|
By the time he reached his
early teens, Kevin's value system was firmly entrenched, but a
single event would wind up determining the course he would take
from there. "My
whole life changed when I was 14," Ham said. "One
minute I was ice skating and then suddenly, I could hardly walk
and couldn’t move most of my joints. I went to a friend’s
house after ice skating and while trying to play Monopoly
(another part of my early business training), I couldn’t even
move the pieces."
"Later that night, I went to the hospital and
was diagnosed with an autoimmune childhood disease. Fortunately,
I recovered in two weeks, but it was then that I became
determined to become a medical doctor. My mother actually
advised against it because of the long schooling and long
hours, but I felt a need to be a healer, a listener and I
always dreamed of finding a cure for cancer."
|
|
Kevin
Ham (right) with his close friend and current
business partner Colin Yu immediately after they
graduated together from the University of British
Columbia. |
After high school Ham
began his journey by enrolling at the University of British
Columbia, but he was in for a shock - high school had not
prepared him for college life. "I
failed every single midterm exam. I realized that I needed to
smarten up and after studying every day, I ended up getting
over 92% on all my finals."
"I
also realized that I needed to develop my social skills
and so I set a goal to look into the eyes of every person I
spoke to, until that person looked away. As I did this, I was
freed from the burden of shyness. I could look deep into a
person’s heart by looking through their eyes," Ham
said.
"I started
volunteering at the hospital and doctor’s offices and also
volunteered 200 hours at the Vancouver Crisis Centre,
speaking to people in crisis, who were sometimes at the point of
suicide. I started to see that each person had psychosocial and
physical needs - the most important being the innermost part of
a person."
Ham went on to earn his medical degree then
rolled up his sleeves and went to |
| work. "I could connect
with patients easily, especially older patients. They felt
secure in my hands. Although the responsibility of their lives
was a huge weight to have, I loved being a doctor." |
But you know what they say
about the best laid plans of mice and men. "After
seeing firsthand the sacrifices many doctors make, and the
financial pressures and other strains on them - paperwork, fear
of litigation and the like – I decided I didn’t want to run
a medical practice as a “business” and forget about the most
important part of medicine – the people. I knew that in
order to concentrate on the people, I had to have some financial
freedom," Ham said.
| He also had an even bigger
over-riding vision - creating the world's largest gospel
media network - a dream that he knew would also require a
lot of money to realize. "My parents |
| became
Christians in the early 1980s. When I was
16 I had a chance to learn what the Bible had to say and it really captivated me.
I received so many answers about life and about myself, that I treasured
the Bible greatly. I feel blessed that I was able to come close to such
a great book, that is historical, moral, wise and spiritual at a young
age and it became my foundation. This has solidified and permeates
every aspect of my being, thought and life. It's the reason why I am still working on the Internet at this time, rather than doing my dream
job of medical missionary work," Ham said. |
|
In fact Ham's initial
infatuation with the Internet stemmed from his belief that it
would be the ultimate tool for spreading the Gospel. "In
1993, a professor from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told me how this new communication tool, email, would be very
important in reaching people all over the world and this new browser,
Mosaic, would allow people to share their knowledge with the world very
easily. He told me that it would be a very powerful tool in the sharing
of the Gospel of the Bible. This really made me think that I needed to
understand what the World Wide Web, the Internet, was all
about," Ham said.
"In 1997, in my third
year of Medical school, as the Internet and email became much
more popular, I decided to learn how to design web sites. I
became proficient with Photoshop and Front Page.
As I began to understand the significance of domain names in
2000, I knew that I had to obtain certain domain names in order
to build the gospel media network I envisioned. However, the owners of those domain names
either were not interested in selling or wanted hundreds of thousands of dollars for them.
So I knew I needed a lot of money to acquire these domain names.
My goal was to make millions of dollars in order to buy
these domains."
|
With his quest now
clearly
defined, Ham set out to make his fortune on the Internet. "Part way through my first year of family practice
medicine, I started an Internet company called HostGlobal.com. I
incorporated as a U.S. company in Nevada and
funded it with credit cards as we had very little money,"
Ham said.
