The domain name Wantable.com sold this week on Sedo.com for $47,000 certainly a nice price for that domain.
The Domain was purchased by Wantable.co, LLC of Milwaukee Wisconsin .
You might thing that it was an “upgrade” acquisition by a .Co site to the .Com.
However Wantable.com is being forwarded to Wantable.co
We are all used to seeing .com owners buying .co domain names as defensive purchases and then having the .co forward to the .com version but here the .com was the defensive purchase and the .Co domain is the site.
Wantable.co, was just registered in May 2012 and already has almost 15,000 followers on Facebook a Page Rank of 3, an Alexa ranking of 318,000.
It looks like a huge success story for the .Co registry.
I agree 100%. I don’t see much .co domains ranking #1 on google, but I guess they are using other type of traffic generation rather then organic.
Great post.
i would have to disagree that this is a success for the.co registry considering the reason for the purchase may be due to confusion and traffic leakage to the .com, since most of the population has no idea about .co extension.
Not this guy again
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125996714714577317.html
I don’t get the connection
This whole business is based around the .CO and this is the only reason the .COM forwards to the .CO and since they own both extensions they will probably never change it because they will be found either way. The only way you can claim this as a huge success for .CO is if the company thrives on the .CO only and never purchased the .COM.
This is the ONLY way to brand a non .com.
Bravo!!
You MUST have the .com and THEN you can promote and brand ANY extension you like.
It does NOT work in reverse!
“It looks like a huge success story for the .Co registry.”
This company paid $47,000 to buy Wantable.com and that is a huge success for .CO? I don’t see it that way.
When a .CO owner buys a .COM for a substantial amount of money that is basically just more evidence that .CO is confusing to consumers.
Even if they forward Wantable.com to Wantable.co they are still protected by having both.
The need to go to another option to avoid confusion is certainly not a huge success for .CO. The story illustrates more the huge success which is .COM.
Brad
They just purchased the .COM
Would you give them a minute to develop the thing? What would one do with a newly acquired domain name? FORWARD IT to one they already have until their IT, or webmaster, straightens hings out later. Right? Right!
The expectation that you will see a tail wagging the dog any minute, in my experience, isn’t commonplace. Who in their right mind would own a .COM and forward it to a .CO (except Overstock of course)?
Dot Com 1 Dot Co minus 00000
the dot com owner always has the leverage to bargain when the dot whatever owner approach to buy the dot com.
What don’t you understand!!!!
Hello everyone, my name is Jalem Getz and I’m the president of Wantable, inc. I thought I might add some clarity to why we purchased the .com. I simply want to share our story since I’ve been an Internet entrepreneur for a long time and have always appreciated it when others gave me candid and honest information. Obviously my opinions and experiences are in the vacuum of our business and don’t necessarily apply to other companies.
First: Sedo violated our NDA by disclosing the purchase price. And, to make it worse they got the number wrong.
We actually leased the .com domain 9 months ago when we launched our website wantable.co. It has always redirected to the .co. Leasing the domain gave us the freedom to build a business around the .co but have the option to use the .com when and if there was consumer confusion.
What we learned: the .co is confusing to a small segment of consumers, it is also more likely to get marked as spam by Facebook and email providers. We experienced each of these issues first hand and while none were insurmountable it was clearly an issue.
Why we purchased the .com and what we plan on doing: we purchased the domain this past week, a full 3 months before our lease expires because we feel by owning the .com we can rebrand as “Wantable” and not need to include the .com or .co extension. Expect to see our website running on the .com extension within the month.
While I’m a big fan of the .co movement, and currently advise a few .co companies, I feel if given the option a company should operate under the .com before the .co extension of their brand.
I hope this adds some color to our reasoning and the information is useful to those interested.
Jalem
Thanks for the insight and the back story.
Personally I wasn’t aware that Sedo brokered domains with lease/options
Congrats on the acquisition and best wishes for continued success
Hi Jalem,
Thanks for that insight and explaining the reasoning behind the move from .CO to .COM. This turned from a huge success for .CO to the reality of living in a .COM world.
“What we learned: the .co is confusing to a small segment of consumers, it is also more likely to get marked as spam by Facebook and email providers. We experienced each of these issues first hand and while none were insurmountable it was clearly an issue.
Why we purchased the .com and what we plan on doing: we purchased the domain this past week, a full 3 months before our lease expires because we feel by owning the .com we can rebrand as “Wantable” and not need to include the .com or .co extension. Expect to see our website running on the .com extension within the month.”
