Thank you for mispelling

In the last two days, I misspelled two sites I visit frequently, Amtrak and Typepad (don't ask why I just don't have them bookmarked...). But no worries, because there are sites at the URLs I typed:

http://www.tyepad.com/
(notice I skipped the first "p")

http://www.amtral.com/
(I mistakenly hit the "l," right next to the desired "k" on my keyboard)

I didn't bother linking to these. Feel free to visit if you'd like. I think I saw some train related links on the Amtral site.

I didn't dig deep into these site, but I assume someone is making money off of them somewhere or else no one would do it. Although I somewhat admire the ingenuity of the plan, I just don't think I could live with myself if my living was based on the misspellings of others.

Update 2/26: This Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer had an article on the business of tasting domain names. It discusses how the 5 day grace period in domain name registration added to the ease and automation has created an industry of firms that gobble up thousands of domain name variants, create sites with search ads, test which ones work best, and dump those that don't:

During the grace period, the entrepreneur puts up a Web page featuring keyword search ads and receives a commission on each ad clicked. Services like Google Inc.'s AdSense for Domains and Yahoo Inc.'s Domain Match help large domain name owners set them up, even as the search companies officially oppose abuses in tasting.

Addresses likely to generate more than the $6 annual cost of the domain name are kept - not a high threshold given how lucrative search advertising is these days.

...

The department store chain the Neiman Marcus Group Inc. even filed a federal lawsuit last year accusing the registration company Dotster Inc. of tasting hundreds of names meant to lure Internet users who mistype Web addresses. At one point, the lawsuit said, the misspelled NeimuMarcus.com featured ads for Target Corp., Nordstrom Inc. and other rivals.