In a brutal article, entitled “Pre-order your .cm domain now, start making money off Domain Typos Soon“,TechCrunch talks about the Namejet.com/Enom exclusive .CM registry arrangement we told you about last week, for the .cm domain landrush.
The article discusses the Business 2.0 article on Kevin Ham, as well as that several trademarked terms appeared on NameJet site when they checked out the backorder page.
As many readers discussed last night on another post on the .CM domains, this is not going to help the domain industry, yet Cameroon has a absolute right to the .cm extension.
Cameroon’s country code, like every other country, was determined by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which manages the root zone file: http://www.iana.org
All country codes have to be 2 letters, and cannot be three.
It was not like Cameroon went out and asked to be .cm it was just assigned that way.
You know my opinion on this already.
If a the .com belongs to the trademark owner then stay away from the .cm.
Also keep in mind even if its a generic term anyone can sue anybody including domain holders.
However, as I said last night if its a generic term like poker.com (poker.com is not trademarked, at least the site does not indicate it) and you have a site developed in that industry you might want to very selectively register .cm.
Keep in mind the registrations are steep; $350 for 2 years, PPC revenue is down, and the best of the generic terms are going to wind up in auction.
Let’s not forget that many ISP’s wildcard mistyped traffic for their own benefit as well.
I’ll go on record and say that just about any .cm domain is a scumbag domain.
Maybe that is harsh but techcrunch is right on the money and 99% of the general population will agree with them.
I say that because virtually NO ONE will develop a business on a .cm domain.
Cameroon? Please.
A .com misspell? Yes. That is the only reason to have a .cm domain and that is a VERY lousy reason to have a .cm domain.
From the start .cm was only good to trick people and capture their clicks.
Completely agree Rob and I’m glad to see TechCrunch is of the same opinion. If someone does choose to invest in .cm, I think Mike’s advice would be very wise to follow.
“If I’d have to venture a guess, I’d say people who dislike people who are in the ‘domain name real estate business’ will have one more thing to complain about real soon.” (TechCrunch)
My thoughts exactly.
100% agree. .cm is a scam. Any buyer is not a domain investor, but squatter.
I guess I’ll have to agree with TechCrunch on this one, too. (Although that’s usually not the case.) DotCM domains are a scam, period. They won’t be used in any legit way by about 99% of the registrants.
As already said, the only reason people will be buying .CM domains is because they’re “one letter short” of the most popular TLD .COM. The TLD is even promoted this way, so we shouldn’t expect any positive reactions to this.
The fact that some notable domainers and domain auction houses are promoting this TLD doesn’t really help, either. (NameJet, Enom, Rick Latona, Kevin Ham and others.)
I was going to comment on TC’s article and especially respond to their “nasty cybersquatter rat nest” remark, but that wouldn’t have done much good. You can see from the comments there how bad the image of the domain industry really is. Although I’m personally staying away from trademark-domains and I know the many benefits of good domain names, having successfully sold generic domains to corporate buyers for years, I can’t say I’m proud to be a part of this business.
It’s a strategy to make money! All ways about making money people.
I agree .cm and also .co are just ways of receiving traffic from people who have misspelled .com
I see a lot of people claiming those extensions will be a threat to .com, i’m new in this industry, but i already read about so many new mega fantastic TLD’s that were going to defeat .com, and so far all hype.
Those two extensions will be typos of .com and nothing more. i don’t doubt that premium one word domains will make a lot of money being sold to other domainers and maybe a few end users, like it happens with all TLD’s, but it stops there.
The only extensions that equal or even beat .com locally are some cctld’s like .de, .co.uk, .fr, .es, .ru, .com.au and a few more, nothing else.
I see no future for .cm and for .co
and yet Kevin Ham is a domaining hero…go figure
Tim Davids … remember the owner of God.com also has Satan.com 🙂
I should have done this when I first read the article but anyway, just posted a link on the TC article to TheDomains — hopefully at least a few of their readers will see the opinion of real domainers is quite different from that of cybersquatters.
Bait and Switch, a classical scam.
I’ve contacted BBB and complained for both eNom and NameJet.
Last resort would be to call my credit card company and put those two to be under illegal company..
When do we see .sex TLD ? This would be a great way to filter out all the nasty shit that our kids get exposed to.
Marv
You will see applications for .sex and .xxx next year when ICANN starts accepting the new g’TLD’s, however its questionable if any will be approved:
http://www.thedomains.com/2008/06/28/how-can-xxxsex-extension-be-ok-now/
Of course there is still litigation over the reject .xxx application from several years ago:
http://www.thedomains.com/2009/06/15/xxx-extension-heading-to-arbitration/
Marv .sex should have been implemented along time ago and transition the adult
.coms to it … imho … the government is too busy with other things instead of
protecting our children.
Anthony
Anthony
Just to be clear it was the Bush administration that killed the .xxx extension.
Take a look at this. 🙂 There has already been tons of .cm orders, PLUS “.cmo” order. from http://www.yoursitecan.be they’re capitalizing on the pre-registering.