Registrars: Post .CO Transfer Coupon Codes

Over one million .CO domain names have been sold to date in less than a year, which is a remarkable accomplishment for the .CO Registry. .CO domain names were first available to the general public last July, and of course that means there are going to be hundreds of thousands of them up for renewal in the next four to six weeks.

While many domain registrars offered hefty discounts on .CO domain registrations, those special promotions are limited to new registrations and not renewals or transfers. As a result, many domain owners will face the decision of whether to renew at possible double the initial registration fee or whether to let some of their .CO domain names expire.

That being said, I believe there’s an opportunity for a domain registrar or two to earn a larger .CO market share. I recommend that they offer special transfer coupon codes on .CO domain names when done in bulk (to avoid dealing with customer service issues that one-off customers might cause). Make an even better offer when customers transfer and add two or more additional years to

This post may seem a bit self serving, but please keep in mind I have about 10 .CO domain names right now and likely won’t benefit much from it. I do think some readers of my blog might benefit though.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

54 COMMENTS

  1. Current lowest for renewing/transferring a .CO is GoDaddy with its 31% coupon gdz666a (no minimum amount is required) which takes the price down to $20.6

  2. Still not good enough reason for many to renew them.
    I believe what Rick S. said on his blog that renewal will be very ugly.
    You can already see many people who want to sell .co asap for cheap as they are not going to renew them.
    I think many new comers registered .co`s and many of them registered total rubbish but they learned some about domains for past year .
    I will take Mike Mann`s advice and will only keep the strongest ones.
    I think .co must lower renewal prices otherwise it will be disaster for them.

    thank you

  3. I’ll be watching, mine don’t expire until OCT. But I have a pretty strong feeling the total regs. will drop drastically after July, probably below the 1 million mark.

    Right now it’s fire sale time all over the marketplace. The only ones defending .CO are the domainers. O.CO doesn’t even exist. It still forwards to Overstock.com. Are they just waiting around to see how the dust settles just like the rest of us?

  4. LOL Elliot, doing Robert Cline’s work for him : )

    July will be ugly, for sure.

    gTLD’s, however overhyped they are, completely stole whatever thunder .co had.

  5. @ M

    There are plenty of people other than “Robert Cline” who read my blog that would benefit from a special offer like this, although he’s certainly the most “vocal.” Even though I have 10+/- names, I’d benefit, too and I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to transferring names to save some $$$.

    BTW, I know of one offer that’s coming soon… more details will be posted once I have the go ahead from the company.

  6. I have a few .co’s with OpenSRS, because they were the cheapest on launch day (I believe the tip for that was from Elliot, on this site – thanks!).
    I’ve actually gotten somewhat of a relationship with some of the Tucows/OpenSRS people because of them, but at the same time, I have all my other domains with GoDaddy, and I’m used to GoDaddy’s DNS system. So if GoDaddy would have a coupon, I would maybe move the domains over to them, though it wouldn’t be an easy decision…
    They don’t expire anyway for another few weeks, so I’m not rushing into any decisions yet…

  7. Special Dynadot offer! Save $2.00 on each .CO transfer and renewal. Use code: DOTCO11

    The coupon expires on 7/31/11 23:59 UTC and there are no restrictions on the # of redemptions.

  8. Never before and never again will so many domains in such a short time period in one extension drop.

    The biggest thud the domain world will ever see.

    Enjoy your dubious record, .co.

  9. Elliot is right on this one.

    if a registrar gives us .CO renewal at cost,

    they could potentially get a wind fall of new domain registrations.

    not to mention tons of ancillary business that they can sell, anything from hosting to privacy you name it.

    So I do not know what the registrars are having to pay back to the registry but lets say $15 bucks then give us the renewal at $15 bucks at their cost and they would instantly get tons of new customers.

    So Elliot bravo for your thoughts on this one. Was much needed.

    Is the Dynadot offer the one you were saying was the one offer coming soon in the previous post to that ?

  10. Moniker was doing .co renewals for $10.99 (did mine on 4/24/2011) so the registry cost is probably below $11. I renewed all my productive domains then, but will probably let the rest drop if the current moniker $26.99 holds. And probably do the same at the GoDaddy $20.60 rate too. At $10.99 I’d renew all of them.

  11. Elliot,
    I hope your post gets someone to step up.. good bad or indifferent I have 300 that registered and I plan to renew either way but I would much prefer 3500 to the 7000 that It’s looking like.

  12. I think this a huge opportunity for any registrar to boost amount of customers.
    If any of registrar lowered .co prices to e.g 10 usd I am sure many people woul transfer their .co at once to him.

    • @ Peter

      If registrars reduced the price by the much, it would yield little/no profit, and it wouldn’t pay the overhead (employees / support). They need to make a profit, and they are entitled to as much as they want. However, the mainstream company that gives the best break will likely see an increase in customers.

      The downside is that domain investors who simply park names are not very profitable. They likely don’t use the added value services that make registrars more money (hosting/privacy/etc) and they take just as many resources like customer service and support as regular customers who pay the rack rate.

