Tech Cocktail Conversation with Juan Diego Calle

No matter what your view on .CO is, the .CO Registry has done a masterful job at marketing and promoting .CO domain names. There have been a number of mainstream articles written about the company’s presence at SXSW this past week (USA Today and CNet), and the more press for them, the better for all .CO domain owners and business owners who operate on .CO domain names.

I want to share an interview that was just posted by Tech Cocktail. If you follow .CO closely, it’s probably nothing really new for you, but Calle discusses what’s driving growth and how the company is performing.  One interesting thing I noticed is that instead of being perceived as a service provider at SXSW, it almost seems that .CO is one of the featured startups.

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

30 COMMENTS

  1. .co has done a remarkable job of getting startups on board its TLD. With S.co and StartupLife.co, it is directly reaching out to startups and positioning itself as a ‘friend’ to entrepreneurs – a very, very smart move, IMO.

    It’s a smart move because a successful startup on this extension would be highly visible to all early adopters – tech savvy, startup following entrepreneurs, investors, and the tech media industry.

    While I would never launch a large endeavor on .co (unless the dot com was way beyond my budget), I appreciate what these guys are doing for their TLD. I wish more registries had such marketing chops. .info had this potential, which it squandered by appealing to bargain hunting spammers.

  2. Calle, and his team, must be persistent then their extension, will be successful. Co creates a lot of different emotions among people (just look how many comments usually get any article regarding .co). Good! no one kicks a dead dog.

  3. adam@
    no one kicks a dead dog,i like that.

    I sold a LLLL today in the low 4 figure.Private sale.

    Apparently this ccTLD it’s loved by new entrepreneurs and hated by most domainers with the exception of cococline.

  4. @ Rich

    Congrats

    It would be interesting to note if there was an uptick in .CO inquiries over the last few days and in the next few days.

    The question is if someone is going to use a .CO, would they make a private acquisition like yours, try to find something unregistered and buy it at a registrar, or try and work out a deal with the .CO Registry on a reserved name.

  5. From 1500 .co’s, i have in an average one inquire per day.

    I think buying from registry it’s way to expensive,most likely they contact the domain owner and negotiate.
    The domain that i sold was Bohn dot co
    They went to GD and that where they find me through who is.

  6. @Rich

    “Apparently this ccTLD it’s loved by new entrepreneurs and hated by most domainers with the exception of cococline.”

    How true.

  7. “Apparently this ccTLD it’s loved by new entrepreneurs and hated by most domainers with the exception of cococline.”

    Is that based on fact or marketing? As I pointed out on the forum:

    “I checked out the “Launch 2012 Companies that have launched” on the launch.co site and broke them down by extension being used:

    .com – 25
    .me – 2
    .net – 1
    .co – 1
    .is – 1
    .io – 1”

    We have SXSW going on, new startups. Let’s have somebody actually do some hard research. Get a list of new startups, break them down by extension being used. And let’s not guess at this, let’s take areal look.

  8. have you watched the video ?

    Calle kicked it out of the park; makes a compelling case.

    .Co

    is growing at the fastest pace now and is absolutely the biggest share gainer going forward.

    Received $1,500.00 yesterday for my sale of lpe.co

  9. Who is reporting these sales ?

    I want my f***en sales reported and Rich’s LLLL.Co sale reported !

    Private sales make up the huge bulk of sales not these crap Sedo, afternic, sales.

  10. @ RC

    Go ahead and email Ron Jackson, but a $1,500 sale isn’t going to make anybody’s top sale chart.

    It looks like the owner of LPE.CO is in Colombia. I guess he is going to use it as a ccTLD.

  11. @Elliot

    I bet you of the 100,000,000 .com, .net

    90,000,000 is CRAP !

    meaning parked sites, no sites, etc.

    Honestly, how many of the 100,000 .com domains you own are developed ?
    This is the sad .com state of affairs.

    I am going to submit for legislation a bill to require if you are a legitimate online domain establishment, to require to upgrade to .Co

  12. Buy buy buy. .co is the new hot thing.

    Its going boom and forget what rick says or overstock said.

    .co is going crush things. Let’s all hype the shit out of .co. Heck I even own .co Domains

    While I agree Juan and team do amazing job and marketing they are good with this. Congratulations. There laughing to the bank as well from the fan boys and no adoption in .co. Remember there making money. Speculation and .info and .mobi. Remember those days.

  13. i know that the .com’s are still the ones that people want, but there sure are some great names out there in.co’s.
    i sold one the other day on godaddy and have added a few more..hope it starts to catch on more.

  14. If .co is not the best alternative to overcrowded .com market, so what is???
    To all those who say .co is colombian – .me is montenegran -> who cares? As long as Google treats it right

    Sure I’d rather have .com version but it’s not the 90’s anymore. I think .co will become no.2 in a few years

  15. Adam@
    in .co i sold 3, all LLLL
    The reason i did not sell more is because i hold on to the price.
    My LLL.co are all going for 5figure.I had mid 4figure offers but i would not take.The biggest offer i had from an investing company through afternic was 8 LLL for $24k which i turn down.

