I know many of you have no interest in .CM domains, however everyone should be impressed by the amount of money in the domain channel, now that the 1st weeks total for the .cm auctions have been tallied.
According to NameJet.com, 2,000 .CM domains were auctioned by NameJet.com, at an average price of $625, for a total of $1,250,000 in auction fees.
In addition, for each domain won at auction, registrants had to spend an additional $350 for a two year registration which totals another $750,000.
So your looking at domainers spending $2 Million dollars in one week on an unproven, highly speculative extension.
The good news for all domainers, as it shows there is PLENTY of money out there ready to invest in domains.
More good news is this was not just one big sale involving one buyer and seller, but rather multiple bidders, showing there is a lot of people willing to spend money on what they perceive to be a good domain at a reasonable price.
This hopefully will translate into big sales at the TRAFFIC auctions in October In New York.
One Interesting note about these .cm auctions. In the event the high bidder refused to pay for the domain, NameJet.com has been awarding the domain to the second highest bidder, rather than re-auctioning the domains. This is what many have been suggesting for some time for general namejet.com auctions.
Next up:
Another 6 days of .CM auctions, with another 2,500 domains, starting Tuesday.
The SnapNames.com Monthly Showcase Auction which also starts Tuesday.
The .Biz single letter and number auction by Sedo.com scheduled for September 30
Then of course the RickLatona and Moniker.com auctions at TRAFFIC. Both companies are still accepting domains for NY auction.
but seriously… what’s the purpose of a dot .cm domain except to theft the traffic of a mistyped dotcom. though i suppose cocaine.cm might be set up for legitimate purposes as columbia is a world leader there… and so it goes.
or is it cameroon… i always get those two confused… maybe camera. cameroon would be good… or gameroom… ok… i have nothing else to say.
That is a lot of money for unproven typo’s when there are so many good generic .com domains for sale at low prices from professional domainers.
Over the years, I have been ‘so burnt’ on .info, .biz and .mobi, I just couldn’t justify spending a lot of money for a typo.
Especially considering the ppc industry is imploding on itself.
2 yrs ago, I would have thrown a lot of money at .cm.
Today, zero.
It wouldn’t be my first missed opportunity. But, maybe I’m getting older and wiser. ???
Nice article, certainly an eye-opener.
Since Colombia popped up in the comments…am I nuts for thinking that there might be much more value to .co than just typo? Only because of the abbreviation for “company”, it might actually catch on.
On the flip side, in practice it will be a nightmare to differentiate between .com and .co from the end-user perspective. Then we’re back to valuing it strictly as a typo TLD.
.cm was a non-starter for me and I probably won’t mess with .co either, just have a nagging feeling there’s something to it…
Btw, not much info on the .co status, anyone know where it stands?
Domain
It all depends on your financial situation, if you have a few bucks to throw away on it, as I did, I think it will be OK.
There are otherways of monetizing domains other than PPC.
But it is a true gamble, I wouldn’t spend a ton of money on them and certainly not your last dollar.
I realize I can afford to lose $40K taking a shot but many domainers can’t and if they can’t they shouldn’t play risk it in this extension.
SL
Of course .co is for Columbia which is a growing Latin America country which is a much better market than Cameroon, so I think that one will have value separate and apart from traffic
Why do people complain about typo traffic.
Why not complain about.
People that say .com is the only domain to have and thus no one just types in .cm, .uk, .net, .info etc. to see what is there. It is because those owning the .com’s push .com.
Just like google.com. They allow .com’s, then .net’s to place at the top. If they really cared about search results being fair they would focus on the indexing of the site to determine which site travels to the top based on content. Maybe a dot TV. They don’t because they are heavily tied to .com advertisers.
Typo traffic may not be fair, I consider it to be luck. If you were lucky you bought vegas.com, if you were lucky you bought xxx.com, and if you were lucky you bought vegas.cm. Most domainers are lucky, only a very few domainers used their skills and knowledge to buy relevant domains.
In the current market where Google has become Goliath with most of the advertising revenue and search traffic I am for anyhting that allows people to find websites outside the search monster. If that includes .cm typos and mispelled typos I’m for it.
If you own a .com or you work for Google you are probably not.
On the subject of .co, if the .cm generate typo traffic or continue to sell for high prices until .co comes out it will generate money. If the .cm becomes a bust, so will the .co’s.
Mike, was there one prominent buyer of all these names ? How many did you grab ?
.CO is a great extension and the domains will also have type in traffic. I think they will start sunrise first quarter 2010.
Big mistake to put .CM and .CO in the same category. The ONLY parallel you can draw with the numbers coming in from .CM is that .CO will be HUGE. HUGE! ..did I say HUGE?
For starters, .CO is gearing up to be a mayor operation with serious money and technology behind it from what I can see in the press release.
From a marketing standpoint, .CO has plenty of other meanings – starting with “company”. Sure, the similarity with .COM is a double edged sword (o not?), but with plenty of new TLDs coming out people will learn that not everything IS .COM. In emerging markets, if they market it properly, I’m willing to bet .CO has the chance to be the first choice before .COM.
FX
I got 12 of the 2,000 .cm domains that went to auction.
If you look at some of the higher priced ones.
Yellowpages.cm $30K
Hosting.cm $9,500
Creditreport.cm $11K
Web.cm $6K
taobao.cm $35K
lawyers.cm $10K
free.cm $18K
insurance.cm $10K
They all have different buyers.
Having said that I do think there are a few buyers of 50+ domains
I’m down for .co
but another point against .cm – it just plain sounds awkward. Everyone knows the abreviation for Television (TV). Even FM Radio was around far before domains. So I just look at it from a branding perspective. I imagine myself mentioning the website on television during an interview or on the radio during an interview and telling everyone to go to “company name” + “dot com”, or “dot tv” (while spelling out the TV), or dot co (but not spelling it out just saying it like a word), but everytime you mention a dot cm you would have to spell it out. Its not like saying biz (mentioning this even though i’ve never like this extension) or net (because these all just can be said like words).
Hi Guys…
Interesting discussion! Just a quick response about the status of the .CO ccTLD…
Here’s a link to the press release announcing the award that was published a couple of weeks back… http://bit.ly/gnWia If you want to stay in the loop on all the latest news and updates about the .CO ccTLD, please visit http://www.news.com.co – which is our temporary news site. We will keep you posted as things evolve!
Cheers,
Lori Anne Wardi
Director of Business Development
.Co Internet S.A.S.
lol Samir… nobody is suggesting it would be a ‘legitimate’ extension on its own for advertising, although there may be.. it is purely and simply about the typo possibility…
What I think will be interesting is the TM typo space in the cm market… the generics will be fine and earning well.. it will be those in the tm typo space that will do will imho because 1. tm typos always earn more per than generics (i.e. No. of TM typos regged vs generics have greater earnings per name) and the .cm typo will be even harder for co. to be aware of.. that is to say, there is a lot of current .com typos that have never been chased, so having .cm a step further away is going to appeal to TM buyers even more..
I think .CM has a got potential since it is not only COM typo but also CN typo.
I can not effort to buy this extention, it is too expensive.
Good luck for those who spent a lot of money, I hope you can get your money back 5-10 years time.
I agree with Furkat, I tried a few names because it is both a typo of .com and .cn which is becoming huge. I was able to get a couple of decent names at what i think is an ok price, if it doesnt work out, so be it and they go into development since there is still SEO value on them.
UPDATE
http://www.thedomains.com/2009/09/24/some-cm-prices-in-free-fall-as-bidders-pass-on-namejet-auctions/
Reckon the best extension typo is .om think about it… It has .cn .com and namec.om