A Sucker is Born Every Day...Showbidz and Swoopbug

[sneakymagenta]

It seems to me, if your earning money from Showbidz, than you are a part owner.

Using that logic every Ebay seller would be a part owner of Ebay, every website owner who runs AdSense ads on their sites would be a part owner of Google, the guy on the corner cleaning windshields with a dirty squeegee would be a part owner of every car whose owner gave him money, burglars would be part owners of the homes they rob, the ho on the corner would be part owner of your... :blinkie:

What makes someone who hasn't taken the time to learn the basic concepts of business ownership think they can run a successful business?

Here are 2 very, very relevant articles.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3062866.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinio....html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=uneducated%20american&st=cse

A business owner who misspells every other word (swoopbug), confuses your/you're and their/there (showbidz) will drive away more potential customers and do more damage to a business than critical comments by a few people on a seller's forum.  Survey after survey shows spelling and grammatical errors make customers less likely to trust a business.

Ditto for making juvenile comments to potential customers like swoopbug made:

Are you retired,fired, or just don't fit out in the public. most likly the odd person out type, couldn't get a date,still lives with mom and blames the world for their sad ugly little life. can't look you in the eys ,hides in the closet when company comes. soils themselves when face with a conflict. not married, never dated in love with their left hand

The reason you only have 54 members after 6 months isn't because of people with "sad ugly little lifes" on TulipTools or Pheebay (see this thread http://www.pheebay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6144 ).  The real reason is because you two demonstrate every time you post that you have limited knowledge about what it takes to run a business and are clueless about how to build a customer base.

[regic]

Some background on the showbidz.com domain name.  The domain was originally owned by Musicland Group Inc which ran the Sam Goody and Music Play stores, as well as the Suncoast Motion Picture Co.  Musicland used the site as an auction site (named Showbidz).  After Musicland filed Chapter 11 in 2006 all of Musicland's assets, including its TRADEMARKS, were purchased by Trans World New York LLC (dba Trans World Entertainment )

Trans World let the domain name expire after it closed the auction site.  Several domain speculators registered and quickly dropped the showbidz.com domain name.  The reason the domain speculators didn't keep this domain name (which still has dozens of search engine links pointed to the old Musicland/Showbidz site) is because of a little thing called trademark infringement....

Showbidz is a registered federal trademark of Trans World New York LLC and the trademark specifically pertains to online auction services.

Word Mark  SHOWBIDZ
Goods and Services IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: conducting on-line auction services via a global computer network to redeem loyalty, reward and redemption program credits in exchange for entertainment-related merchandise and memorabilia. FIRST USE: 20040520. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20040520
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 78443521
Filing Date June 30, 2004
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1A
Published for Opposition May 31, 2005
Registration Number 2987577
Registration Date August 23, 2005
Owner (REGISTRANT) MUSICLAND GROUP, INC., THE CORPORATION DELAWARE 10400 Yellow Circle Drive Minnetonka MINNESOTA 55343

(LAST LISTED OWNER) TRANS WORLD NEW YORK, LLC LTD LIAB CO NEW YORK 38 CORPORATE CIRCLE ALBANY NEW YORK 12203
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record Kathy Silberthau Strom, Esq.
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Before registering a domain name the first thing you should always do is check the USPTO database. 

Here's a link some readers should familiarize themselves with: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/guide/index.html

When you mess with someone's patent (i.e. patent site concept) or copyright and trademark (like a name) you may want more than 54 profit -$7,331.96 loss sharing partners to back you up.

That is especially true when the owner of the registered trademark operates over 800 B&M stores and lists $401 million in assets and $900 million annual revenues on its SEC filings.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:TWMC&fstype=ii
http://www.twec.com/corpsite/stores/

[regic]

[quote author=xwpopper link=topic=19006.msg75494#msg75494 date=1258554584]
Swoopbug...
Sounds a bit like almost identical to Swoopo...
I wonder how long it will be until Swoopo starts taking legal action against sites that use all but 1 letter of their name with an identical concept and design.
Maybe you should ask owners of all the "***Bay" auction sites eBay's lawyers have shut down.
When you mess with someone's patent (i.e. patent site concept) or copyright and trademark (like a name) you may want more than 54 profit -$7,331.96 loss sharing partners to back you up.[/quote]

Based on a recent post on Swoopo's affiliate blog which prohibits affiliates from using the company's trademarks or misspellings of the trademark in PPC campaigns, they may very well have a problem with the use of 'swoop' in an auction site name --especially when the site is using a 'Swoopo' clone script.

PPC Policy:-
No trademark keywords (Swoopo)
No trademark misspellings (Swopo, Swoopoo, Swoop, etc)
Ads with Swoopo display URL are not allowed (www.swoopo.co.uk)

http://swoopoaffiliates.blogspot.com/200...hange.html

[dimucci]

Word of mouth advertising is the best their is, thats how ebay & craigslist got started.

