Who has paid for a .cm domain
- Thread starter loclhero
- Start date
kieranadvert
Newbie
- Feb 15, 2009
- 49
- 4
Wow news to me, I didn't know about ".cm" I'll have to give it a look.
These use to be dirt cheap when they launched. These guys (cnobin.com) were selling them for like $0.20 each but you had to buy $100 worth. Now they have jacked them up fairly high as you pointed out. I was going to try them out but they were heavily spammed so I didn't think Google would like them too much.
Edit: Oops, my bad...sorry, I thought it was .cn not .cm
Edit: Oops, my bad...sorry, I thought it was .cn not .cm
Last edited:
antx16
Power Member
- Nov 25, 2007
- 584
- 1,526
Read this and think twice
Business 2.0's Paul Sloan has been digging into the .CM domain name scam. A domain name broker managed to convince the government of Cameroon, which controls .cm, to do a deal where any mis-typed domain name, like Google.cm (instead of google.com), takes the visitor to an advertising-filled landing page (the ads are served by Yahoo).
The .CM pages are served based on a wildcard. If the domain has not been registered, the user is redirected to agoga.com. Since the redirects are taking place via a wildcard, and domains are not actually being registered, there is little trademark holders can do to fight this (other than register the domain themselves).
This is actually one of the cleaner scams occurring in the extremely dirty domain name business. ICANN, which oversees top level domains like .com, .net and .info, has no oversight or regulatory powers over the two-letter country code domains like .cm. It's up to the individual countries to decide what is ethical and what isn't. And when money is thrown at these small countries, it seems that they have little hesitation in giving control of their namespace to a relatively unknown speculator.
Business 2.0's Paul Sloan has been digging into the .CM domain name scam. A domain name broker managed to convince the government of Cameroon, which controls .cm, to do a deal where any mis-typed domain name, like Google.cm (instead of google.com), takes the visitor to an advertising-filled landing page (the ads are served by Yahoo).
The .CM pages are served based on a wildcard. If the domain has not been registered, the user is redirected to agoga.com. Since the redirects are taking place via a wildcard, and domains are not actually being registered, there is little trademark holders can do to fight this (other than register the domain themselves).
This is actually one of the cleaner scams occurring in the extremely dirty domain name business. ICANN, which oversees top level domains like .com, .net and .info, has no oversight or regulatory powers over the two-letter country code domains like .cm. It's up to the individual countries to decide what is ethical and what isn't. And when money is thrown at these small countries, it seems that they have little hesitation in giving control of their namespace to a relatively unknown speculator.
wowhaxor
Elite Member
- Apr 28, 2007
- 1,924
- 3,371
Thats awesome, there has to be so much misspelling traffic there, I bet they hardly pay anything for it.
By the way the redirect I got was a CPA email submit, probably making some bank!
loclhero
Supreme Member
- Jun 11, 2007
- 1,284
- 2,437
If I'm not mistaken, there's ONE dude who runs that whole agoga redirect thing and has made millions if not tens of millions on it. Even though they are running around $800 bucks per domain, I was debating on registering a couple and seeing if I could make some bucks with redirects or such but am I correct in what you're saying...that any .cm registration is pretty much taken out of your control immediately?
blackmouse
Registered Member
- Dec 15, 2008
- 78
- 49
Yep thats him... I read about it.. He's earning millions just on parking ads on .cm domains.
I chanced about the .cm domain goldmine when I misspelled google.com. Then I thought to myself, if I could register a .cm of a new affiliate product, I would definitely get some sales from the misspelt traffic.
So I did some research on registering .cm domains. It's possible, but it costs a bomb. Like somewhere around 700-900+ USD per year, and you actually have to be the trademark holder for a same name domain. There's some documentation shit that you have to go through, and its a real hassle. I read somewhere that some guy took like two months before his domain was registered.. can't rem where though.
Do a quick google search on .cm registration and i found this.
I chanced about the .cm domain goldmine when I misspelled google.com. Then I thought to myself, if I could register a .cm of a new affiliate product, I would definitely get some sales from the misspelt traffic.
So I did some research on registering .cm domains. It's possible, but it costs a bomb. Like somewhere around 700-900+ USD per year, and you actually have to be the trademark holder for a same name domain. There's some documentation shit that you have to go through, and its a real hassle. I read somewhere that some guy took like two months before his domain was registered.. can't rem where though.
Do a quick google search on .cm registration and i found this.
Code:
http://www.101domain.com/domain_name_registration/cm.htm