Why were so many sites turned Japanese?

[Chow Pow]

Hey guys, new in this whole parking domains business.

I was just curious, when I look at a lot of domains in the wayback machine, they seem to have been picked up and "turned" Japanese. These are sites that were originally registered by english speakers who created an english website when they first registered it.

Can someone explain why that is, was there some sort of scheme many years back involving Japanese?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Name Trader]

I think .com's are a lot cheaper than ,jp's.

 

[Ralph2472]

I think .com's are a lot cheaper than ,jp's.

Plus the fact that they want to reach a global market. Who outside of Japan would ever think of typing a name with the .jp extension?

Regards

Ralph.

 

[Chow Pow]

But even if they want to reach a global market, why would they write the site in Japanese? How would anyone but Japanese people understand them?

For example, this site: cybersci-fi[dot]net , look at it in the wayback machine

and why do they all look like Blog type sites?

Just how expensive were/are .jp domains?

Also, would you still pick up domains like the one I just showed if they have good traffic? Aren't you taking a risk with them?

 

[forge]

I think the scheme goes back to 1941

 

[N-A]

A .co.jp domain has to be a registered company in Japan, which is quite expensive. Anyone can register a .jp and it's around $100 per year.

A lot of mom and pop shops often go with lower priced .info domains as TLD's don't really matter in the local market. However, when they want to go global, they will go for the .com and ccTLD's they are targeting for language specific pages.

I won't be the least bit surprised if Japan starts using .XYZ as it's free.

However, I believe that Tokyo and Nagoya will start to use the gTLD's as soon as they are released. They have been heavily promoting them using AKB-48 for the last few months for pre-order's of $100+ (for premium words like beer.nagoya, etc.). There are a couple other gTLD's that GMO is going to be focusing on for the Japanese local market. With that being said, Japanese mom and pops will always go cheap or free, corporations .co.jp and small businesses .jp for recognition.

 

[Chow Pow]

Though

 

[Chow Pow]

Though these sites just look like they were blogs, although when I translate the text, it looks like affiliate marketing for viagra, pharmacy, uggs boots. So I doubt these were picked up by real Japanese people or mom & pop shops looking to reach a worldwide audience.