Entrepreneur Derick Downs Set to Capitalize on Pokemon Go Craze With Auction for Website Pokeymongo

(PRWEB) JULY 19, 2016

Pokémon GO has only been available in the App Store for a little more than a week and already has converted the masses into Pokemon trainers.The GPS-powered-hide-and-seek game is currently attracting more daily users than Tinder and Twitter.

Despite being free to download and play, users are spending an estimated $1.6 million per day on in-app purchases to improve their chances and skills. Niantec, the maker of the game is not the only one profiting off the game’s popularity. Nintendo is an investor in both Niantec and the Pokémon Company and saw its share price rise 24.5 percent on Monday, the highest one-day surge for Nintendo since 1983. In just 12 days Pokémon GO has been downloaded by 5% of all Android smartphones in America and added $7.5 billion to the firm’s market value already.

With the game’s ever increasing popularity, many people and businesses are trying to find ways to monetize the Pokémon GO obsession. Craigslist is full of people offering to drive game users around town in search of rare Pokémon; vendors have been lining up in Central Park and other popular Pokémon areas to sell Pokémon GO accessories; restaurants and small businesses all over America have benefitted by strategically purchasing lures to attract Pokémon-and therefore the customers who want to catch them-to their locations.

Derick Downs, an entrepreneur in San Diego, who has been building websites since 2011 was on the front-end of the Pokémon GO craze when he purchased the‘Pokeymongo.com’ (with a ‘Y’) domain name on July 7th after a friend of his talked about the game over drinks. Downs recognized the opportunity for organic visits to a webpage with a variant spelling error in its title and capitalized.

He quickly constructed a website with brief information, tips, and tricks for the game and within minutes of ‘http://www.pokeymongo.com‘ being live was receiving thousands of visitors to his website. Downs is auctioning off the ‘Pokeymongo’ domain name on ‘Flippa.com’, right now in efforts to capitalize on his quick-thinking. The website is currently “receiving around 10,000 unique visits daily” according its Flippa listing and is #1 in the “Most Active Auction” category on Flippa’s website, with 93 bidders and a highest bid so far of $2,000 in auction that ends at 10:00 AM on July 24th.

Although nobody can not be certain how long the Pokémon craze will continue, it shows no signs of slowing down. It is apart of the best-known gaming franchise in history and as of now has only been released to three markets (it is set to be released to Asia in coming days). If anything, the early success of Pokémon GO has revealed to Nintendo the untapped potential of the mobile gaming market, unfamiliar territory for them before recently. More Nintendo mobile apps are scheduled for release this year, but the company must first prove they can maintain interest and sustain profit.

For now, while the rest of the world is walking around with their heads in their phones searching for Pokémon, entrepreneurs and tech savvies from all over are doing their best to capitalize on the madness.