You heard it here folks. Damion Foxworthy is now the proud new owner of my ActiveRain profile. The story behind the sale follows…I’m sure many of you have heard the controversy about the sale of MMORPG characters and goods. It is quite an industry actually, complete with overseas sweatshops where workers will spend hours mining for gold in World of Warcraft, or building up an Everquest Character for resale. You can even buy 50,000 “Linden” dollars on ebay for only $199.99, in the popular online universe known as second life. I even wrote a post about it a while back that discussed the implications of a lady that became the first millionaire from selling virtual goods.
It’s an interesting topic… and it got me thinking. If people can sell virtual goods and money, why not ActiveRain points? ActiveRain isn’t a game or an online virtual world, but it does deal with a potential commodity called: points.
In the early days of ActiveRain, it was pretty common to see people gaming the system for points. Writing 10 junk posts a day, or commenting 50 times a day just to build their points. But as AR has evolved there have been measures put in to make sure that in order for people to get ahead, they have to actually work at it. Which makes the points that much more valuable.
Let’s discuss the value of points for a moment… As most of you know, points can help you get ahead of your competition in any given market. You can see here that I am currently listed in Colorado. Ranked 7th in Colorado, 2nd in Douglas County, and 1st in the town of Castle Rock. Not Bad!
But, lets say I decided to sell my profile to a real estate agent in Virginia… it’s a hugely populated state, and represents a huge real estate market segment. But, there is very little competition for points. Meaning if I were to switch my profile to Virginia…
I suddenly catapult to the number 2 position in Virginia, 1st in Arlington County, and 1st in Arlington. Pretty amazing!
Not only does the profile now catapult me to the top of the Virginia members, but it also gets me to the home page of activerain for all the people from Virginia viewing the site!
It struck me like a ton of bricks the other day that my AR profile is valuable!!! And somebody might pay some serious dough to get an instant high placement in the state they work in. So, I went ahead and sold it to the highest bidder. I considered the fact that many of the AR member would be angry, frustrated, or even hostile. And if you happen to have read this far into the paragraph you’ll be happy to know that none of this is actually true. I haven’t sold my profile, I just wanted to see what kind of reaction it would get from the AR community. What if tomorrow you woke up and saw a profile selling for $6,000 on ebay? Would you be mad, upset, surprised, frustrated? What? Points are important to alot of people… whether you are trying to beat your competitor to the home page or AR, or trying to get to that coveted first spot on localsim. Points on AR are the underlying thing that drive the community.
The other issue to selling an AR profile is the content. What do you do with it? Let the person have it for free? Place a CC license on it so they can’t duplicate it? You have to ask yourself, are you willing to let all that content slip away… how valuable is it to you?
Points rule activerain… and I plan to make a fortune from selling AR profiles. Who’s with me???
Related posts:
November 15th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Justin, Wow, you certainly had a revelation! Change your profile to Maryland, and I will be the first to bid! Will you take an IOU?
November 15th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
so, comin’ to Arlington, huh? We would welcome you - it’s a great place! But really… selling your AR profile… thought provocative at least!
Have a great evening!
November 16th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Not only was I not mad, I was reading the post to find out how you did it.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:02 am
You are too funny!! The idea is interesting.
November 16th, 2007 at 2:07 am
Great idea!
I have a friend that used to play online poker. If you choose you can play for fun using fake money. Once he had a couple millions fake dollars he’d sell them on EBay for about $70 for every 2 million. No risk.
Or there are the Realtors in Second Life…
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/22/technology/fastforward_secondlife.fortune/index.htm
November 16th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Justin, That is awesome!! Its about time somebody over on activerain made some money$$ Keep up the great work. I think I am going to dig this too.
Late.
November 16th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Justin - loved the article. I, too, was wondering how you did it…and I was ready to go. My points ought to be worth something, huh? Hey, the holidays are approaching and I have no closings on the immediate horizon.
Jeff
November 16th, 2007 at 3:34 am
I can Digg it!
November 16th, 2007 at 4:14 am
i dig it too……you had me going…
now that you shared this idea with us, i wonder who will actually do it?
- rudy
November 16th, 2007 at 4:23 am
I think it is awesome. I love the free market system. I think it oulw be worth buying. We pay more than for other lead generating.
