Mash-up: Selling the BloggingTips Blog and Stealing Shoemoney's Brand

What's a mash-up? "A mash-up is when you put to songs together to make them richer". And I take that from coach Will Schuster of Glee (yes, I'm such a Gleek).

I decided to put my own touch into it by incorporating it into my blog writing. So guys, this is going to be a mash-up post of two of the hottest blogosphere news circulating on the web (as of the moment).

Right now, I'm still in complete shock upon hearing the news that the BloggingTips blog is for sale. You heard that right. For Sale. I just checked the auction site of BloggingTips at Flippa and...

...it's positive. We are now facing the end of Kevin Muldoon's ownership on his legendary blog. And I reckon this shouldn't go unnoticed. That's why I'm making a noise right now.

The Big Question is, Why?

A short visit to BloggingTips Dot Com would tell you that nothing's been formally announced, declared or notified in there whatsoever. If Kevin what's the transition to be quiet, it's futile since I know many more bloggers have already kept their eyes on this issue.

I mean, c'mon. This is the BloggingTips Blog (and I lost count how many times I repeated that).

Kevin's (the owner) is a great guy- though I still haven't had the opportunity to be personally close to him. Whatever the reason maybe, I trust that Kevin knows what's best for him and for the entirety of the BloggingTips community.

But I'm pretty sure many will be waiting for his statement.

The Bigger Question is What's Next?

Thanks to Rob Benwell (author of Blogging to The Bank), selling blogs seems to have grown in popularity these days.

I'm not brewing a suspicion that that must've been the plan all along (since of course BloggingTips is such a huge brand to casually consider selling out as an exit). And it's not as if it's easy to part with something that took 3 years to build... talk about all the accomplishments and credentials it has achieved.

The thing I'm most worried about is what comes next after it had been formally sold. From the Flippa site, Kevin mentioned that he's willing to settle for at least 60K and I do think many would be ready to offer that kind of amount.

But really, we've seen a lot of blogs being sold and there sure is a big tendency for it to lose it's original luster. I'm such a big fan of the BloggingTips blog and I don't want it to have that kind of fate.

No. It's to great to suffer.

On Stealing the Shoemoney Brand

If you still haven't received Jeremy's newsletter, I'm pretty sure you'd get your chance to read it on John Chow's Stealing Trust post (which contains the very newsletter that Jeremy sent out).

A bit of a nasty stuff really.

I know it's common practice for scruffy marketeers out there to steal brands, tamper identities and especially use fake testimonials and comments just to drive in more customers and sales.

It's a really nasty event in the world of the booming online market. And it's no wonder that Jeremy Shoemakey a.k.a Shoemoney is a favorite victim.

Who Stole the Shoemoney Brand?

A certain David Sullivan stole Jeremy's face and copyright photograph for promoting a fake news site (see it here) that tells a supposedly 'success' story of how a married woman, after being laid off, made tons of money certain "Online Cash Success Kit"... which of course is a big scam.

This Tells You Two Things

First, just because you see a logo of a news network (or if the site looks like a news website) doesn't mean that you can automatically trust it. Crazy marketers are doing more crazy illegal stuff nowadays... which extends to faking news websites as well as stories, testimonials and comments.

Second, that the bigger you become, the more prone you are to being victimized by copyright infringement, as what happened to Jeremy.

Yes, some people do hate Jeremy for what he is while some people idolize Jeremy for the success he's bought to a lot of lives... but let's put aside those reasons for a while.

Right now I just want to see justice well served.

And Jeremy rightfully deserves justice.

[photo copyright by Jeremy and Kevin of course]