This will be my last post as Justin Smith of the Real Estate Tomato under this profile. It was fun... but look for me to come back under a different profile real soon.
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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???
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