I went looking for some new virtual real estate, as I am thinking of starting a business venture, and one of the names I looked into was Zerovision. So of course, I checked out zerovision.com you can check the site yourself, but I don't recommend you do, because it is a splog Someone bought up the domain name just to turn round and sell it at a profit.

Of course now there are rules against this, you can't simply buy up a made up domain name and not use it, waiting for some company with that name to buy it from you. Not to mention that there is a cost to register the domain, and a yearly fee to keep the name registered to you. Of course this will not keep any determined vulture from wanting to cash in, and thus was born the splog.

I think zerovision.com is a particular kind of splog called a scraper site. There is NO CONTENT on the site at all. The entire site is made of buzzwords scraped together (hence the name) from high-ranking websites, to place it as high as possible on search engines, and generate any traffic at all to their site. Where the content is supposed to be (in the body center of the page) is...you guessed it, advertisements. Tons and Tons of ads, which probably generate a small bit of revenue.

Now the vulture can say they are actually using the domain name, and the site might actually make a couple bucks from ads, although if they made enough to offset the yearly registration fee, I would be surprised. The real money is made by reselling the name.

I e-mailed the owner of the website/splog zerovision.com, and asked them how much they would sell the name for. I have copied the e-mail below. I have reversed the order of this e-mail trail so you can read it from the top down, but I have not changed any content. Keep in mind that a website name costs about ten bucks to register.

I know it looks like something I would make up, but I assure you this is the real thing.


***********************************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: DomainSpa.com e-mailer [mailto:mailbot@domainspa.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:36 AM
To: exoticdomains@domainspa.com
Subject: [zerovision.com] Inquiry


Domain: 'zerovision.com'
Date: '7/13/2006'
From: 'conradzero@gmail.com'
Subject: 'Inquiry'
Message follows:

how much to buy this domain name, zerovision.com?

-C


-----Original Message-----
From: ExoticDomains [mailto:exoticdomains@domainspa.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:38 AM
To: conradzero@gmail.com
Subject: RE: [zerovision.com] Inquiry

$5000



-----Original Message-----
From: Conrad Zero [mailto:conradzero@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 1:37 PM
To: exoticdomains@domainspa.com
Subject: RE: [zerovision.com] Inquiry


That's funny.

But seriously, how about two hundred, and I will still call you a thief
afterwards?

Sincerely,
-C


-----Original Message-----
From: ExoticDomains [mailto:exoticdomains@domainspa.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 12:49 PM
To: 'Conrad Zero'
Subject: RE: [zerovision.com] Inquiry

How about I will call you an asshole now?



*******************************************************


How about? Heh.

Of course, I reported the site as a scraper site to google, which should jerk their search results out from under them...

...and Now, I'm an asshole.

Splog on,
-CZ

Labels: Blogging, idiots