Checking the Webmaster Marketplace I saw this this auction labeled “Very Good Email Adress iPod Touch”. I was curious and clicked the link… someone is selling the Yahoo email address of appletouchipod@yahoo.com on eBay. WTF… How much can this really be worth? I guess it might add legitimacy to someone who sells the Apple iPod Touch ? Regardless its 100% profit…
So just thinking more… I asked myself what about registering the blogger or wordpress.com accounts? Like say ipodtouch.wordpress.com ? You would have a nice seo boost out of the gate or I guarentee you could just sell it. And what did it cost you? nadda!
So even thinking more what would I pay for shoemoney.wordpress.com or shoemoney.blogger.com … probably at least a thousand apiece. What would I pay for myspace.com/shoemoney ? I offered the person who owned it $1,000 but she has not got back to me.
What about the person who owns the AOL instant messenger of “shoemoney” I would pay at least $1,000 for that! AND the same for Yahoo. (I own the skype)
What about gmail?!?! shoemoney@gmail.com ? id buy that
And last but not least my last name schoemaker.com who I tried to buy before but just could not justify over 10k for it =(
Here is the thing. We (shoemoney media group) hate dealing with clients. We have like 4 clients every and we way over charged them cause we hate dealing with clients. BUT one thing that is always the same is reputation management is FRICKING HUGE for them. We had 1 guy that was so obsessed with a blogger blog that he paid $5,000.00 to purchase the blogger account. WHICH I THINK IS TOTALLY RETARDED but that is where we are at. First of all I think the person who recieved the payment is a total dirtbag but the person paying it just encourages them or more people like them to do the same thing. If I purchased every sub domain or site of every negative comment about me you would see a bunch of previously anonymous pimple face nerds suddenly macking it. But I don’t cater to these little worms… blah got off track there a bit 
So moral of the story… If you can react to a meme or product there could be a nice payday for none or almost no cost involved.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 74 comments… read them below or add one }
Some people and some companies have more money than brains…
Nice twist on ‘domain squatting’ without any of the inherent legal hassles. I assume there have been no other comments because everyone is busy looking for places where the “shoemoney” handle hasn’t been registered yet?
Just regarding the guy that paid the $5K for the blogger account – Did he buy he to get rid of negative remarks or because the address caontained his brand? Or both?
If he did it simply to get rid of the negative comments that IS retarded. It only encourages more people to do the same.
Yeah… if I could ever get my name as a dot com I’d be happy, but the people holding it don’t even want to talk to me about selling it.
Guess I’ll settle for the blogger subdomain for a while longer.
It’s not about the email addresses. What this guys are doing is hoping some asshole with less brains than them bid on the auction thinking they’re buying an iPod Touch for $2.99.
I guess we all know here how many click happy eBay users are around that are potential victims to this…
In the first days of the iPhone you could see hundreds and hundreds of this kind of auctions. Many with actual bids!
Agreed, it’s the some as domain squatting.
“inherent legal hassles” – Seriously man…. I have been doing this stuff for so long and have owned and sold so many domains with trademark terms. I can tell you the way things are right now… i doubt .000000001% of tm squaters ever see a court room.
I don’t think it is about branding. When the PS3 was big, people were selling email addresses, and stupid internet users were paying $200-400 for the email, thinking they were getting an actual PS3. I don’t know if it is the same as this case, but definitely a possibility.
Wow really. TBH if someone thought they were buying a 600$ ipod touch when it clearly says its a email address then they are idiots… not victims well maybe both
Except that if you own the trademark, you can ‘steal’ the domains. Maybe that isn’t the case with emails. I am not 100% sure though.
The person who owns my preferred domain name hasn’t updated content in over a year, has no plans to in the near future, but still chooses not to sell it.
Shoe,
Really, would you pay $1,000 for something as trivial as myspace.com/shoemoney. I thought it was about quality not quantity. Sounds a lot like Disney buying a cow that has a spot that looks like mickey’s ears, really unnecessary in my book.
Its about brand reputation and control. Lets say the person who owned that hated me…. do you know how easy it would be for them to put a bunch of bs about me and have that rank in the top 5 EASY on any search engine?
