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

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

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

Is 7,000 good or bad? What does it say about 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 already 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 new 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.

i think if its true 7000 is a awesome number, way above my lofty expectations. then means 6900 other names were registered besides mine. Plus they still dont allow transfers, and other hiccups… iLove.LA

I am doing the math, which is why I don’t think it was anywhere close to $280k. Not sure what rental rates are in L.A., but even if they’re 10x what they are here in Austin they didn’t spend nearly that much.