"So
my master plan was to get a lot of web hosting companies
as advertisers. Back then, they were the hot thing, and they
seemed to have large advertising budgets. Before I even
approached them, I knew I needed visitors who would host with
them. So how could I get visitors? If I had reviews, people
would come to me through the search engines. How would I get
reviews of web hosting companies? I had to find people who
already had an existing web hosting account. How would I
build the web hosting review directory? I ended up finding an
all for one solution. I would buy this directory software and
learn programming to write code for a user review/rating
module for that software," Ham said.
|
|
"Pretty soon I had thousands
of reviews. Then I used my web hosting directory list to contact
all the web hosting companies and offered them advertising for $30
a month. Surely I would get at least ten interested
parties. No one was interested. I supposed they believed
that if it was that cheap, something must be wrong. So I
waited a month and sent out the same email but this time increased
the price to $300 a month. This time I received a couple
of interested parties, so a a few months later, I asked for $3,000
a month. My highest paying company was $20,000 a month!
When I finished residency, I was just thinking now if I could
just increase my visitors, then I could get even more
advertisers. This was June 2000. and my internet
businesses at that time were on pace to make $300,000
profit per year," Ham said.
|
|
"In
March 2000, I started DNSindex.com because a registrar
reseller told me he was making $1,500 per month on the $50
link I sold to him on my Hostglobal.com site. It was a
tiny space at the top right corner of my site and I didn’t
really care about domains at that time, but when he told me
that, I thought that in order to increase my offering to
Hostglobal.com visitors, I should also be a resource to help
them register or buy a domain name," Ham said.
"But how was I going
to get more registrations? I thought if I came up with a list of
domains to register, people could subscribe to these lists for $49
a year. Anthony
Peppler helped me generate some of these lists (compiled
through research we did on the web) and we shared the profits.
My wife also helped generate lists while I was working at the
hospital. By offering a free sampling of domains to attract
customers I soon had thousands of subscribers."
|
|
"I then
asked those subscribers to register their domains though my
registrar reseller account. So I made money on the subscription,
but much more on the registrations. Pretty soon, I was making $10,000
to $20,000 per month selling special lists along with the
registrations fees - and I started to meet a lot of interesting
people," Ham said.
Another
domain pioneer, Scott Day (left) has Kevin's
attention during lunch
at the 2008 Domain Roundtable conference in San
Francisco last month.
Ham said "It was a
much different crowd than I was used to – a mixture of
rawness, visionary and entrepreneurial people and yet with a
competitive nature. In the beginning my focus was to just try
and buy domains that had to do with web hosting and domains. I
kept emailing the owner of WebHosts.com. I offered
him $10,000 and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t
responding. I now understand because the owner is one of
my best friends, Scott Day - the watermelon
farmer" (and owner of one of the world's best domain portfolios).
| Ham noticed that someone
else based in Vancouver was registering a lot of expired
domains. He wondered why someone would register so many
domain names. Ham only owned about 20 at the time and had
business plans for all of them to join the handful of live sites
he was already |
| operating. So
he picked up the phone and asked this guy if he could meet with
him. The stranger turned out to be Frank Schilling, now a
legendary domainer in his own right of course.
"Frank just
struck me as a straight shooter and he let me in on the secret –
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising," Ham said. Kevin started down the same road, signing up with FindWhat.com as his
PPC provider because he saw that the biggest domainer, Yun Ye,
was on that service. "I assumed that the biggest domainer
would be at the best PPC company - but little did I know
that most domainers were at FindWhat because GoTo.com had
terminated all but a few. Eventually I got into Goto.com, which increased
revenues |
Frank
Schilling clued Ham in on PPC revenue. |
| five fold," Ham said.
However, the FindWhat
connection still paid off because he became very good friends with
the reclusive Yun Ye, the pioneer who sold his portfolio to Marchex
for $164 million. |
Ham also learned that his
hometown of Vancouver had become a global hotbed of domaining.
"Like Frank, Richard Lau, who won T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s
first Domainer of the Year Award also became a very good
friend (Editor's note: Schilling and Ham have followed Lau as
winners of that award). I believe Yun should have won it too. My
current partner, Colin Yu, was an anchor in helping me
grow the business as well."
|
As Ham's success with
domains continued to grow, his medical career remained stuck on
the back burner for far longer than he planned. "The three
to six months I expected turned into a year and that has now
become almost eight years," Ham said. "While I am
focused on the |
|
Steven
Sacks handles domain
acquisition for Reinvent Technology. |
business, I have been able to dedicate some time
to giving lectures on preventative and more practical medicine,
especially for people who cannot afford medications. In
addition, I continue to support medical missionary efforts
worldwide. Medicine and healing will always be a
part of me, whether or not I am at a hospital or medical office.
