Did you go for a .CM Domain in the recent .CM domain landrush? Let’s hope you made out better than I did.

I was skeptical of the process at first, especially after the repeated delays in opening up the registration.  After all, Cameroon is a rather obscure place and who knows what their intentions are (aside from huge profits on domain names, that is).

So I put in my landrush application for a domain and plunked down my $150.  While I won’t tell you the exact domain, I will say that it was a misspelling of a large retailer’s domain, and it was probably one that will get a TON of accidental traffic.  I was actually fairly hopeful that I would get the domain as I didn’t think there would be much competition.

I was wrong.  I got a call from my registrar telling me they were charging my card, and I assumed that meant I had the domain.  Days later, I check the domain and it was occupied by a lackluster ad-placeholder page.  What a waste!  I don’t doubt that I could have generated $20k plus a month in referral fees had I gotten the domain, but alas:

“Regret is a wasted emotion.”

For all intents and purposes, this was my first month of real affiliate marketing.  I had been an Adsense user for several years with minimal success, but July was when I finally said “I’m going to actually try this”.

For Adsense, I’ve got about half a dozen random sites that pretty much just sit around collecting a tiny bit of traffic.  My most successful Adsense is my old funny t-shirts business that I created, owned, and operated for 5 years.  This site still gets around 1500 uniques each month despite being completely closed for business.  For several years, that site ranked #1 on Google for the term “funny tees”, which was a fiercely competitive niche.

Granted, I didn’t get started until nearly July 20th, so this was more indicative of about 1/3 month than a whole month.  You’ve gotta start somewhere and I’m glad I did!

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