Kevin Ham

Kevin Ham is one of the world's premier domain speculators and domain owners, with assets estimated at $ 300 million.

The son of Korean residents studied medicine before teaching himself programming and running his first two Internet portals from 1998 to 2000. In 2000 he gave up his job as a doctor and began to buy expiring domain names and monetize them via domain parking .

At first he used his own written software, which should enable him to register a domain name that was becoming available faster than other Internet users. Although Ham had neither the most powerful software nor the best hardware, after just a few months he managed to outdo competing domain grabbers by securing exclusive partnerships with domain registrars.

In May 2007, Ham made it onto the cover of Business 2.0 magazine: He signed a contract with the Cameroon government, on the basis of which every user who surfs to an unregistered Cameroon address is redirected to the website of his portal Agoga.com . The highlight: The top level domain of Cameroon is .cm and is a frequent mistake for users who actually want to navigate on .com pages. According to Business 2.0, around 8 million visitors per month land on the portal and generate enormous sales for Ham through pay-per-click advertising .

Web links

• Cameroon makes money with type-in ​​traffic , anty.at, May 23, 2007
• The man who owns the Internet , CNN Money, May 22, 2007 (English)
• The sudden fame of Kevin Ham , inpado.de, May 31, 2007