NNN .CO Market Value

Rick Schwartz posted an article listing 90 of his three number .CO domain names asking people to make an offer for the group of domain names. He labeled it an “experimental domain sale” and a “dose of reality.

After several days, it does not appear that anyone made an offer to buy the group of domain names. I don’t know if anyone made an offer to purchase individual domain names either.

Because there are 90 domain names that appear to be coming up for renewal, you’re looking at around $2,500 on renewal fees alone, and that is before making an offer to Rick’s liking. This is likely preventing anyone from making an offer. I am not a big .CO investor, but I was considering making an offer if it weren’t for the significant annual carrying cost associated with owning the group of names and not having a good feel for the numeric .CO aftermarket.

I don’t really think the sale is a “dose of reality” though. To  ascertain  a more accurate reality, I think we should observe a single NNN.CO sale or auction, where the market values an individual domain name instead of a group. The domain name 250.CO is currently in pre-release status on NameJet, and there are 4 bidders who have placed a $69 minimum bid. This, of course, includes the renewal (This is NOT a NameJet affiliate link).

In my opinion, this is a more accurate way of determining a value for a three number .CO domain name, although 250.CO is in all  likelihood  a better name that those Rick is/was selling. Perhaps a  significant sale price on this NJ auction will make Rick’s names more valuable. Perhaps Rick should try to auction his names on NameJet or Sedo and maximize the value on each. My bet is that will yield a higher return.

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

29 COMMENTS

  1. You are bang on, Elliot. 666.co sold for $7500 a few months ago. That is one of the better ones but it says that Rick’s NNN have value. It’s pretty much the platform where he chooses to sell them, as you’ve said. There is no one who will buy them put into the format that he chose.

    If he put them on an auction format like Namejet, there would be a couple I’m interested in bidding on. I think quite a few others would say the same.

  2. The problem for me is I am not going to sit there and do 90 individual transfers, transactions and all the rest. My time is more valuable than that. So I will let them drop if I can’t sell them in bulk.

  3. Rick Schwartz registered about 2500 .co`s and dropped 2000 last year. We, with partner, could not believe what kind of names he registered. It was really low quality with no potential at all.
    I do not want to say anything bad about him but that guy is history. His mind is not flexible at all. Its very visible just looking at any his post. Schwartz reminds old guy who he is talking constantly about war..

    Guys like Mike Mann or Dicker say sth different about .Co`s. They also make great sales on regular basis.
    Schwartz is so proud of saveme.com case but in reality it would be ridiculous if he lost so easy case. the domain was registered 16 earlier from savee.com.br. and they are around just 2-3 years.
    If he wants to do sth for this business he must punish that guy.
    I recommend him RS to drop the NNN.co`s there are no potential there and its difficult call them `high quality`.

  4. From what I’ve read Rick is a patient investor that waits for the right offer. Him wanting to sell these signal to me that he is not a believer in the long term value of .co.

    I think the .co registry made their money and you will see a lot of them dropping and not many people picking them up. Where are you going to sell them?

  5. “I think the .co registry made their money and you will see a lot of them dropping and not many people picking them up”

    @ Anticareer

    The first drop period already happened, and I understand the renewal rate was fairly strong.

  6. The big problem,there’s is no aftermarket.

    That’s why we are going to see a lot of drops this year,not to mention that the renewals are $25 a pop,way to much.

    With the price of a renewal i could buy 3 .com’s.

    That’s how they get rid of the domainers.

  7. I can sell you a ghost town in Utah and some .co domains as well. They both come with a guarantee : NO TRAFFIC!!!

    No traffic, means no clicks, which means no parking income, no product sales, and no domain sales, which means it’s a liability due to the renewal fees. Not sure about other people, but I like making money, not losing it.

    Same problem with a ghost town. You can’t have old structures falling in on people and you still have to pay that damn property tax.

    You’d better have a gun show or something to get people to your ghost town or .co domains or you’ll have a tough time selling them. Remember .mobi ?

    666.co is parked at Sedo.com. You suppose they are looking for the next sucker that wants to pay more than $7500? Good luck, you’ll need it b/c no investing prowess was involved.

  8. Rick Swartz is an idiot. Got lucky at first and made a little money. Then has let his mind and body go to waste.

    He likes to make dramatic foolish statements to get off on his ego. Trying to sell his NNN.Co on his site is like trying to sell at a garage sale in his lawn to the world.

    When they drop, this will be snatched up in the $200 range each. I assure you.

    I have sold a few LLL.Co’s for $1,500 this year.

    Does anyone know of any good quality .Co renewal coupon ?

    Elliot

    When are you going to post an article requesting for .Co renewal coupons like you did last year ?

  9. Whatever price you have in mind, that a NNN.co is worth, it’s only downhill from here. It’s an alternative extension and with a flood of new alternative extensions on the way, it’s just going to hurt .co values. Sell now if you get any decent offers. It’s not a hold type of extension.

  10. Rick, is understandably mad @ .CO from Juan’s comments about mass speculators (aka domainers that buy in bulk) and the .CO market still hasn’t seen any real high end sales expect for maybe a few single letter domains. If I dumped in the amount of money like Rick did I’d be pretty upset too and I was for a little while but that’s all water under bridge because I see profit with .CO maybe not as much as some extensions right now but it’s there.