This is really sad. Not too long ago, actually it was yesterday. My comrades were discussing about a new idea to launch an online magazine. The discussion was taking on a public forum, which they run. Not many people visit that forum, as it was a closed pack forum, where almost everybody knows each other. They had an idea for a domain name to launch the magazine. Moments later, it was taken, although it was a unique domain name. No one knows who did it, and the person who registered it, did pretty well covering his/her tracks. No information on the Who.Is database. The magazine idea wasn’t even aimed to make money.
Although, I got there pretty late (after the domain name was chosen). I know these tricks, I never discuss domain names with anyone unless I trust them. But my comrades are not well versed about the internet industry (neither am I), so it was a lesson to be learned.
Moral of the story is, never discuss domain names or ideas publicly. Period.
“If I purchased every sub domain or site of every negative comment about me you would see a bunch of previously anonymous pimple face nerds suddenly macking it.”
It’s a shame the WHOIS info for SHOEMONEYSUCKS.COM is anonymous. I’d be curious to know what pimple face nerd owns it, haha.
I sure hope so. I grabbed grand*turismo*6.com* (without *’s), after grandturismo 2.com sold for an “undisclosed amount nearing $20k”, said one source. For a $9 investment, we can all dream they haven’t gotten any more intelligent since their last mistake.
Thats why you should always grab your domain name in every TLD, rather than risk someone hurting your name.
Is “shoemoney” not trademarked? Could you not simply file DMCA or something with blogger,wordpress, and yahoo to recoup your legally owned name? Or am I missing something?
Pretty crazy stuff. I never really was into the selling domain game but this is quite an interesting twist on it.
Cool post.
Hehehe good luck with that domain. Seems like a pretty good idea.
Strictly cybersquatting IMO. I wouldn’t mess with trademark products whether they can or can’t come after you.
Looks like the guy who owns shoemoneysucks.com was trying to get rid of it on DP:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=327846
And since it’s a trademark, it’s definitely not legit.
I like the mickey-ears-cow idea. Anyone else out there or is it just me? Unnecessary? Totally, but it’s little things like these that can put a smile on people faces.
=)
hmmm i havent tried that.
No if I owned disney I would definently buy a cow that had a spot that looked like mickey, itd get you publicity and a cow.
Whats the worst that could happen? they take the domain you got free from you.
Im just lucky I know everyone in the world with my last name so unless someone looked up my name just so Id be forced to buy it from you I doubt that domain will ever be bought unless I buy it.
Great call on this one, Shoemoney! I just registered a Wordpress blog and hopefully will be making money on it soon.
or just trademark it so you can DMCA it when someone does register your name
You guys are missing the point. It’s not about the name. Like matatujefe and word hugger said they are trying to scam people who think they are actually buying an ipod touch. This happened all the time when the Wii was launched. People were selling NintendoWii@gmail.com email addresses on ebay and people were thinking they were buying actual wii’s.
you can only file DMCA when it comes to domain names.
blogger,wordpress…….are all legal.
thats the law “cyber quating”……
Its my old habit, Whenever i start a site, i reserve domains accross all TLDs so that my brand is safe
People said the same thing about domain names years ago, and look where we are now. I happened to grab ipodsportkit.com
Ya , i search for all New products and celebrity names but most of them will be booked already.Hardly i managed to get few bit never tryed to sale them.
be careful about copyright infringements!
There is plenty of legal precedent that ___sucks.com sites can exist and trademark owners have no right to the domain, as long as the content of the site doesn’t compete with that of the trademark holder.
How else do you think paypalsucks.com still exists?
Just because you have a trademark on a term doesn’t mean you have free reign on every domain that contains that term. Microsoft doesn’t get every domain with the word “windows” in it.
this remind me of the time that guy sold his imaginary friend on ebay. I wonder how much I would get for an imaginary friend named shoemoney ….
Haha, that’s just hilarious! Do you know how much he got for him?
excellent piece of writeup a perfect example how to deal and react fast. It is amazing.
