show.
…According to Lori Anne, an “unprecedented amount of money” was spent promoting the .co extension in comparison to other new extensions. Although I tuned in late, I didn’t hear anyone mention Colombia or typosquatting in the discussion. Lori Anne actually doesn’t believe this is the proper extension for investing for resale and she firmly believes that registrants of .co domains will be developing their new coveted domains. O.co sold for $350,000. Lori Anne is a spectacular sales person! She had a well crafted response to almost any question and molded her answer into a pitch for why .co is so awesome. One of her heaviest pitches for .co was something like this.. “It’s time to own the domain you have always wanted”. There’s a twitter campaign behind this pitch @dotco using #pigsfly. Morgan kind of supported this angle by mentioning his girlfriend was so excited to secure the buzzword of her industry in .co. Morgan also caught a nice percentage of his backorders, eight new .co domains (I think). Chef Patrick revealed he did register one .co and also stated later on firmly, “I’m a .com guy” 🙂
Before today I really haven’t publicly stated my position on the whole .co landrush. That’s mostly because it doesn’t mean much to me. I agree with Lori Anne Wardi that .co is better suited for development (or re-direction IMO) than for investing in. I bought zero .co domains. I looked up a few yesterday to see if I could score a couple great generics but ones I tried were taken, probably pre-ordered months ago. I think the only type of .co domains that a domainer would want are typos of companies whose sites generate alot of traffic… I’m just not much of a typo domainer. 250,00 registrations in the first day is impressive. I am afraid we could break the record of most domains dropped in one day next year. I think too many investors are registering these just to have them in their portfolio.
This was the first time I joined in a Domain Masters show on WebmasterRadio.fm and I really enjoyed it! The chat integration is a nice feature. I look forward to tuning in more often.
** IN Case you were not aware, my site was hacked yesterday and there was a phishing scam implemented on a page of my site I did not know about, as a result a person became enraged and started impersonating me on several domain blogs and related sites using my email address and name to post profane and derogatory comments on others sites. I now have this all cleared up, read my blog post from yesterday. I just wanted to keep everyone aware of what’s going on.
Thanks for tuning into the show Mike. Lori Anne was awesome for coming on the show with such short notice.
This was actually my first show as host of Domain Masters. I am very exciting about doing more live shows with chat, video and possibly call in questions.
Tune in the same time next week, Wednesday 7pm est 🙂
Well I love this statement: “I am afraid we could break the record of most domains dropped in one day next year.”
And I agree with you. 🙂 It will be a day to put into the history books. Maybe a lesson once and for all for those that think this extension will have some extraordinary future.
But I do disagree with what Lori said. Development is the worst thing possible for the .CO. Ofcourse she will say this because this is what the registry needs otherwise they are doomed.
The .CO is not an invention and has no major changes. Besides typo squatters like myself and those that are speculating in this industry, the .CO really has brought no change to the rest of the 6 billion people in this world. And developing a .CO guarantees that you’ll lose 50% or more of your traffic to the .COM equivalent.
Extensions like .TV, and .US lose a lot of traffic to .COM because people think that .COM is all that exists. .CO is a disaster for branding because for example running a TV commercial, most people will think the domain is yada-yada.com and not .co.
I am sure at least 50% of the traffic is lost to .COM. Therefore, the extension is actually better suited for flipping before it is too late, and investing into typos.
@Matt – Thanks for adding to the discussion. I forgot to mention the reverse-typo possibility and losing traffic to the .com. I should have brought that question up to Morgan and Patrick to address after Lori’s interview was over.. curious to hear what they have to say on that, especially Morgan since he’s no doubt going to develop some of his .co domains.
I also registered many .CO typos and am very very disapointed. Yes I am a bad typo squatter. But the CTR on the .COs is about 1-2% or less. My RPM is $0.50.
If it continues this way, everything that I have I will need to drop.
It seems that people that type in .CO automatically realize they have missed the last letter and don’t click on anything on the parked page.
So I think it’s a bad sign for generic holders, bad sign for developers, and surprisingly bad sign for typo squatters unless you have the typo of the top 500. Mines are between top 1000-3000 and they don’t convert at all.
@Matt – Thanks again for your insights and personal results. Who knows, maybe you will get that surge of traffic and revenue after the summer months are over.. Anyway, best of luck.