It’s no secret that my money is on .com domains. It’s the only generic top-level domain that has consistently been dominating the sales charts and even with the many new TLDs that launched during the last couple of years, I do not see this changing anytime soon.
There is, however, one other extension in which I have been successfully making a moderate profit (low five-figures) during the last years and that is .co
.Co Domain History
Before .io came around, .Co easily was the most popular alternative for .com for startups and the extension has seen huge end-user adoption since it became publicly available in 2010 thanks to a very well executed and aggressive marketing push by the registry at the time.
As a result, many premium, one-word .Co domains were snapped up for big bucks during the landrush auction in 2010 and despite competition from some new, cool kids on the block such as .io and .ai, .Co continues to report impressive sales in the aftermarket.
The most important driver for its success is the large number of startups that embraced the extension over the years and build large and successful businesses on the domains with some of them forking out a significant amount of money to acquire their .Co domain.
10 Companies That Bought .Co Domains
- Online payment company PayCo paid $46,087 for Pay.co in 2013.
- Revolutionary camera maker Light bought Light.co for $25,000 in 2014
- Insurance lead generator LeadCo decided to invest $25,000 for Lead.co back in 2012
- An Australian towing company paid $24,000 for Tow.co earlier this year.
- Universal shopping cart browser extension Shop.co paid $22,000 for their domain in 2011
- Messaging app Pie forked out $21,500 for Pie.co back in 2014 before they were acquired by Google.
- Subscription-based e-commerce for dog-lovers BARK spend $19,532 to get their hands on Bark.co in 2013
- Funding portal Republic forked out $15,000 to get their hands on Republic.co in 2016
- Media production agency Hybrid paid up $12,000 to become the owner of Hybrid.co a few month ago.
- Stage, a virtual venue for live entertainment paid $7,000 for Stage.co earlier this year.