  16. @Rich
    If you compare prices which people paid for .co at the beginning to present prices you will easily see that get those prices now its almost impossible. Also, demand is much weaker.

    So it seems you could sale 11 .co`s . If you have 1500 .co`s it will take you over 136 years to sell them all.
    I know its just simple calculation but it also does not mean you will sell 11 .co`s this or next year but your renewal cost definitely will grow.
    I am not sure if one-day-philosophy is good strategy..

  17. Ha! Calle just said that “Domain Squatters” are a problem with .com, .net and .org…

    But not .co?

    Ha! That extension is full of “squatters”.

  18. Adam@

    I did not buy co today to resell to resell tomorrow with the exceptions that i get what i want.
    They key is patience.Rick mention that a lot of times.
    Everything good takes time,that why i’m not in a hurry.

  19. @Rich

    you dog, I’ve been selling for $1,500 a piece and

    you turn down an offer of $24k for 8 LLL

    you sure got more balls than I do.

    Or perhaps I’m selling too low. 5 figures ?

    It would be nice to sell at $10,000 plus, like BMR.Co went for $15,000

    exactly, may I ask did you sell and for how much so maybe I can have some comparables as ammunition so next time a big company comes nocking I can give them some numbers. Thanks in advance.

  20. @Adam

    if he is selling for 5 figures a piece or $10,000

    he doesn’t need many sales to cover costs. Just 4 sales a year would cover costs for 11 sales would be in the money.

    plus sale prices are likely to increase as awareness goes up and .Co does its annual Superbowl again. Sales picked up after the Superbowl commercial and this is a good thing because I need these sales to pay for my renewal fees coming up in just a few months.

  21. RC@
    I’M not selling,i’m asking,big difference.

    All so my LLL’s, i like to think that are better then yours.
    You can google me and find out.
    I have a lot of LLL pronounceable names

    on another note,i wish you would not be so ridicule on the comments that you made,trust me you are not helping.

  22. “They key is patience.Rick mention that a lot of times.
    Everything good takes time,that why i’m not in a hurry.”

    He mentions that referring to .com, that’s the gold standard. With other extensions there is more risk. Sometimes it’s good to sell while there is still perceived value in an extension. I’m sure there are some .mobi holders that probably wish they sold in the first couple of years. If more stories come out like Overstock and the 61% or stats even in the same neighborhood, I can’t picture the value going up. Just checking DNJournal, top 100 ccTLDs this year only 4 out 100 are .co.

  23. johnnie@

    “He mentions that referring to .com, that’s the gold standard”

    That rule does not apply only on .com Rick bought meet.me for 6k and sold it for 450k yrs later

    Why do you take the .mobi’s failure?
    Because of the Apple apps,that tld did not work.

    Why don’t you take .net .org as an example or .de or .me? Those tld’s do good,and don’t tell me they don’t have any leakage over .com.

    I bought cweb dot co for $25 and sold it for $5,000 and its a .co.
    I turn down a least 70 offers in the past one year witch where 1k to 4k on LLL

    I don’t have to make as much money on .co as some people made on .com, buying property.com,hold on it and sell it 16 yrs later and make $4,000,000,
    and why cant i do that? buy and wait…

  24. Rich, speaking of Rick, you do realize he just tore the .co extension a new one right? For obvious reasons. You mention some other extensions but they don’t suffer from the problem .co does.

    .net – .com
    .org – .com
    .de – .com
    .me – .com
    .co – .com

    Which one looks most like the .com? Yes, any extension can leak to the .com but which one out there has the biggest chance? That story of the 61% leak and Overstock, wasn’t a dream.

    So imagine if you’re a developer, a startup, somebody that wants to start a site. You can’t get the .com you want. So you have the world of extensions to choose from, there are lots of them out there. So you think it’s a smart (as a domain investor or developer) decision to pick the leakiest one known to mankind? I mean is there one out there you think leaks worse than .co?

    So my point is knowing when to sell. If you’re getting good offers, I would take them. Or hold on to them, hoping somehow more people building on .co will somehow escape the problems Overstock faced. I doubt it, I expect more stories once sites get up and running and that’s going to hurt the prices for that extension.

  25. Rick Schwartz dropped almost all his .co`s.
    I agree with Johnnie. Building on .co is very risky. I would choose any other extension. Waiting for miracle does not make sense.

    Rich gets one offer a day from his 1500 .co`s.
    I get many more reasonable offers (still not what I want- I do not need money so I am quite greedy now) from my 50 domains with different extensions which I hand registered or bought cheaply last year.

  26. .CO will need a few more years before we see if it has established or not.
    If it is developed and ranking and in the publics face all the time, .COM may well be the out dated extension with the new generations.
    Hell, in 10 years it could be considered the typo for .CO. Don’t think it will be on top for ever, that’s stupid.

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