Sometimes I like to title my posts so illogically that you will question whether or not I know the first thing about SEO.

Anyhoo, today I’m going to talk about .CM domains. You may remember a famous domainer by the name of Kevin Ham who traveled to the distant land of Cameroon to basically swoon the Cameroonian government and monopolize the .CM TLD. Well, as of just recently, .CM domains are now up for grabs for everyone.

In case you haven’t already figured out the appeal of this TLD, it gets a ton of typo traffic due to hasty web surfers that miss the “o” key when typing in .COM addresses. It’s safe to say that Google.cm, Yahoo.cm, Facebook.cm, etc, get a hefty amount of erroneous hits per day. There are also non-trademarked typo domains you could snag if you put your brainstorming cap on and do a little research.

The Catch
These exotic domains don’t come cheap. I just registered a .CM domain (that I’m quite happy about) with Namecheap, and it cost me $104/year. I’ve already started to accumulate a text file filled with other .CM prospects that I may or may not register. This could get dangerous.

Namecheap offers free privacy with .CM registrations, so that’s nice. Especially for those of you planning to snag some trademark domains.

Before You Register a .CM Domain with Namecheap!
Check out this important info I got from a Namecheap representative:

If you register new .CM domains during open enrollment (starting Wed, August 26, 2009 at 5:00:01 PM PT) be sure to pre-configure the domain to use custom nameservers at the time you register the domain. You cannot change DNS after it is registered. Please see the CM FAQ page for more details. The Registry will eventually allow DNS changes in future (estimated to be early in 2010), although the Registry will charge for DNS updates. The use of eNom nameservers is a free service for our direct clients. You can make any changes to your host records, such as URL or email forwarding, by going into the domain control panel (Domains > My domains).

As far as other registrars, I have no idea what the policy is. I remain loyal to Namecheap.

Last night on the Wickedfire Ventrilo server, myself, Eli, Enigmabomb, and a couple others (who do not have blogs to the best of my knowledge) did some intense .CM gold-panning. We found some pretty interesting available domains.

Eli found and snagged the best one. That jerk.

Have fun.

Well, finally some good news from the Ebay Partner Network. I don’t want to even talk about the upcoming shift to “Quality Click Pricing” because it’s just going to upset me. Perhaps I’ll have a future post all about optimizing your phpBay sites for the new system, but first I’m going to have to figure that out for myself!

In any event, EPN recently introduced four new programs: Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.

Why is Germany in bold!? Well, because Germany is Ebay’s second largest market after of course the United States. This means that all sorts of untapped niches and microniches can potentially be exploited over in good old Deutschland.

Pic (sorta) related:

It also opens up some domaining opportunities if you’re thinking about registering .de domains. Although there is definitely competition in the .de domaining game, it’s nowhere near that of the .com industry. However, keep in mind that .de is the second most popular TLD in the world with an estimated six million .de domains already registered.

If you’re interested in searching for a good .de domain in any particular niche, here is what I recommend you do:

1. Determine the main keyword related to your niche
2. Use Google Language Tools to translate that word into German
3. Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to check out how many searches that keyword and related keywords are pulling in [use exact match]
4. Snag a .de domain

Unfortunately, my most favorite registrar, Namecheap, does not offer .de registration at this time. Here are some alternatives (prices/currency conversions obviously reflect the time of this writing, don’t expect me to update this shit all the time!):

1. GoDaddy* – $17.99/yr (PayPal accepted)
2. iWantMyName.com* – $29.00/yr
3. EuroDNS* - apprx. $26.23/year (€16/yr plus €2 setup fee)
4. iDotz**- $19.95/yr
5. DomainDiscount24.com – $10.39 (€7.14)/yr
6. Joker.com – $9.16/yr
7. Europe Registry – $13.11 (€9)/yr

But I Heard You Have to Live in Germany to Register a .DE domain!?

Not the case, not the case. That myth is derived from the fact that the administrative contact on each .de domain registered must be located in Germany. Some registrars offer to act as the administrative contact on your behalf, thus circumventing this little bump in the road. However, some registrars will charge an additional fee for this (and some may not offer this service at all).

The registrars with the * listed above are the ones that include an administrative contact in Germany with your registration.

**Idotz.net will provide a German administrative contact for an additional fee.

The others either don’t offer this service or charge an additional fee (you’ll have to do your own research you bastard). Or you could just use your long lost cousin that lives in Germany as your administrative contact.

Only one I’ve used myself is GoDaddy (I know, I know). They might not be my favorite registrar but when it comes to international domains, I’d rather deal with their spammy site/terrible support and hopefully not have any further problems. Coincidentally, they’re also the only registrar listed above that I have an active affiliate relationship with. Weird.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that if you plan on building and optimizing sites for German traffic, it’s imperative that you have the site(s) HOSTED over there. Having your international sites hosted on IPs in the countries they are targeting helps a ton for ranking on search engines specific to that country. As far as which host to use, do your dang homework. As of now I use a UK host called Nativespace for all my European e-pillaging. That’s pretty close to Germany, right!?