  13. Low price can be like good add, for any good advertisement you have to pay.
    Sometimes its good to loose some money to get much more in the future . People also get used to a registrar service and there is a big chance they will spend more in the future.
    if renewal will be ugly I do not think it helps sell more .co in the future. and it will be real loss.
    Bad news attract more bad news.
    They need more registrations, more awareness!

    Moniker was doing renewal at 10.99usd , according to Alan, so I think its possible.
    I can bet that at least 2 registrar will reduce .co price to about 10- 11usd.

    PS Cost of .co is very low. It all only depends on Colombia.

  14. @Elliot

    The registrar business is volume oriented and one of the most automated businesses in the world. I think it unlikely that experienced domainers use anywhere near the support staff than the average single-domain customer, especially on a per domain basis.

    The only time I’ve ever interacted with my registrars to get support was to report site bugs and to sort out some billing issues. 3 or 4 tickets in 10 years for 1000+ domains.

  15. @Peter

    You’re point about the damage to .CO is spot on. There are already a ton of nervous people out there and even more naysayers. If there’s a huge volume drop, .CO could be finished.

    Does anyone know what’s going on with expired LLL.CO domains? I know there are some restricted names like GOV.CO, NET.CO, etc. But domains that were registered and are now dropped are locked from registration even though they are out of the registry. AAM.CO for instance is not in whois anywhere, but can’t be registered. Is CO seizing the dropped domains?

  16. A LLL.co just went unpurchased on Boxcar recently, opening bid was only 95.00 usd.

    There’s another one ending soon for the same price.

    HNH.CO, might be a good investment…

    Also noticed K5.BIZ for short.

  17. I have about 80 .co domains. I have not renewed any of them yet. Will renew about 20 best ones, but would be good to keep all of them if registration price drops to about $10.

    Godaddy coupon are not working! Can anyone update them, I can’t seem to find a working code on .co transfers.

    some of my domains:

    fax.co
    civic.co
    accord.co
    injuryattorney.co

    Selling most of them on sedo. Let me know if you would like to see the whole list, or have any questions.

  18. so far i’m going with namecheap.com to transfer .co domains. $23.49 with whois privacy and email forwarding. A bit pricey I think, especially when .co new registrations are half the price.

    If you know a currently better deal / price, please update all of us!

  19. LLL.co valuations have been all over the place. The one at Boxcar didn’t sell, most of the people I know have sold theirs for between $75-$500, there’s one sale of $15,000 we all know of, and ZUM.co is currently at Sedo for $1,000.

    I don’t think Boxcar gets as many .CO investors looking at it as Sedo, but maybe that’s just me.

    AUDIOBOOK dot co is on auction at Sedo for $150 with just under 3 days to go. Now *there’s* a great deal. (wink, wink…hurry Robert!)

  20. I am still waiting for a patron to help finance my 1000 .co renewals.

    It can be in the form of renewal discounts.

    or

    I am taking donations as well. Just email me.

    @Elliot

    just tell us if you know any .Co renewal discounts. I have been searching since many months ago.

  21. @ Robert Cline

    Be patient!
    I am almost always right with .Co and something says me that they decrease prices. Just wait!

    I have seen your portfolio.
    My advice to you. Instead of waiting for discount do very proper research regarding your domains right now.
    Many of them are really not worth renewal in my opinion.
    You can safe a lot of money dropping those ones.
    The rest, with little bit of luck, help you earn in the future.
    LLL.co`s are not all equal!Just like other domain names!

  22. I’ve been using 1 & 1 for a little over a year now. They never had any specials with .CO’s when I reg. mine. I noticed they just raised prices on gTLD’s to 9.99 from 8.99, still cheaper than most. I’ll probably stick with them. I just started using Hostgator, 1 &1’s web hosting seemed overpriced. Gator has unlimited websites for 10.00/month.

    Right now 1 & 1 has new .COM’s for 4.99. They’ve had this deal on and off for most of their gTLD’s for awhile now, so it’s been hard for me to buy any new .CO’s. Haven’t reg. any .CO’s since January. That’s when I took a long hard look at .CO and said to myself it’s just never going to be anything close to .COM or .NET .ORG etc.

    But given .cointernet’s standpoint, I don think it really matters. They wanted to offer a TLD for a new generation, hence their catchy slogan: “Get the domain you really want.” They probably anticipated a large number of speculators that would buy up a certain number of domains and then a large drop after the first year as those speculators lose interest. So to some degree they likely saw this coming.

    They even stated they weren’t catering to the domainers because of the 29.99 price point. .CO is for the do-it-your-selfer, and I don’t see that crowd paying out large sums for .CO domains.

  23. You’re right, but I don’t see the DIY crowd even buying at $29.99. Especially when they are bombarded by $1.99 and $4.99 ads all over the place.

    cointernet could destroy their long term profits by letting so many drops occur. That mass drop, if it happens, is going to turn into a long term media bashing of the failure of CO.

    Since any domains that do drop can be registered at half price, I think a lot of current owners will roll the dice on their less valuable domains and reregister after the delete if at all.

