We're Fusible

After weeks of back and forth between a Beta site and Coming Soon page, Kevin Ham and Tony Lam of Reinvent, have finally launched GoodNews.com to the public. At the end of April, Kevin Ham took advantage of all the type in traffic by advertising GoodNews.com among his network of domain names like Pajamas.com.

From there, a Beta site was accessible for a short time.

That all changed in June and early July as GoodNews.com partnered with Vancouver.com to catch subscribers.

If you had logged on to Twitter and visited @GoodNewsVan in the last couple weeks (the Twitter account for Kevin Ham’s Group Buying venture GoodNews.com), GoodNews.com announced that followers would get to take a sneak peek at the new web site which was expected to be launched this week.

Now, that the site is officially launched, you can expect it’s going to be successful as the potential for group buying websites in 2010 and beyond is enormous – especially partnered with geo websites and social media.

Traffic to the website has already climbed from under 2,000 unique visitors in March 2010 to over 45,000 visitors in May 2010 – demonstrating the power of Reinvent’s type in traffic and category killer domains.

What is GoodNews.com?

GoodNews.com aims to seamlessly connect local people, local businesses, and local organizations in a powerful way for a good cause. The company was conceived from our belief that being socially responsible and giving back to our community should be as easy as getting a great deal.

To accomplish this, we’re working with local businesses to put together amazing deals, and then pairing every deal with a meaningful local cause. A portion of the proceeds from each deal purchased goes directly to the cause. Now it’s easy for all of us (shoppers and businesses) to donate and contribute to our local community.

At GoodNews.com, we’ve created a unique, socially-conscious shopping experience that people will want to share with family and friends. We believe that the more positive connections we make, the more our entire community benefits.

We hope to hear good news from our social shoppers, local businesses, and local causes so that our message spreads around the world, from city to city.

Sometimes you have to wonder what it takes to get a name accepted at a Great Domains auction. If you’ve been rejected in the past, you might be trying to figure out what’s going on after you see some of the domain names listed for the upcoming auction in less than a week.

Before I get started, here’s a look at the criteria for a GreatDomains listing. The information was taken straight from the GreatDomains web site.

» The domain is short, a real word and is easy to remember
» It is a generic domain, e.g. like car.com, creditcard.com or books.com
» The domain is easy to spell and not prone to typographical errors
» The domain is product-related and therefore has a high commercial value
» The domain doesn’t violate any third party rights (e.g. trademark rights)
» The TLD geographically matches the language of the domain name
» The reserve price for the domain is reasonable

If you take a close look at some of the names listed for the upcoming Premium auction, you have to ask yourself how did some of these names get in?

Not that they’re terrible names by any standard, but if you pass them through the GreatDomains checklist they don’t necessarily cut the mustard.

CanadasPolitics.com?

BankCreditScore.com?

Here’s the thing, generally it’s reasonable to think a “Great Domain” is already registered in most of the popular TLDs – at least .NET and .ORG if it’s so great. But as with any GreatDomains auction, you can usually produce a list of available .NET and .ORG domains, and this GreatDomains auction promises many more.

Great Domains, Available for Hand-Registration

Here’s a list of available .NET and .ORG domain names for hand-registration, based on the list of “Great Domains” for the upcoming Premium auction.

BANKCREDITSCORE.NET
BANKCREDITSCORE.ORG
BRITISHSPY.NET
BRITISHSPY.ORG
CANADASPOLITICS.NET
CANADASPOLITICS.ORG
DRINKFLUIDS.NET
DRINKFLUIDS.ORG
ETULSA.NET
FEATHERSKIRT.NET
FEATHERSKIRT.ORG
FEATHERSKIRTS.NET
FEATHERSKIRTS.ORG
GUNUSE.NET
GUNUSE.ORG
LAMBICS.NET
LAMBICS.ORG
NYC360.ORG
PAIDTAXES.NET
PAIDTAXES.ORG
SYNG.ORG
VCRTV.NET
VCRTV.ORG
YOLP.ORG

Kevin Ham’s @GoodNewsVan announced just hours ago that GoodNews.com will officially launch next week. The Group Buying service run by Kevin Ham and his crew at Reinvent, promises more deals and surprises as it makes the leap from Beta.

@GoodNewsVan, the Twitter account for GoodNews.com, posted the following tweet less than 10 hours ago:

“Thanks for checking out the site during this beta week – our official launch is next week! There will be more deals and other surprises!”

It looks like Kevin Ham’s timing is right when it comes to picking which domains to develop and launch. The group buying craze in 2010 is hot and the amount of investing and popularity of sites suggests it’s not going away anytime soon.

HomeRun.com, the domain name that sold in February 2010 for $130,000, has skyrocketed in traffic as its group buying service was officially launched. In May, traffic to the site shot well past 100,000 visitors.

How Hot is Group Buying?

According to some estimates by analysts, Groupon (the leader in the Online Group Buying industry) is valued at more than $1 billion.

In May 2009, the site had just over 10,000 visitors. Last month, the site reported nearly 5 million unique visitors.

Love them or hate them, typo domain names with traffic can be profitable. In December 2009, Bissel.com (a typo of Bissell) sold on NameJet and ended with a $10,088 sale price and 118 bids from 74 bidders. But at least that name came with type in traffic.

Not all typo domain names, no matter how good they look, are worth very much – even if every typo variation is already registered.

That’s the case with a typo gambling domain name over at NameJet that expired on June 15, 2010: FullTildpoker.com.  The domain already has 4 bidders with a high bid of $555.  But that’s really all it has.

Are bidders doing their research?

Some domain names are so easy to misspell, because they involve little thought. For example, Twitter.com. Many type the URL into their browser with just one ‘t’. Twiter.com gets as many as 140,000 unique visitors per month.

However, in the case of FullTiltpoker.com, it’s pretty tough to spell it with the letter ‘d’ instead of ‘t’. Give it a shot on your keyboard and see for yourself.

But the fact FullTildpoker.com doesn’t have much potential, hasn’t stopped NameJet users from bidding up the domain — A domain with zero visitors in type-in traffic, zero page rank, and other issues that would cause most domain investors to be wary such as trademark issues (although it appears the Full Tilt Poker trademark was abandoned years ago).

Before you bid on a domain, do your research. Unless you are absolutely sure the spelling is correct, most web sites have a feature to view the domain in Uppercase.

Unfortunately, one unlucky winner in this case, is getting stuck with a $500+ bill, maybe more.