GoodNews.com Could Mean Great News for Kevin Ham’s Wallet in the Billion Dollar Group Buying Business

GoodNews.com, appears to be Kevin Ham’s latest venture to kick off 2010. The web site is Coming Soon but it works on the premise of Group Buying. Group Buying is a strategy where people connected over the internet get a better deal on pricing, when the entire group purchases the same product.

CNN.com writes, “That’s the idea behind a new breed of “group buying” Web sites — at least one of which may be valued at more than $1 billion.”

Group Buying grabbed the attention of many domain investors when HomeRun.com sold for $131,200 Moniker and the owners launched a group buying site using the domain. As we reported back in February, the concept of group buying power has been back for awhile. Site’s like GroupOn have gone from about 1,000 visitors per month in June 2009 to nearly 3 million visitors per month in March 2010. HomeRun.com which has only been online a few short months hit almost 60,000 visitors in March.

Kevin Ham and Group Buying

Kevin Ham owns millions of domain names and like BlackFriday.com which he launched in 2009, he looks to take advantage of all the type in traffic by advertising GoodNews.com among his network of category-killer domains like Pajamas.com.

Elliot Silver of ElliotsBlog wrote, “A promotion like this, which will surely be seen by millions of people, would have cost another company millions of dollars to pull off. Of course, the company will certainly loose PPC revenue from people clicking away immediately rather than clicking through on the parking page links, but the sign ups they receive and revenue derived from those people will probably outweigh any lost revenue.”

Group Buying in the News

Earlier this week, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about Group buying startup LivingSocial raising $14 million in Series C funding. The announcement came just six weeks after the company closed on a series B round worth $25 million.

With group buying sites surging, Kevin Ham has picked a business that’s going to be great for his wallet.

Items.com the $50,000 domain name sold in 2010, launches “Optimized Social Shopping” website

Items.com which sold in January on Sedo for $50,000 recently launched a shopping site.  Items listed on the website range from “At Home” items to Beauty, Clothing, Computers, Electronics and more. 

The Items.com web site appears very new as the Facebook, blog and twitter entries associated with the site went online about a week ago. 

Traffic to the domain name items.com which had been previously parked was just over 2,000 unique visitors per month in March, but with items.com developed, and getting ready for summer shoppers looking to purchase swimwear and other items, it’ll be interesting to track the progress of this site’s traffic.

Items.com is currently the #50 top domain sale in 2010, and while many other names remain parked in the DNJournal YTD chart, the owners of Items.com strategy is development to make the best use of its investment.

According to the website:

items.com is a hot new way for consumers to find and compare all the best online deals out there. Get a better shopping experience by utilizing all of our fun and functional features. At items.com we utilize intuitive search to help customize your shopping experience, while cutting down search time. Our lively shopping community consists of consumers just like you. Join our community and voice your opinion on popular products and offer your expertise by talking about experiences you have had. Walk away from our site with a better idea of what deals are available, and what products provide the best bang for your buck. Become a better shopper at items.com.

Beta site of Kevin Ham’s newest venture is available (it’s DEFINITELY run by Kevin Ham, see it here)

To see the beta site, go to: http://beta.goodnews.com/deals-homepage/

Goodnews.com isn’t limited to a Coming Soon page, the website is in beta as well, and you can access the beta website and learn about Kevin Ham’s newest plans for an online business powered by group buying.

You can probably expect the full version of the website to be unveiled soon to the general public, but during the beta period you can visit the site and check out today’s deal, recent deals and a whole lot more.

And this venture is definitely run by Kevin Ham. According to the Beta website’s about page under the Who We are section:

We admit it, we’re deal lovers ourselves. That’s why our entrepreneurial team, based out of beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia (see our office Webcams), isn’t happy unless everyone shares the good news.

Our parent company, Reinvent, Inc. is a private online media and advertising company, as well as a leader in the business of direct navigation on the Internet. Working with our portfolio of over 400,000 premium domain names and the extended Reinvent Network, we receive over 30 million unique visitors every month.

Rookie Mistake as Rookie.com Expires, once owned by the National Rookie League (NRL)

The domain name Rookie.com expired on April 20, 2010 and goes to auction on May 25.  It already has 59 bids with a high pre-bid of $2,301 on NameJet. 