I believe in the holistic approach of the healing of the body,
the mind and soul, and the spirit."
Having been educated in how to monetize domains, Ham decided to
zero in on generic keyword domains and domains that received a
steady flow of traffic.
"I was particularly focused on domain names in the
religion, ecommerce, lifestyle, travel and health
verticals," Ham said. "You will see that our portfolio
is in the top five and likely the best overall in terms of
quality and scale, especially in these categories. I saw that
the timelessness of these verticals would allow generations to
develop out these domains, rather than concentrating on mistypes
or the flavor of the month/fad domains. I started working
with Steven Sacks and mentored him, and now he is in
charge of our domain acquisitions." |
|
"In
2004, I asked my older brother, Don, who was running his
own dry cleaning business, to join me as we made plans to launch
our own syndication (PPC) platform. Within six months, we had |
|
the best monetizing platform and Hitfarm.com was born.
Don is now President of our syndication business. He has always
been a people person and that is the brand he
brings," Kevin said. "In
the past, we targeted the mid- to upper-level market - people
who had fairly large portfolios - but as this market
consolidates, we plan to start catering more to the general
market."
"Because we have such a large portfolio ourselves,
our mindset has always been to use technology to scale and
intelligently optimize our portfolio as well as those on our
platform. We acquired one of the leading semantic
companies in the world last year and we will be leveraging that
in our existing business and also across other initiatives,"
Ham added.
Ham's domain strategy has
now come full circle and he is again focusing on developing the
domain assets he has. "Since
last year, we have concentrated on trying to leverage the great
portfolio we have built, along with its traffic and |
Don
Ham runs Reinvent's
PPC platform - Hitfarm.com |
| data stream.
We have many projects in the pipeline and are shifting our focus
to developing out new lines of businesses and revenue streams,"
Ham said. With names like HDTV.com, Camp.com, Attorney.com,
Spanish.com and Laptop.com to build on, his company -
recently christened Reinvent Technology (at Reinvent.com),
obviously has a great foundation to build on. |
Ham is also moving into
the Geodomain space and has acquired the ultimate destination
for his hometown - Vancouver.com. "Vancouver.com
is a very special domain for many reasons. Many would say
that Vancouver is the domain capital of the world. The city is
consistently voted as one of the top three livable cities in the
world. And of course, the 2010 Winter Olympics will
bring the eyes of the whole world to Vancouver," Ham said.
View
of Vancouver, Canada from the Reinvent Technology office.
"We
are building a new advertising and retail platform through
Vancouver.com. The ambition and initiative is huge and if
we can make it work for our city, then we can build it for the
rest of the world. Geo domains are asset rich but cash
flow poor. So if we can change that paradigm into one that is
cash flow rich, then we will raise the level for all geo
domains."
"We also own Washington.com,
Melbourne.com, Brisbane.com, Perth.com, Wichita.com
and many other geo related domain names. While these geo
domains are words, they need to be combined with the right
business models to realize their value. We are confident that
our efforts and the plans we have for our geo domains will
change the way people interact and do business."
|
Kevin
Ham on the cover of
Business 2.0 magazine - June 2007 |
While assembling his
phenomenal portfolio, Ham stayed off most people's radar - but
he finally went public in a big way last summer when he was the
subject of Paul Sloan's widely read cover story in Business
2.0 magazine titled The
Man Who Owns the Internet. I asked Ham why he
finally decided to step into the spotlight, how that article
changed his life and what he thought about the piece.
"I
agreed to do the Business 2.0
article because I thought it was going to be a story of the top
domainers in the world, most of who live or have lived in
Vancouver. I was surprised that I was featured as the
cover story and may have declined to do the story if I had
known. I wanted to use the story to gain some credibility and
exposure for the business to assist in hiring local talent, and
also use it to jumpstart development of several Christian
domains that I am quite passionate about," Ham said.
"After
the cover story came out, there was instant curiosity and a
sense of awe by those I knew and my inbox, which was already
heavily inundated, started to overflow with even more
|
| emails
from people who wanted to sell me domain names, investment
bankers who were interested in investing in our business, and
Christian organizations that wished to partner on spreading the
Gospel." |
I have always been a
grounded individual and so I had to take a step back. The
first thing I did was register The-Internet.ca, to give
some credence to the title of the article, The Man Who Owns
"The Internet", Ham smiled. "The article showed
the entrepreneurial side of me, but missed the human
perspective of who I am. People read it and either thought I
was a great entrepreneur, or thought I was only about making
money."
