Premium .cm auctions fall through

Earlier this month, a number of .cm domains sold for very high prices at auction. This includes sex.cm for $51,300 and free.cm for $17,800.

In an apparent lack of confidence for the .cm extension, many buyers in these domain auctions have backed out. As a result, a decent number of previously reported high sale prices turned out to be quite low.

Sex.cm originally sold for the aforementioned $51,300, but after the two top bidders refused to pay up, it ended up garnering only $21,700– less than half the original sale price.
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More .cm domains sell at auction

The end of the week is finally here, but that hasn’t stopped a number of premium .cm domains from selling. The top seller is freeporn.cm, which netted £8,397, or $13,700.

Passion.cm also sold for $3,625 and webcams.cm for $2,585. Other notable auctions include:

• tube.cm- $8,700
• cancer.cm- $7,200
• 28.cm- $6,100
• web.cm- $5,099
• restaurant.cm – $3,220

Are .cm domains a good long-term investment? In my opinion, no. The only force driving these sales is the possibility of receiving type-in traffic from .com domains. While this might create revenue in the short term, the success of a .cm depends exclusively on the success of its corresponding .com name. Not to mention that fewer and fewer people are using domains to navigate to sites, opting to query search engines instead.

Source | The Domains

Photo | Daina2

Premium .cm names sell at auction for big bucks

It hasn’t even been two months since Cameroon made its .cm domain available for public registration, but premium versions of the extension are selling like wildfire.

The biggest sales so far have been Hotels.cm and Sex.cm for £50,097 ($81,000 USD) and £31,542 ($51,000 USD) respectively. Other notable sales include:

taobao.cm- $35,100

mail.cm- $30,100

porn.cm- $23,050

coupons.cm- $20,100

free.cm- $17,800

pornhub.cm- $15,100

creditreport.cm- $11,100

insurance.cm- $10,200

youporn.cm- $10,100

lawyers.cm- $10,008

domain.cm- $9,580

These names are not necessarily selling as investments, but instead to make money through typosquatting. Hotels.cm, for instance, is a common typo for the popular hotel booking website Hotels.com. No doubt Cameroon is making quite a bit of money from these sales.

Source | The Domains

.CM auction results pile in

It hasn’t been long since Cameroon announced plans to offer its .CM domain to the world at large, but a number of premium names have already sold at auction.

So far the highest sale has been Cars.cm for £21,455 ($35,000 USD). The highest sales have all been generic names. Here are some others:

• jobs.cm- £6,130 ($10,000 USD)
• games.cm- £ 3,065 ($5,000 USD)
• juegos.cm- £3,065 ($5,000 USD)
• loan.cm- £3,065 ($5,000 USD)
• lasvegas.cm- £1,962 ($3,200 USD)
• date.cm- £613 ($1,000 USD)

I was a bit surprised by date.cm. I expected that to sell for a much higher price. Juegos.cm is Spanish for “Games.cm.” Normally foreign-word domains sell for less than their English counterparts, but in this case, both variations sold for 3,065.

Domainers also seem to be keeping away from trademarked domains for the most part, though there are exceptions. ABC.cm is just one trademarked name that has sold. It fetched £736 ($1200 USD).

Source: The Domains

Photo: Flickr

.CM domains soon to be available for registration

For years Cameroon’s government leased out the .cm domain to Agoga.com. Because .cm is a common typo of .com, the company set up a system where if you entered any address ending with .cm, it took you to a webpage filled with ads. Agoga made millions from this deal, profiting from domains like google.cm and weather.cm.

Now Cameroon has decided to end this special deal with Agoga and will open up the .cm domain to everyone. Starting July 15, you will be able to preorder a registration free of charge. Public registration begins on August 1. On August 4, the most lucrative .cm domains will be auctioned off. Normal registrations will cost £217 ($350 USD) for two years.

There is no doubt that Cameroon is trying to make money from typosquatters, crafty individuals who register common misspellings of popular websites in hopes of getting free traffic. Typosquatting often constitutes trademark infringement and is finable by up to £186,234 ($300,000 USD) in the United States.

Cameroon has made a very irresponsible decision regarding its domains. Many trademark holders will suffer as a result of the country’s attempt to make a quick buck. As developing countries build web infrastructure, their governments ought to learn to be more responsible.

Source | Tech Crunch
Photo | Flickr