The domain name was once owned by the National Rookie League which had a website online in the early 2000s before being disbanded.

According to Wikipedia:

The National Rookie League (NRL) was an American unaffiliated minor league for the National Basketball Association that completed its inaugural season in August, 2000.

The NRL was exclusive to players under the age of 24 and was designed to help prepare the nation’s most talented young athletes for a professional basketball career.

It consisted of just four teams, located on the eastern side of the country: Baltimore Blaze, Washington Justice, Philadelphia Force and the Delaware Destroyers.

The National Rookie League was disbanded in 2002.

Hallpass Media’s Bill Karamouzis Relaunches new company site, “Develop Those Generics!”

If you're not familiar with Hallpass media, Bill takes aim at premium domain names, then develops them into highly engaging portals.

Hallpass Media has launched a new company site that showcases the company’s collection of highly entertaining gaming and virtual world websites.  The owner of Hallpass Media is the March/April cover story at DN Journal and Bill has been the subject of several stories here on Fusible.com in recent weeks.

A week ago we wrote about the facelift to the Hallpass Meda site that was more a landing page, but that all changed today.  Bill emailed earlier and said the new site has been launched just today.

The new site has a cleaner interface that immediately draws attention to the popular internet properties such as StickGames.com, GirlGames.com, GuyGames.com and more.  There is also a section for advertising that offers information on the demographics so that companies looking to advertise to teens, moms, and women for example, can easily choose VirtualPets.com and WordGames.com.

In the last story run here on Fusible.com Hallpassmedia buyer of CookingGames.com, gets a facelift; over 3,000,000 gamers monthly, Bill commented and even offered up advice to domain investors:

Develop those generics folks!

Software.de sells for $313K on Sedo; Did Software.com buy another great domain like they did with Software.co.uk?

The keyword software which is searched over 1 million times per month globally, has sold at Sedo for $313,618.90 USD.  Software.co.uk sold on Sedo in October 2009 for $249,000 after being purchased by Software.com Holdings Pty Limited.   While the price of the .de is considerably higher than the .co.uk name, .de domain names have been enjoying strong business in the last year. 

Currently the domain Software.de is registered in Sedo’s transfer service, but based on past sales, there is a good chance Software.com landed another great name for their portfolio. 

Software.com was purchased for $3,200,000 in 2005 in a private transaction and is one of the Top 100 domain sales of all time, just ahead of candy.com.

Software.co.uk redirects to software.com.

We Were Wrong about CamRoulette.com – an apology to Adam Strong

It’s nothing personal. Back in late March after the Domain Madness 2 auction ended boosted by the sale of one domain: CamRoulette.com for $151,000, we were skeptics. Was that wrong? We were the only ones with doubts? While we certainly didn’t dismiss the sale, we found it hard to believe, considering the availability of similar domain names for hand-registration but also the availability of category-killer names for the same pricing. We recently logged into Twitter almost a month after the auction only to find several messages from some of the top domainers firing at us for our story, apparently over a statement we made in our article:

If this big sale of CamRoulette.com is not a complete sham, then it will certainly be the success story of domain names in 2010 that demonstrates anything’s still possible in this industry…

Could the new owner back out and have buyer’s remorse over such a huge deal? Possibly. Could the bids have been bogus? Maybe. Things happen.

It created a firestorm of messages on Twitter, but not on our blog. Either way, the comment wasn’t intended to imply that the seller Adam Strong was duping people, it was more of sticker shock at the sale price. We had our doubts, and we were wrong. Chances are in the future, we’ll be wrong on other stories too — it happens.

We’ve actually covered the story ever since, and were the first to announce the launch of CamRoulette.com.

We write a blog. And we write about our observations and opinions. Plain and simple. We’re happy to hear the criticism and complaints. But like we said, our comments are just our opinions, and shouldn’t be taken as a shot.

However we do apologize to Adam Strong.

After floating our disbelief at the sale, it was definitely egg in our face. But it is awesome to see such a success story with a domain name that had little or no potential just a few short months ago.