Now that Ham has reached
the point that he no longer has to work for money, his idea for
the global Gospel Media Network we talked about earlier is
moving back toward the front burner as many of the pieces he
needed to complete that puzzle have now fallen into place.
"In 2004, with some help from above and the help of my good friend, Richard Lau, we obtained God.com. In 2005, again
with Richard's help, we obtained Religion.com. In 2007, we obtained
Heaven.com. In between those times, we have built up a supporting cast
of domains, such as GospelMusic.com, Rapture.com,
Baptism.com, Trinity.com, Messiah.com, Devil.com,
Satan.com, Christians.com, Catholicism.com,
Buddhists.com,
Muslims.com, Jew.com and thousands of other such
names," Ham said.
| "The
legendary Yun Ye, acquired the domain name
MyBible.com in an auction for me and carved that out of
the sale of his portfolio to Marchex. It is one of the
first domain names I plan to develop for the Gospel Media Network (GMN). Eight years later, we are on the road to
developing out these web sites. I am
very excited and passionate about this vision. It's what |
gets
me up in
the morning. I have the handful of domain names for GMN that
I envisioned in 2000. It is evidence to me that this is why I am
where I am and what I need to do," Ham said.
"My prayer is that I find passionate like-minded people working with me
on the GMN, who understand how the Internet can be used to reach many
others who are seeking God. Everyone at some point in their life will."
"The great thing about the Internet is that it is where people go for
information and they have control as to what they read. If they are
interested, they delve deeper into the web site's content, or they are
free to click away to another web site. I am not exactly sure as to the
form or details of the GMN, but it becomes clearer each day and I trust
that God will show and pave the way. I hope that we can look back in
five years' time and mark this as a turning point for the GMN." |
|
"At the same time, I am also very passionate about building and creating
value with the thousands of other domain names we have acquired and have
many exciting initiatives there too," Ham added. "Working with a group of people who
are very passionate about all of these initiatives makes this fun,
exciting and inspiring."
"I
believe each person has the capacity to attain many different
skills that are unrelated. The world tries to funnel us to excel
at one thing, but I like the Renaissance period, where
people like Leonardo Da Vinci were skilled in both art
and science, using both sides of their brain. I play the piano,
love the science and art of medicine, practice judo, love to
read and watch movies regarding history and religion, and try to
excel at being an entrepreneur and businessman," Ham said.
|
Dr.
Ham delivering a speech at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West
in Las Vegas (Feb. 2008) that people are still
talking about. |
At the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
West conference in Las Vegas in February, Ham
delivered an impromptu speech during a lightly attended morning
seminar session that blew away everyone who heard it (I
was sitting on the panel when Ham gave his talk). Three months
later people are still buzzing about it. I asked Ham what led up
to that unforgettable address.
"I felt a desire to reach one
person, to give them hope
and inspire them," Ham said. " I have taught the high
school group at church and give talks at least yearly about life
perspective. It's the reason I became a doctor and a central
theme in my life is to touch the heart and soul of others in some
capacity."
"That week of the
conference, many of us only had gotten a few hours sleep each
night. It was an early morning session and I had no idea what I
was going to speak about. As I started speaking, I could see
that the people in the crowd were really listening and so that
allowed me to speak straight from the heart. My main point
was that success is not something that
|
| other people
determine for you. Just because they put you on the cover of a
magazine doesn't mean success. I already had everything before
that cover story. Success is something you define yourself and
ultimately comes from up above," Ham said. |
|
"You can have the
perfect plan and execute it, but there are so many other
factors. For me, that is giving oneself up to a higher power,
with the thought that I be used to do something that helps at
least one other person. If you have that grounded perspective,
then even when what others define as success is taken away, you
are still very whole and humble when you have nothing and also
when you have everything."
"I often find that in
this busy world, people don't have time to think about what is
important and forget what is important in their lives. So
just going back to basics, it helps us focus and figure out the
reason why we do the things we do," Ham said. "If we
are in business just to make money, I think that there will be a
lot of emptiness inside. Money is just a means to an end."
"Of course, making money is
important because it takes money to do something in this world,
but many people think money is the end goal and so when they get
it, then what to do with it becomes an afterthought. I
just wanted to touch one person in the room or one person who
may listen to that speech later in life...and that one person
may perhaps be my own child."
|
Dr.
Ham with the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
2007 Domainer of the Year Award
he received in October 2007. |
*****
|