As many others have said dropping the extension and rebranding without it shows the power of .COM. It is only an option when you own the .COM.
For the reasons above buying the .COM was a smart move. Best of luck with your business.
Also I am sorry to hear SEDO violated an NDA. I know last year I sold a domain via SEDO that the buyer wanted to keep private, and paid the extra fee, and SEDO still reported it on their weekly sales.
Brad
straight from the owners mouth:
“What we learned: the .co is confusing to a small segment of consumers, it is also more likely to get marked as spam by Facebook and email providers.”
“It has always redirected to the .co. Leasing the domain gave us the freedom to build a business around the .co but have the option to use the .com when and if there was consumer confusion.”
There you go….CONFUSION!
Got to love the .coM with the M at the end. The only way it is and will be. All the rest will leak the juice that so many want!
.co is laughing all the way to the bank. Maybe I should get a .co, .biz, .pw, .info, .name, .ws so i can help someone else make $ or just pay the premium and purchase the .COM to make $ for myself.
Haha. I see the owner already chimed in to confirm, but my first reaction to the headline of
“Wantable.com Purchased For $47K is Being Forwarded To Wantable.Co”
was “Yeah, for now it’s just “forwarding”. Give it another couple months and see what happens.”
It will never cease to amaze me how different human intelligence types work; how some people can be so brilliant at one thing, yet so clueless at another. How some things are so obvious to some, so impossible to others.
@Berkens,
So far. I called it correctly again. But I don’t expect you to say anything about that.
The owner’s input is helpful here. This is a big deal. Analyze what he is saying for the record. We will be DEALING with this issue henceforth.
@jalem.
FYI – when one tries to get to your site via the wantable.com, they are confronted with the following sinister warning, it’s probably due to the SSL certificate, do something about it, or your $50,000 is already losing:
“This is probably not the site you are looking for!
You attempted to reach http://www.wantable.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as ssl2644.cloudflare.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of http://www.wantable.com.
You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site”.
Rick Schwartz you are a moron. If dot com was a real person you’d be his bitch. I’m glad companies are finally going the other way using .co .
I laugh at all you dot com loyalists lol. Sure, we’re all accustomed to dot com – so it would make sense to buy the dot com these days. But the success of .co has to start somewhere. The more bold companies take a stand and begin using .co rather than the “orthodox” dot com the more familiar .co will become to the world.
Megan, while you were busy laughing, you did read above where the president of Wantable said that they will be running on the .com extension within the month, didn’t you? (Does this make them “less bold,” now?) If not, here’s the quote:
“Expect to see our website running on the .com extension within the month. While I’m a big fan of the .co movement, and currently advise a few .co companies, I feel if given the option a company should operate under the .com before the .co extension of their brand.”
Yes I did see that. I’m just saying startup companies and established companies are using .co. We need more of those esoteric iconoclastic people to step up and stop being dot com’s bitch lol
in the one hand : laughable dot co thread
in the other congrats to Jalem for his honesty.
at this point I will say only an uneducated developer or one forced by circumstances or receiving ill advice… will start an “English language website” using a DOT CO. domain
Schwartz – you are such a scared little dot com bitch lmao. Dot com was the first TLD you invested in that’s the only reason you’re so passionate about it. If people stopped being little scared bitches, stepped up to the plate and branded their company with a .co instead of a dot com things will begin to change. There are a select few of companies out there using .co and sticking to it because they don’t go by what society says they can think for themselves.
Why use dot co when there is a high likelihood of confusion. Why take that chance, it’s hard enough to have a site gain traction. With the introduction of more extensions shortly, there will be plenty of safer alternatives for start-ups. Dot co marketing should be congratulated for taking a stinker of an extension this far though.
Sure there is going to be some confusion for a while because we all know dot com. But the more businesses use .co it’ll begin to stick and people that aren’t dumb will be able to differentiate between the two.
Megan, people are that dumb. Dumb is probably not the right word, but they’re not domainers who keep up with all the different extensions. I bet if you took a poll of internet users, you’d find that most have never heard of dot co let alone visited a site with a co address. Unless you’re launching a site geared to tech savvy people, you’re probably better off sticking to a dot com or another extension that would be less likely to cause confusion. Clearly, a site aimed at a market demographic such as wantable is wise to go with dot com. Most users probably just type wantable in google to reach the it anyway or follow a link through a social media site. But, if you plan on some of those who have been exposed to your site to return by way of direct type in, counting on people to not assume that it’s a dot com given that dot co is so similar is taking an unnecessary chance.