How I Sold My ActiveRain Profile for $6,750.00
November 15, 2007 – 10:51 pmYou 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???
34 Responses to “How I Sold My ActiveRain Profile for $6,750.00”
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?
By Scott on Nov 15, 2007
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!
By Jennifer Klaussen on Nov 15, 2007
Not only was I not mad, I was reading the post to find out how you did it.
By Todd Carpenter on Nov 16, 2007
You are too funny!! The idea is interesting.
By Sarah Bandy on Nov 16, 2007
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
By Chris Hotz on Nov 16, 2007
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.
By Hawaii Realtor on Nov 16, 2007
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
By Jeff Dowler on Nov 16, 2007
I can Digg it!
By Port Orange Juice on Nov 16, 2007
i dig it too……you had me going…
now that you shared this idea with us, i wonder who will actually do it?
- rudy
By rudy on Nov 16, 2007
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.
By Rob Aubrey on Nov 16, 2007
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?
By Retta Absher on Nov 16, 2007
Justin - I may now have to reevaluate the points I have and whether to accumulate more for future value…….
By Indy Realtor on Nov 17, 2007
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!
By Katerina Gasset on Nov 17, 2007
Justin… I’m still trying to do the math on my points.
Loved this.
By Jeff Turner on Nov 17, 2007
Thanks Jeff,
From you that means alot.
By Justin Smith on Nov 17, 2007
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.
By McClellanville Real Estate on Nov 18, 2007
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!
By Lydia Taylor on Nov 18, 2007
Just starting to get into the whole activerain thing. Congrats on the nomination. Good luck.
By Jack LeVine on Nov 19, 2007
Great post, Justin. Very thought-provoking and very well-written!
Brian Wilson, Zolve.com
By Brian Wilson on Nov 19, 2007
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.
By Madison on Nov 20, 2007
I think it is funny that someone would think it would be anywhere near that valuable.
By Bob in San Diego on Nov 21, 2007
WOW, I’m absolutely shocked that someone would pay that kind of money. I would of sold it to
By Turtle Creek Condos on Nov 25, 2007
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.
By fastrealestate on Nov 27, 2007
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.
By Atlanta Real Estate on Nov 28, 2007
I think this is a great idea! How about selling our profile on Ebay!
By Janice on Nov 29, 2007
Wow - why don’t such things happen to me!
By Srini on Nov 30, 2007
Well you just basically hit a small lotto. I cant believe someone would actually pay that much for an AR page.
By Austin MLS on Dec 8, 2007
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…
By Eugene Oregon Real Estate on Dec 22, 2007
LOL - I can only imagine the heart attacks of some AR members if profiles could be sold.
By Glenn in Bonita Springs on Jan 2, 2008
I love that idea. Pretty sure that I would sell my profile for that price.
By Ken in Chicago on Apr 9, 2008
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.
By Jesse Barron on Jul 5, 2008
…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.
By Jesse Barron on Jul 5, 2008