  24. @Tom

    for heavens sake

    do not try selling

    LLL.Co ‘s at places like Boxcar(which incidentally I’ve never heard of till yesterday), craiglist, bidbay, ebay, fruitbay, or any other place that no one visits.

    Unless LLL.Co are sold to end users you are not likely to get above $1,000

  25. @Tom: That looks like it’s priced right for good letters.

    In general LLL.co’s are consistent with LLL.me and LLL.biz, around $100-$150. I bought some nice premium letter .co’s at the peak for $50 each.

    To end users the value is around $200 max.

    And there’s going to be a nice supply available once drop day comes around. Tons and tons of keyword .co’s too.

  26. Don’t need any lecture from someone that bought 1000 .CO’s. I just found a few LLL.CO’s for cheap if anyone was interested. They’re not mine. Boxcar’s had some for <100.00 recently and with no bids they could be had for 95.00, just FYI folks.

  27. this is exactly why $20 plus renewal fee is too high and

    I am hoping that the .Co registery will lower the fee to be competitive with the .com

    I am hoping that .Co will be at the same true level as the .com and in order to have 10s of millions of registrations, the price has to be competitive with the .com s.

    You want to skin a sheep year after year, not kill it. And if the price is too high, some people may not renew and may never come back again.

  28. Too late now and the drop is going to be ugly. Just like with .me, once the horse is out of the barn there’s no looking back. It’s dead Jim.

    Maybe the next TLD release will be different though.

  29. The only reasonable transfer option I have come across at this point is 1and1.com. And there USD 15 transfer-in offer is going to be closed on 30th June.

    But across the internet, there are hundreds of negative reviews for 1and1. People call it a trap. People say 1and1 plays tricks when you try transferring out from them. I do not know what the reality is, but since I have only 3 dotCO domains to renew (I am dropping another 4), I will not take risk.

    @Robert

    Why do you think CO registry is going to give you a cushion to land on? I read your posts on another thread where you claim that 80% CO registrations have been made by customers who bought 10 or less domains and that most of these people are end-users themselves. Most of these people are going to just pay up the renewal fee. So why would dotCO kill a cow they can milk?

    And I was just wondering if you really bought a thousand CO domains. That is really a good 0.1% of the total CO registrations!

  30. @Robert

    No. 1and1 bills you before starting the transfer process. I actually initiated a transfer with them, before reading reviews saying that they trap customers.

    Fortunately for me they manually verify a credit card before charging it. I cancelled my virtual credit card before they could actually charge me. But they had billed me only USD 14.99

  31. @Puneet Goel

    What makes you think they trap customers ?

    Yes, old reviews are not the best but

    there always will be complaints wherever you go.

    And perhaps they have changed for the better now.

  32. Sad I know but it actually keeps me awake worrying about if kids will be missing meals or not getting in to school because their broke pennyless mum/dad/brother/whatever spent all their money on this highly speculative investment.

    Personally, I think the worst thing the .co registry could possibly do is reduce prices now, about the only thing going for it is the air of premium about it that some people perceive. IMO they should do absolutely nothing, take the drop hit, and afterward just carrying on being the .co registry, such as it is.

  33. @Robert

    Actually I based my opinion on reviews only. I have never been myself a customer with 1and1. And as I said, I have only 3 domains to renew, so I do not bother so much about the cost. I will probably transfer my domains to Moniker at USD 26 a domain.

  34. @Lindam: Agreed, and don’t forget all the worthless 3D domains that will be dropping from the rampant speculation last year. Same situation but to a smaller scale, albeit with cheaper renewal fees.

  35. SL- Im not sure its comparable really but I know what you are saying. 3D buyers knew they were speculating on long term hold future tech names, and tbh the game is far from up on those. I dont see many 3d name owners panhandling, in fact not even complaining at all. They know to sit tight. I think these people (inc. me with about 6 3d names) knew they were not going to do much for a few years, which is why they are regged til 2014+ 🙂

  36. Any other .Co transfer renewal promotions out there ?

    Today is the last day of the 1and1 promotion but when it ends is kind of ‘don’t know’ since this is a german company. Who’s time are we using ?

  37. @Elliot

    and everyone else out there.

    I need your help.

    I need to find a new home for my .Co domains.

    Does anyone know who has the best price for .Co domain name transfers which includes 1 year extension ?

  38. GoDaddy is offering $27.99 on bulk renewals/transfers, but none of the codes I’ve tried will work if there are more than 6 domains in the cart.

    Renew them 5 at a time to disable the bulk price and the codes will work.

    gdbb1901 25% off brings each to $22.49

    I’ll be transferring my domains out of moniker to GoDaddy. Personally I hate GoDaddy because of their fat interface and used car salesmen attitude, but money talks and Moniker isn’t listening.

    I’ll renew my few remaining profitable domains as they come up for renewal over the next month or two. I expect to transfer 25% and drop about 75% of my domains due to the excessive pricing.

    Seems to me that dropping the renewals to $15 would be more profitable for the registries than letting a huge drop happen. They sure won’t be making big bucks on backorders.

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