.LA domains registered at GoDaddy since June — Over 7,000

GoDaddy registers over 7,000 .LA domain names since promoting the domain for Los Angeles.

A reader who invested in .la domain names asked me this stretch if I knew how the domain name was doing since GoDaddy put some of its marketing weight behind the domain.

Here’s your answer:

GoDaddy clients have registered over 7,000 domain names since the firm got involved in June. The registrar started promoting the domains in July.

At regarding $40 a year, that’s around $280,000 in registration fees not counting premiums for the best domains.

Regarding half of the registrations have come from people in California.

Is 7,000 good or bad? What does it say regarding the potential of city top level domains coming to market? Here are some relevant points to consider:

-GoDaddy tells me the 7,000 registrations are more than the number of registrations for .ES, .DE, .EU, and many other domains at GoDaddy during the same time period.

-To market the domain, GoDaddy rented a few billboards around Los Angeles when it started promoting the domain, and also invested in some online marketing.

-Many of the best domains were by now registered, as .la has been marketed (albeit weakly) as a domain for Los Angeles for more than a decade.

-This means there was also no sunrise or landrush period.

-The city of Los Angeles has no involvement.

I believe most of the fresh city TLDs, e.g. .NYC and .London, will see much higher numbers. The key reason is that the cities themselves are involved, which will lead to a lot of press. They’ll also be backed with lots of marketing, and perhaps even door-to-door sales. The sunrise and landrush periods will help, too.