November 16th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Very imformative , I am so confused about how all this blogging works, seems there is so much to it, where do you all learn this stuff?
November 17th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Justin - I may now have to reevaluate the points I have and whether to accumulate more for future value…….
November 17th, 2007 at 3:44 am
This is the free market, I think you should be able to make money how you want to as long as it is not illegal. I love Capitalism!
November 17th, 2007 at 6:28 am
Justin… I’m still trying to do the math on my points.
Loved this.
November 17th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Thanks Jeff,
From you that means alot.
November 18th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Great idea, there are a lot of agents out there who want instant success without putting in the effort, but I think AR might be on its way out, so you wouldn’t catch me trading money for points.
November 18th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Wow, that’s a pretty innovative idea. I’m not so sure AR is really worth putting a lot of time into, but obviously a lot of people do. I’ve got a small profile on AR but I’ve gotten very few referrals from it.
By the way, I found your blog through Bloodhound, where this post was nominated for an award of some sort. Good luck!
November 19th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Just starting to get into the whole activerain thing. Congrats on the nomination. Good luck.
November 19th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Great post, Justin. Very thought-provoking and very well-written!
Brian Wilson, Zolve.com
November 20th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Very good spoof. If only there was a way to monitize my AR account which has 80K of points, I would likely sell it, I really am starting to believe that AR is a diminishing property.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:21 am
I think it is funny that someone would think it would be anywhere near that valuable.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
WOW, I’m absolutely shocked that someone would pay that kind of money. I would of sold it to
November 27th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Amazing blog post, I’m not sure of my AR points situation. I know plenty of people sell myspace accounts so I guess it’s not different. Web traffic is worth so much money these days.
November 28th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Wow I never thought of it that way, but I could see this happening sometime soon. 6k could be a low number, it could be more like 15k if the points are high enough, and if it has a good Google PR.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:42 am
I think this is a great idea! How about selling our profile on Ebay!
November 30th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Wow - why don’t such things happen to me!
December 8th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Well you just basically hit a small lotto. I cant believe someone would actually pay that much for an AR page.
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:51 am
Very interesting theory. I’m not sure what someone would pay for an AR profile. But some people are very into getting those points, myself to some point as well. First page placement is worth something for sure. hmmm…
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
LOL - I can only imagine the heart attacks of some AR members if profiles could be sold.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I love that idea. Pretty sure that I would sell my profile for that price.
July 5th, 2008 at 4:06 am
I don’t know if I would pay over 6k for a profile with under 100k points. I was active on Active Rain in the very beginning but started a new profile in what I think was April and have already accumulated over 12k points through moderate use and not paying attention to my points accumulation.
I could spend that $6,000 on online marketing and generate the same results. In fact, I could outsource it overseas and for $6,000 I could pay someone $2 an hour to get me a half million points using genuine content that they write.
Luckily, I keep plenty busy enough as it is.
July 5th, 2008 at 4:09 am
…another thing I have noticed about Active Rain is that a lot of the “busier” people on Active Rain are not as busy in their actual career. Sure, there are some superstars with a high point count (you may be one of them — I have no idea — never saw you on there), but just like Tila Tequila is a MySpace celebrity who does not do much outside of MySpace and two seasons of a reality show, there are Active Rain celebrities who are not doing too much outside of the cyber world.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I would sell mine for that kind of cash but like you said you haven’t sold yours yet. As a MMORPG gamer, my choice is LOTRO, I have seen gold spammers and character selling but it takes the fun out of it for me.
But for marketing positioning it would be a smart business solution to immediately be top in a region and would be interested to know if AR would take actions to prevent profile selling.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:07 am
hahah i thought you really got paid from it ..but your idea is interesting and very attracting .. i realized that i might be able to do the same with my visitor tracker - have 100+ visitors a day. but im thinking i might not be able to make the same website for real estate ..
August 24th, 2008 at 3:30 am
Before I had much RE experience I knew enough to brand my website not with my name, but with a generic phrase I could sell to someone at a later time. I don’t want to be out showing houses when I’m 80. When you figure out how to sell points I will be the first to jump on the bandwagon!
October 12th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
To say that your idea was thought provoking is an understatement. We are always looking for ways to think outside of the box. Keep the great ideas coming!