I have heard a lot of uncertainty in the last 2 years about .CO. The uncertainty would be justified if you have developed a .CO site and it didn't perform well against a .COM. This would be a legitimate argument for many domain investors but that's just not the case.

Contrary to the .CO doubters, we have developed .CO sites that continue to rank on the first page after 8 plus months. Web developers & domain investors… This is the flashing red light in the sky...

Additionally, our company recently worked with a very large group health insurance broker. We created an aggressive SEM campaign using a .CO website. This campaign was highly successful… so much so, the client asked that the SEM campaign be temporarily “turned off”. We repeated this model for other clients with similar results.

To date our successful .CO sales are because we build value into the .CO brand by creating performance models, proven action plans along with click rate and direct traffic conversion results from existing clients.

Building value in the .CO brand through development is essential to netting the profit margins domain investors are accustomed to!

Minneapolis, MN

Since when do we care what domainers think? Next thing you know we'll be having focus groups with pedophiles.

Hello to All. In every business there are various actors, those who fall asleep, and those who are attentive. I think that in the golden era of .Com many people did great business, such as Christian Chena and others. Now it's the turn of .CO.  Congratulations Juan for this great company, and for good decisions - like having great partners like godaddy.

@Domainerdon - Sounds to me like you've never been a fan of .CO so I don't expect to change your opinion. That said, I will point out that "the people of Colombia" are actually quite happy with our role. .CO is now a valuable asset to our country AND the extension for local use (.com.co) has grown 5x since we took over 2 years ago - yes, five fold! (For more on .com.co, you can visit www.dominios.com.co)

Regarding having a "PR problem", I think the bigger issue here is that the entire domain industry (including domain registries) has a huge PR problem and its just because of a few bad apples. While that gets solved, I'll do my best to have more tact. Thanks for the feedback.

Mr. Calle: It seems like you have PR problem. If you are going to invest as much in the .co brand as you have, IMHO you might try a little tact and be absolutely sure you are clear when segmenting domainers into groups like cyber-squatters, mass registrants, investors, etc. There is such an overlap that you have apparently insulted the whole bunch with a broad stroke of the brush. Here's something for you to consider: What about the people who consider you a cyber-squatter for hijacking not only a single domain name, but an entire country code extension. What about the people of Columbia who want to have their own country code for their own country's purposes? I don't see much of a concern anywhere in your writings that even addressed the people of Columbia. Perhaps you are profiting from cybersquatting the abbreviated version of .com to the detriment of an entire countyr... Just remember two important things: Perception is reality, and people who live in glass domains shouldn't throw bricks...

@DarkDM - Please read my update on the definition of "mass speculator, leveraging tech to register thousands of names". Apart from being a domainer myself, we have many customers with thousands of domain names and appreciate their business. As the blog post says, that's why we sponsor events, blogs and such. What we don't appreciate is when the indiscriminate registration of domain names takes investors down the path of not even knowing what domain names they own. These are industrial size domaining operations that have nothing to do with "professionals in the field making a good living with .com's and happended to register some of the .co's to expand portfolios and seeking new opportunities". The latter are welcome in our space and hopefully they will appreciate that we're building this thing for the long term.

Arrogance kills business, specially a business with such volatility as the domain business - Calling someone a cybersquatter because he registered 1500+ domains or even 10 domains and seeking profit from it by leveragin it with technology - it is simple stupidity - this business, even before the .co era,is, was and will be still a profitable model, once people realize not to mess around with TM's - and protected brands - Putting all domainers in the same category as "cybersquatters" is a very dumb statement, there are professionals in the field making a good living with .com's and happended to register some of the .co's to expand portfolios and seeking new opportunities - and perhaps that is the sticking point .. Maybe the .co pretends to be a no-cybersquatting brand ? - I think, Mr Calle is the clear example of the inverse ratio, between the size of the brain and the size of the mouth ... word to the wise .. you don't bite the hand that feeds you .....

@Diddlysquat - Mike Mann made some great investments in .CO domains. Happy to have him around. He's the fastest human crawler in the biz.

@Dale Palmer - Good. Best of luck to you!

@Jacek - Hey Jacek, unfortunately you'd have to talk to your registrar about that. That said, renewals will always be pricey on .CO. It's a key aspect of our strategy as it encourages development.

@Rich (Magnum Domains) - If you reg'd trademarks, yes, you're a cybersquatter and we'd prefer if you do that elsewhere. If you invested in generics, count on us to continue building out the space. While you seem to have a lot of .CO's, quite frankly it doesn't make our cut of "mass speculation". You'd have to be doing 10's of thousands of regs using automated systems to meet that criteria.

@Goran - Thanks!

@Mike Stanley - Read my response to @Rich.

So what about Mike Mann ? You telling him he's a cybersquatter ? You going to give him his money back ? I've got a few .co but no more - I'll take my money elsewhere and I suspect I won't be the only one. Except I may register snakeoil.co before I go.

What a jerk, I am more than happy to put my money and effort elsewhere.

Hi Juan
Maybe it'd be a good PR idea to release a discount code (coupon) for .co's renewals?
It's hard to explain the monstrous 20 something bucks price!

Mr. Cale@
So the fact that i bought 1500 co's (2yrs$90,000) makes me a cybersquatter now.
The fact that i invested so much in .co,now you are telling me to go piss in some one else's yard.This is how you honor the people that got you where you are.
In the first two hrs of .co being public i had 1% of your company.You know that?People like me and others have invested heavily in this extension just to be insulted by your comments on the video and blog...well shame on you.
well...I got news for you,I'm here to stay.
Magnum Domains

Great post, I will definitely share on social networks. We need people like you rasing awarness about this issue. That's the only way people outside the industry understand how things go. Besides, just yesterday I talked to a young entrepreneur who offered 200$ to another domain owner, and he thought he was giving him a good one because owner payed 10$ to get it. People just don't know and understand.

Did you ever make an offer for LeWeb.Com or did you just assume that they were squatting/investing when they regged the .com before you even started your company?

What a crap answer.

So, we can speculate, but not big speculation. So no big investors are wanted at .co is what you are saying?

How arrogant.