With this type of pay system I can reward members that promote the site by recruiting. So yeah, I'm paying cheerleaders to go out and do the advertising. Advertising is very expensive, so I would rather spend that money on the members.

I like the idea of a Co-op run by the members, their the experts and do all the work, plus they have ownership and a stake in how the site does. With this type of pay system, I can offer the potential for members to build on-going residual income. You can build an income producing machine and downline business by recruiting and training other sellers, and get paid for passing on your expert knowledge.

http://www.pheebay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6144

Deja vu!  :blinkie:

I can't believe this thread is on page 3 and nobody has mentioned the obvious: GT and BidBay tried mixing MLM and auctions in 2001  and failed.  They had 4.5 million members and couldn't make a go of it.  They filed a patent application that covered MLM and auctions

Our  principal  marketing  focus  is  through  our  MLA™  program  which  was
introduced earlier this year.  MLA™ stands for Multi-Level Auctions.  We have
filed a provisional patent application for purposes of protecting the concept as
it  relates  to  our  industry.                                               

Through MLA™, our registered auction users can join a force of associates who
are  compensated  for  using  our  auction  site.  Generally speaking, through a
multi-level marketing arrangement, an associate in the "Gold" associate category
can  also  receive compensation when our auction site is used by others that the
associate  has  introduced to the site.  We believe MLA™ has the potential to
increase  the  use of our auction site in a significant manner together with the
corresponding  fee  revenue. 

http://www.secinfo.com/d1ZQYu.3Au.htm

Remember their sales pitch?

Better Online Auctions


An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Online auctions are an "idea whose time has come." eBay leads the pack with more than thirty million members. In order to capture our share of this huge market, AuctionDiner has launched its patent pending Multi-level Auctions (MLA).

Most internet based companies have affiliate programs. Our Affiliate Program is the most rewarding ever developed. We reward our Affiliates for acquiring customers through word-of-mouth advertising. You do it every day -- why not get paid for it!

It's simple. Why pay ebay part of your proceeds. A single fee lets you list as many items as you want on AuctionDiner. But it gets better. That FEE is actually paid back to members in a matrix. The company gets a small percent to run the auction, and the friends get the rest.

Why friends? Someone that tries to save you money is your friend.

Now the big kicker.... spill over. Honest spillover. In our matrix you have 3 on your front line. PERIOD. No more, no less. I sponsor at least 20 a month, and all those go to my downline. Frankly, most of them I steal from eBay. They are fed up with the eBay ripoff.

Even better???? Ok. The company is filming an infomercial and placing print ads starting in June. All gold members will receive this spill over as those people join us.

Now the WOW. Every time the matrix fills 7 levels below you, the computer automatically recycles you into your 8th row AND starts building for you AGAIN. At just 5 rows your getting over $500 a month - just like I did when the 5th row filled. My first 3 friends got over $120 that same month.

AND I sold everything I had listed in the auction

Level 1 2 3 4 5 Totals
People 3 9 27 81 243 363
Shared Revenue $2.25 $6.75 $40.50 $121.50 $364.50 $535.50

When you mess with someone's patent (i.e. patent site concept)

eBay was granted a patent on November 3, 2009 that covers the process every auction site uses to list an item.  They first applied for the patent back in September 2000 and it took the patent office 9 years to grant it.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7613633/fulltext.html
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7613633&OS=7613633&RS=7613633

Abstract
A method for facilitating commerce at an internet-based auction is disclosed. The method includes authorizing a first participant to post an item for auction at an internet auction site. A communication handler program executes on a host computer and receives information from the first participant about an item to be auctioned. The received information includes a designation of a category selected from a list of categories, under which the item is to be auctioned. The received information is processed into a presentation format with a database-to-presentation format formatting program. The presentation format includes an indication of the category of the item to be auctioned. The presentation formatted information is presented to a plurality of internet
participants. The host computer then receives at least one bid for the auctioned item from at least one of the internet participants.

[mandy]

An interesting analysis of Swoopo and penny auctions was published on November 14th by a Stanford researcher:

Consumer and Producer Behavior in the Market for
Penny Auctions: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

http://www.stanford.edu/~ned789/Pay_As_You_Go.pdf

The researcher estimates that Swoopo is making a profit of €42,215.98 (approximately $62,800/£38,000) per day at an average profit margin of 62.74%.  Average revenues are estimated to be approximately 150% of the value of the goods.

Showbidz is a registered federal trademark of Trans World New York LLC and the trademark specifically pertains to online auction services.

:chitfan: :popcorneaters:

[mandy]

Swoopbug issued 3 press releases yesterday:

In press release #1 the clowns claim they are shipping all items from their own warehouse despite the fact that the item descriptions  are being copied from dropshipper middleman DropShipDesign (complete with DSD's blue font).

In press release #2 they bash TulipTools, call TulipTools members "ex time felons", "convicted mortgage fraud brokers", etc.