“What about gmail?!?! shoemoney@gmail.com ? id buy that”
Just use gmail@shoemoney.com and pretend it’s the same thing
Whoops – I’ll let you edit that email address out if you want – don’t want you getting caught by spambots
Selling email addresses is the biggest scam on ebay. THey put huge keywords and pics of the actual items and then in small write “by the way im selling an email address and not the product pictured”
Luckely there are plenty of idiots in this world
“sucks” sites are usually legal
haha,Good idea!
It’s the next stage of the domain name rush. I like to have good email addresses, but I don’t think I would pay for them. I wouldn’t pay much for a wp name either. I would pay, and have paid on behalf of jobs, a lot for domain names. I spent $30,000 for my boss for a domain name once from Moniker. The site was a several million a year revenue site, so I guess it was worth it.
but it is so true just like all those people that registered domains when they were free…. he who gets it first gets the return
I was thinking more about this post. I wonder how many people are registering WP names like crazy after reading this post?
OK, if you’ve “been there done that” I’ll take your word on it. Learn something new everyday:)
It is still available and you haven’t registered it yet? Dude, for the $6 or whatever it will cost it would be worthwhile securing it.
Wow, that is crazy:) Both on the part of the seller and buyer!
I rather wonder how much more bullshit you will post here to get #1 in the commentator list to promote this wired gecko tale chicken
If I would start a web email website business..
I could sell a lot of email addresses..
Heh. Pretty funny that stuff like that sells. But as someone else said, reputation matters.
You said that you would pay for the email account shoemoney@yahoo.com
Well, I happen to have a shoemoney email @ yahoo.com email address. Please contact me and tell me if you are interested. Thanks
I also have hotmail email addresses too for shoemoney. Just contact me
It’s just another version of domainers.
haha thanks. I will see either a big payday, or a big lawsuit. Sounds like fun!
Yeah, but that can be a hassle. It is best to do both and not take risks.
I will entertain Shoemoney’s offer to buy http://www.myspace.com/shoemoney
http://www.charleshighsmith.com – A dying mans blog… The silent millionaire.
Take care!
I guess in life, we value thing like they are. The price only depend on what the costumer value the thing or are willing to pay. A great example is the computer. You buy your computer today and in 5 years it will value nothing to you, but for people who are looking for buying it, they will compared with the price you bought it. The free is email thing is totally ridiculious, but what can we do? If there is a market for it, it mean there is buyer ready to buy it.
Thats a neat little trick there shoe. What about your other properties like nextpimp.com would you want to pick that up as well? I saw that nextpimp.wordpress.com was already picked up.
Wow I haven’t thought of flipping blogger and wordpress domains like that. That’s a great day. Would pick up nextpimp.wordpress.com if you had the chance?
Money is everywhere. Just need to have the idea first.
I would say just crazy on the part of the buyer. If they’re not gonna bother reading the auction listing, what can you do?
…but on the cheap.
Interesting blog… really.
Yeah, good point. Never thought you could sell… emails or subdomains relating to popular things for profit. I mean… I was aware of the concept I suppose but never thought people like yourself would actually pay for it. $1,000 for the myspace? wow that’s pretty nuts, but I suppose it is a good source of traffic.
Haha well yes, so many stories out there about domains being parked because they can cash in tons of money for the buyers.
You are right. I have the same view on this issue, but I do not know how to write so beautifully.
I cannot justify any reason for me to purchase an email address. I have 2 perfectly good working email addresses. And if I want a professional touch, then I can use an “admin@mydomainname.com” from one of my sites. A couple of hundred or a couple of thousand for an email address? Is it really worth it?
Hey, Shoemoney, I have shoemoney.uni.cc coupled with johnchow.uni.cc .Are you interested?
Someone owns my company name and the price keeps coming down, and I keep getting emails. It is 5k now, but I don’t even want it anymore as my own domain is better. And I’ve also bought a heap of related domains that I might want when we expand. I’m not being held to ransom by some idiot, and i hope he winds up having to stick some crappy adsense site on there.
I think that Dino is right:
>Money is everywhere. Just need to have the idea first.
although with your own domain you can have any email that you like.
but it still feels cool having ferrari@gmail.com, porsche@gmail.com than ferrari@your-domain.com, porsche@your-domain.com
Unless you own a valueable domain name such as z.com … z@z.com