    I realize many domainers have negative thoughts on .CO and certainly express their opinions on forums, blog comments, and in articles but there are many of us that stay away from the negativity and focus on developments and domain sales just remember that if you are on the fence whether to keep your .CO’s or dump them. Also remember .CO came in to some rough times and succeeded tremendously!

  11. “When they drop, this will be snatched up in the $200 range each. I assure you.”

    So if you are such a smart investor Wayne, why not buy them from me for $100 each and double your money? You are assured of making $9000 or are your words and wallet empty and your mind full of shit? It takes some balls to make some money, let’s see some balls or do you just huff and puff?

    So if the .co whores won’t buy, what does it say about the extension?

    Businessmen know the difference between throwing good money after bad, blowhards just know about being blowhards.

  12. Rick, you give domainers a bad name.
    All that cappuccino has made you soft. A good 3 month basic training is prescribed for you.

    I’m only interested in making 20x 30x 50x to offset registration costs so a 1:1 return does not make sense.

    You are the sorest of the sore losers. You let your emotions get the better of you and making a fool of yourself.

  13. I think Rick was well-aware of the risk involved with his initial .CO registrations. It’s his money to spend, so I don’t see why he’d have to listen to anyone’s criticism on how to spend it, or not spend it. If the traffic or offers on his NNNs didn’t meet his expectations and he sees them as dead weight in his portfolio, he might as well release them.

    I know moves like this are going to get attention no matter what because he’s a big investor, but there are probably multiple things at play here.

    I don’t think there’s any way to value NNN.co right now. There have been more LLL sales, but even those have been all over the place. I don’t necessarily think Rick’s move means all of those domains are worthless – it just means they weren’t worth enough to him, or that he has other things to pursue in the long run. If anyone can point out a developed NNN.co, that would be great, because I haven’t seen any. I wouldn’t want several hundred of them (but that’s just me). I only have 2.

  14. My thoughts

    1) Even terrible names sell in the drop. If its 4 chars or less any extension or any pronounceable word meaning anything it will sell in the drop 99.9% of the time, even if you couldn’t pay someone to take it off your hands previously.

    2) NameJet is in a whole other league. Great place to sell domains. Even better to buy there for long term hold. Gotta be careful there for a flip because they get the high wholesale price for the domains that nobody else could get close to.

    @Rick, thanks for doing this experiment. I had the idea to start a domain business off the concept of threatenening to delete or drop names and try to sell them with the idea that people would rather buy them before the drop auction. It was a scary prospect to test because I’d have to follow through and delete/drop the name I was threatening on. I think you’ve proven that this business model doesn’t work. Just to substantiate this claim so you know I’m not full of sh*t it was supposed to operate on the domain NameThreat.com which I own however looks like I’m going to let it drop next cycle. Funny I’ll bet someone picks it up on the drop too.

  15. @Rich

    You are welcome to make an offer on it to try and change my mind. My use for it has pretty much proven not useful. Ironically I’m sure someone will buy it in the drop.

  16. @Wayne – LOL, you just had your bluff called and you were holding nothing!

    Are you trying to say that you are so snowed under with 20x sales to bother with a 100% net profit as you see it? Give me a break…I don’t know anyone, multi-millionaires included, who would pass it by if they;
    a. believed it
    b. had the resources to do it

  17. At this moment single key word .CO’s seem to be a better deal.There have been .co sales everyday. Just recently I bought a premium .co for $400 -> the seller got 15xROI but I still think at that price it was a steal. What I am saying is it was&is possible to make good money on .co’s

    As far as the new gTLDs are concerned, I think .CO will do just fine because:
    1. It has 2 year jumpstart ahead of them
    2. It’d take a revolution to get people to switch from .com to .web or .site
    3. .Co is closer to .Com than any of those
    4. There are already successful .CO sites on the internet

  18. Question, so why would it be so bad if the link in the article was an affiliate link to NameJet?

    I have found that some people assume the article was only written to make a couple dollars from the affiliate link. With the new NJ affiliate program, it seems there have been a lot of NJ articles lately.

  19. It’s a shame you can’t just write that explanation (if you feel the need) and include the affiliate link. I say write an article explaining and saying that from this point on all links will be affiliate links so everybody can just get over it. Even though odds are you aren’t leaving any money on the table.

  20. @ JP

    I hardly ever use affiliate links on my blog. Probably been a couple of years since the last time. I’ve found most to not pay well and they tend to make people question the validity of the article. I have a bunch of advertisers who paya set rate, and I am content with that.

  21. I have heard alot of uncertainty about the .co and I think that would be justified if you developed a .co site and it did not perform well against a .com. This would be a legitimate arguement.
    Our company has developed .co sites that have ranked on the first page for 8 months or longer.
    Additionally, our company recently worked with a very large group health insurance broker. Our company created a SEM campaign using a .co. This campaign was highly successful… so much so, the client asked that the SEM campaign be temporarily “turned off”.
    We also have repeated this model for other clients as well.
    We are also having successful .co sales because we build value into the .co brand by creating performance models along with proven action plans.
    Building value in the .co brand is essential, this will net the profit margins domainers are looking for!

    Minneapolis, MN

  22. @Rich

    It’s already expired now and in my pending deactivation list in Moniker. You still think its a good domain? You can save it for maybe as long as a few more days (proof of concept).

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