Lost treasures of Cameroon

Posted on May 23, 2007
Filed Under Domain Names |

Agoga.com would have been absolutely unremarkable website, if not for two minor details, it has about one million US visitors and it belongs to domain mogul Kevin Ham (The man who owns the Internet). How comes that boring website got attention of millions? Very simple, Kevin Ham cooked up some shadow deal with some corrupted Cameroon official that made him effectively king of Cameroon domain space (.cm). Any .com domain mistyped as .cm is re-directed via “wild-card” DNS server to Kevin’s site - agoga.com. Where is the profit? Agoga.com is typical domain parkng site showing ads, any click on these ads contributes to Kevin’s wealth estimated at $300 million. Maybe not exactly clean but definitely brilliant scheme.

While primary web real estate, generic keyword domains, are either held today in portfolios of domain moguls like Kevin, or available only on secondary domain market, there is always opportunity to catch some new trend, new term or event and capitalize on it. The market has learnt to recognize value of keywords by chasing for domains as soon as new term emerges. Want example?

On May 22, 2007, Wcbstv.com publishes an article ‘Helmet Boxing’ A Dangerous New Craze For Teens. The article is about “helmet boxing”, an underground sport that’s just beginning to surface. Google Hot Trends picks up the wind on May, 22. All major domain names (net, org, info) for “helmet boxing” are snapped up within two days after article at Wcbstv.com makes light. However, the most precious domain name “helmetboxing.com” was registered on May, 16 - a few days before the article has been published.

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