SecondSpace is coming out of the shadows with a vacation home web portal one year after it raised $6.5 million from Ignition Partners. Today, it announced the launch of ResortScape and LandWatch to provide services to consumers interested in the vacation resort and rural real estate markets, respectively.
I expressed skepticism to SecondSpace CEO Anil Pereira that there is a need for another vacation home web site. But the former Classmates.com CEO said SecondSpace is trying to establish itself as the main destination for people who are looking to buy or already own a second home. He added that the company is already recording $1 million in revenue and is attracting more than 1 million unique visitors to its web properties per month.
Pereira noted that SecondSpace is not relying on CPM or CPC-based advertising models. Instead, it's emulating LoopNet, the publicly traded commercial real estate web site that applies a subscription-based revenue model. SecondSpace hopes to attract service providers, real estate brokers and other advertisers interested in acquiring leads from current or prospective second home owners and prefer to pay a fixed rate each month. Pereira think SecondSpace's technology platform will enable the company to serve increasingly contextual ads to users.
More common in the B2B segment, the subscription ad model has been forgotten by consumer Internet startups in favor of performance-based advertising. It will be worth watching in the coming months how it works out for SecondSpace.
For more on SecondSpace, see:
Brad Stone
Tags: secondspace, vc, venture+capital
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If they had 1 million unique visitors a month, they would be listed on Hitwise and Comscore's list of top 20 real estate website, but they are not. Did their CEO really claim 1 million uniques a month?