.Bio Sells 4,100 Domains For $250,000 In It’s First Week

Starting Dot, the registry operator for new generic top-level domains (new gTLD) .BIO, .ARCHI & .SKI, announced that the company experienced greater than projected registration volume with .BIO, which launched on Aug. 21.

Over 4,100 .BIO domain names have been registered at the end of the first week generating over a $250,000 USD in revenue thanks Starting Dot’s pricing and marketing initiatives. The .BIO launch ranks in the top 15 in terms of new gTLD first week retail revenue and validates the popularity of the extension in the market place.

First week retail revenue is calculated by multiplying the total domain name registration (net from registry operator self allocation) by the average retail one year registration fee in USA, Germany and France. So the average retail price for .bio was at about $60 USD.

Starting Dot launched its 2nd New gTLD this week, .bio, on Thursday 21st of August and got 2,679 domains after it’s 1st day. It got about 1,500 domains during the rest of the week.

Starting Dot Ltd. management attributes the recent sales success to the addition of a three letter, aspirational and meaningful domain, combined with the attention from the European organic food and farming community.

The early success of .BIO is attributed to the simplicity of the extension, the broad uses that can be associated with BIO and the its ability to inspire the imagination of internet users.

“The .BIO new gTLD was universally hailed as one of the most popular in the pre-registration phase so we are pleased with but not surprised by the high conversion rate” said Godefroy Jordan, Starting Dot founder and CEO. “Our goal now is to continue to increase our marketing efforts with registrar partners in order to bring this domain to every corner of the digital world,” added Jordan.

Currently three main markets, Germany, USA and France, represents over 90% of the registrations, with two thirds of sales originating from Germany.

“In Europe ‘bio’ means organic, where Germany and France are the two largest consumer markets. But North America has clearly understood bio as the short form for biography, with already many professionals and artists using a .bio domain to showcase themselves online”, said Jordan.

“There are still opportunities for domain name registrars to join the Starting Dot Registrar Partner Network and take advantage of the sales potential .BIO can bring and is encouraging registrars to contact their Starting Dot representative to start on-boarding.”