Tuliptool.com Scammers forum
Take notice that a new forum has been launched with sole purpose in mind to discredit any and all internet business ventures


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 19, 2009 – At first glance tuliptools.com seems to be a blessing. warning people of the vises  and misdealings of some Internet business.
However a closer look reveals the real purpose of this site. mostly comprised of 3 ex time felons, and convicted mortgage fraud brokers.  who sit around and look for new business enterprises to post slanderous accusations about.

http://prlog.org/10420375

Press release #3 also bashes TT.  The TT member mentioned by name in the press release title is another OAI forum owner who joined TT a few years ago and hasn't visited TT in almost 2 years.  He is well known in the OAI for his work in exposing eBay scammers.

http://prlog.org/10420425

Swoopbug owner Richard Austin was busy yesterday.  In addition to the press releases, he also launched another site: swoopopro.com which, like swoopbug.com,  is hosted on the binarywebs owned swoopohost.com nameservers.  The telephone number given on the domain's WHOIS is registered to an Annjeannette Austin

[LittleOnlineStore]

Thanks for the publicity!

Seriously, who do they think they are fooling, cause even the PSUckers won't fall for their garbage.

Yeah, they can sue me all they want to, but since I don't have anything, they'll just be out of luck.

I sure don't doubt they'd start suing since they'll have to get money somehow. Maybe they can get money by suing people. Wait, but then they'd have to prove that what is said isn't true, oh poo.

[sneakymagenta]

Yeah, they can sue me all they want to

Sure they could sue and they'd be greeted by several multi-million dollar countersuits  because the morons published press releases that falsely called people felons.

Publishing press release #3 was probably the biggest mistake Swoopbug has made in his 60 years on this planet because A.P. sued the last boinktard who put something on the web like that, and I have a hunch press release #2 guarantees that the 2 companies whose trademarks are being infringed will learn of the infringement and take action.

I think a song is in order.....this song perfectly describes the mess the illiterate Floridian got himself into: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQDQV9ChJ40

[regic]

SneakyDave's blog has an article on the Swoopbug/Showbidz idiots:
http://sneakydave.com/wp/2009/11/20/swoo...everybody/

[sneakymagenta]

Showbug update:  buy a script, threaten a chargeback, and the scriptwriter will shut your site down

Yesterday Swoopbug issued another press release and a complaint on RipOff Report.  This time blasting the clonescript seller DiscountClones  he bought the $499 Telebid auction script from.  The "Josh" in the following quotes is the DiscountClones guy and "Ray" is of course...our favorite boinktard.

I am out thousands of dollars, been threatened with police action if I call my credit card company and cancel the charges, and been told my dad is moron who has tried to screw up my web site deliberately......

...........a minute to minute update, they have now shut the admin panel down and pulled the licencee, so now they have my money,the script,the licencee Iand I have nothing.

more...

Josh claimed that since the script ran fine for three days he proved that his script was fine and that this time Ray screwed with the server and messed it up on purpose( he called it hacking into the server ).we reinstalled the script onto our dedicated server and started all over again and once again all was working fine till we loaded products,set up auctions and kicked on the bid butler and let the targeted visitor campaign go on again. within hrs the timers went down,the server crashed, etc.  end result Josh again said ray was playing games trying to hurt my business or at the very least run up bills to take care of problems he created.

Now for the kicker...drumroll...

I also let Josh know that Ray was my father, and so he was not charging me for his work, nor would he have any reason to screw up the site or script on purpose. he still said his script was great no refund go away.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/internet-fra...-bbfa2.htm

Swoopbug is the dirty undies king Binarywebs' son



Today the domain is running the $299 PennyProto Swoopo clone script (made by NashScripts) and the nameservers have been changed to ns1/ns2/ysphost.com.  YSPHost is registered in Funchal. The other site hosted on the new IP is telebidauctionscriptdemo.com

Ricky also posted his crap about TT and A.P. as an update in that RipOff report.

In the update, this moron with a capital M also accuses Swoopo of being behind the clone scripts.  According to Ricky boy it's their way of making sure the competition fails.  What an absolute F'ing MORON this guy is...he registers a domain that infringes on Swoopo's trademark, uses a script that infringes their patent, and then accuses them of being the bad guys :

one would have to wonder if the original telebidas and swoopo have their hand in this since if the auction sites that are using these scripts gain any popularity or mementum in the industry they begin to fail and start eating up the servers they are installed on some experts say these scripts were corrupted on purpose to eliminate the competition. and go further to say that these companys selling these clones are actula clones of the telebid/swoopo people themselves acting as their own shill starting up these clone site. the question might be asked why would swoopo and telebids allow these clones to exist unless they knew in advance they would fail ????

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Showbidz update: minutes after Scott spammed PSU with another message of "part ownership" the site went down and has been in maintenance mode for almost 24 hours.  His excuse for the downtime: his "programmer" (binarywebs) is updating the script to the new 6.06 version which was released 2 weeks ago.