Month: February 2010

HomeRun plans to be an exciting, fun website.  The concept of the website is Group Buying, which apparently many have tried and failed since the nineties.  But the owners of HomeRun have invested in their web site and in their brand, shelling out $131,200 for the domain nameHomeRun.com

at Moniker.  While most won’t associate the idea of “group buying” with scoring a home run, the site is branding itself HomeRun.  The name actually ties in nicely with “scoring”.  In this case, when enough people buy, everyone gets the deal and they score by getting an unbeatable price.

The site is also tied in with social networking and allows you to connect through Facebook.  It also has a hip look-and-feel.

For businesses, HomeRun uses the domain HomeRunDelivers.com where businesses can apply to market their offers.  HomeRun offers a guarantee to businesses since a minimum number of people must buy for the offer to be given at the unbeatable price.  

Group Buying Power is Back 
 
Other startups have gotten back into group-buying online. Another site called GroupOn which launched in 2009 has been getting a lot of press, and it appears the concept group buying power is back.  

The site’s traffic has gone from about 1,000 visitors per month in June 2009 to over 2 MILLION unique visitors in December 2009, according to Compete. This looks to be one helluva business model.

Most everyone in the Domain Industry has heard of Domain Development Corp. The secretive Domain Development company that struck a Partnership with Yahoo Sponsored Search ads for BOSS. 

Despite their skyrocketing popularity and their work with Yahoo!, they’re still making web sites for their clients and big partners like National A-1 Advertising.  They’ve also made themselves more accessible with their redesigned web site, that showcases their work and their services (http://www.ddc.com/).

Minisites are only the Beginning
 
One of DDC’s big partners is National A-1, who has been launching several web sites lately including Antiques.com and the redesigned Pizza.com.  They’ve also churned out some of the best looking minisites using WordPress themes. 

Two of their newest sites using WordPress include Boys.com and Girls.com, two category-killer domains owned by National A-1 that recently shifted the names out of Parked.  The sites are so new, it looks like they even need a little more work (for example, the sidebar on Boys.com says “Featured Grant Programs” instead of “Featured Categories”).    DDC also developed Grants.com using a WordPress theme.

If you still haven’t given WordPress a shot, now is the time

Whether you have no experience with web development or have domains sitting idle, WordPress is a good first step in the development and implementation of a website that could bring you organic traffic from the search engines, and much greater control over the monetization of your web site, including using affiliate ads, which is where the market is increasingly going, especially with advertisers wanting more accountability over their publishers.

The custom WordPress themes used by DDC for Boys.com and Girls.com have a more hip look for a younger crowd, and with the content, visitors may be more likely to click around the website and see what’s happening, whereas before with the parked page templates, visitors are a lot more likey to move along and not return.

WordPress is a great choice for getting your names out of parked, and you can test your abilities with content, marketing and much more without others taking a cut.

Back in June 2008, the co-founders of Flickr, husband and wife team Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, resigned from the company.  And by the looks of things, they’ve been staying busy ever since, working on several projects like Hunch.com and a secretive project called: Tiny Speck.  TechCrunch even ran a story in July 2009 that discussed the new project and the news that the company was hiring. 

While it’s not entirely clear what the project is all about, TechCrunch writes, “The word on the street has been that it’s some kind of new social gaming endeavor.”

The project does look interesting and fun, even from the little we’ve been able to gather.

Seller of Glitch.com Made a Nice Profit
 
While searching through recent domain sales we came across the sale of Glitch.com for $19,000 on Sedo.  The Seller actually made a handsome  profit on the name having paid a mere $3,000 in 2007 on Afternic.  Minus broker fees, the profit was good after only a few years of holding onto the name.

How’d we stumble upon Glitch?
 
We checked the registrant information on Glitch.com to see what the name was all about after seeing the price tag of $19,000, which took us to the Tiny Speck project over at TinySpeck.com.  Back in 2005, TinySpeck.com was a photography website for Damian Hevia.

While there still isn’t a lot of information on Tiny Speck, you can sign up to help them test their upcoming products on their website.  Right now, Glitch is a Baby Pig.  When you visit Glitch.com you’ll see a Flash Presentation.  Nothing more. 

Whatever the duo have in store for their new project, they’re certainly not holding back on paying whatever it takes to get the domain names they need to brand their products.

When all is said and done, don’t be surprised to see the husband and wife team amass a nice portfolio of names plucked from the Aftermarket.