How could someone try to make a buck of the death of teenager Trayvon Martin?
The most tasteless: Itrayvonmartin.com for sale on eBay.
I have the domain name for Itrayvonmartin.com
This auction is for the domain name .
Also have the domain name for travonmartin.org contact if you want that one.
These registrations and sites related to Trayvon Martin aren’t any better:
TrayVonMartinMurderTrial.com – listed for sale on GoDaddy Auctions for $300
TrayvonMartinSkittles.com – listed on GoDaddy for $2,000
MartinTrayVon.com – you can donate to the owner via PayPal on this site. Where that money goes I have no idea. But given that the domain is for sale on Sedo for $3,000, my guess is it doesn’t go to a good cause.
RememberTrayvonMartin.com – parked at Sedo and listed for sale.
TrayvonMartinHoodie.com – forwards to a Cafe Press store
Trayvonmartintshirts.com and trayvontees.com – a store selling Trayvon Martin t-shirts where “a portion” of proceeds will benefit Martin’s family.
TrayvonMartinNews.com and TrayvonNews.com – an auto generated site earning money from Adsense
HoodieDidNotKillTrayvonMartin.com – listed for sale on Sedo
Scott says
Totally agree. That is way far over the line of common human decency.
NameSpeculatr says
It is a shame, but even Mike Mann posted on Trayvon.com for sale on Facebook. One commenter said the asking price was $250,000. Go figure…money makes the world go around unfortunately….
Andrew Allemann says
@ NameSpeculatr – looks like he got the domain a while ago. But yeah, I wouldn’t be advertising it right now.
RaTHeaD says
ah!… a profit deal.
Steve Jones says
“How could someone try to make a buck of the death of teenager Trayvon Martin?” Like the news media? That’s what they’ve been doing all day every day with this stuff.
These kinds of domain registrations are the worst part of this industry, but I don’t think it will ever go away, especially not with private registration shielding most registrants’ identities.
David says
What a scumbag Mike Mann is for doing that. Classless
John says
This is sick.
Buying up athlete names in college and on air personalities as well.
The industry should just take them away and retire them or give them to the known people.
Really no excuse for this. Better ways to make money in life & its a very bad light on the entire industry.
Jon says
Even his parents are trying to trademark a couple of his names, they say they want to stop people using their son’s name to make money!. Really? No book or movie deal in the future?
Joe says
My website, TrayvonMartinNews.com is not “auto-generated” news. In no way am I automating the content. Every post has been sought out and written by me, and my friends. We are seeking to find interesting stories, videos, and tweets regarding the Trayvon Martin case.
Adsense ads are a means to covering the server costs, and are not meant as profiting off the dead. I am not selling the domain. I am not selling t-shirts, buttons, soda can holders. All I’m doing is writing about the case, and the reactions online.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Joe – I saw the tweet reports and thought they were automated. Some of the content is just snagged from other sites.
Regardless, having ads on here is tasteless. “Server costs”? It costs maybe $10 a month to host a site like this.
Joe says
Andrew Allemann,
You bring up great points. However, those same points I can turn around on you and say that this website is also trying to “make a buck of the death of teenager.” You have written about Trayvon in this post, I see ads. GASP! You can say the same thing about BET who a couple nights ago ran a Trayvon Martin special pancaked between ads selling carpet cleaning supplies. Welcome to the News media!
The domains combined cost about $10 bucks, the hosting is on a VPS Dreamhost server that I’m paying $70/month for. So far the grand total of Google Adsense ads means I’m still 80 bucks in the hole. If I was interested in making a buck I would be linking to those cafepress sites selling shirts, getting the affiliate money. That’s not my intention, that’s not my goal.
I am fascinated about this story and the news. I’m going to write about my fascination.
If someone from the family wants the domain name TrayvonMartinNews.com, then by all means it is theres. It’s their son’s name – not mine. In the meantime, we are going to do our best to write about the story.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Joe – I don’t make a single extra dime by writing about Trayvon Martin here.
You’re right, you could argue that about the general news media.
To me it’s creating a dedicated site about it and monetizing it.
Joe says
So, you’d rather some domain squatter sit on the domain with a parked page and an outrageous $3,000 price-tag?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Joe – no. I agree with you, the other examples are more egregious.
Puranjay says
This is absolutely inexcusable and gives our entire industry a bad name.
The domain industry is as such equated with ‘cybersquatting’ in the mainstream press. Things like these don’t exactly help a great deal in restoring our already sterling reputations
Andrew says
Mike Mann actually changed the price of the domain to $250k not sure what it was previously at but he changed it to make more money of someone. Sick individual.
Troy says
Tell me how this is any more sick then a place like Graceland that makes money off Elvis after he died?
Andrew says
Graceland are celebrating Elvis’s gifts and talents. The talents of which he shared with the world. If I had the domain mike does id give it too the family. To be honest this is totally different than your example and silly if you ask me.
Son says
Regarding to the website embed under the nick “Joe” above, that he claimed “Every post has been sought out and written by me, and my friends.” All I saw on that site were just short snippets no more than 60 words above each articles, and below that are copied paragraphs from other news sources. What a terrible MFA site.
Oh, and the MFA site got a free boost in SERPs with backlinks from this authority domainnamewire pointing to it too, due to a few comments here. Brilliant!!
Andrew Allemann says
@ Son – comment links are no follow
DotCom says
Unfortunately capitalism is all about making money from disasters and misfortune. Wall St gets rich by banking on lumber before hurricanes etc. etc.
This is what the laws of society dictate, and has nothing to do with the domain industry, but capitalism as a whole.
Troy says
“Graceland are celebrating Elvis’s gifts and talents. The talents of which he shared with the world”
So someone trying to sell a domain about Michael Jackson would be ok? How about new stations that sell advertising on shows that talk about Trevon Martin? How about newspapers that sell ads around articles about him? How about bloggers that post articles about stupid domainers that buy Trevor Martin domains to generate page views.
Buying names like this is stupid and tasteless, I will agree with that. But making money off the dead and dying is done by much more established people and businesses everyday, even some that don’t realize what they are doing.
Mini Man says
Mike Mann has a knack for the tasteless and objectionable. One of the most highly regared domainers out there. Speaks volumes about the industry. Mike should stick to facebook typos, thats where his true genius really lies. Mike Mann has some other really great names for sale. I personally think these are some of his better ones. Gives you a glimpse into the mind of a real genius…
GOOGLEgab.com
cashinonGOOGLE.com (I see your trying Mike)
XBOXxtreme.com
MICROSOFTsystems.com
MICROSOFTinstaller.com
Yep, evidence of the true domain name visionary that is Mike Mann. You have an amazing knack for coming up with unique names Mike. I am curious where the isdea came from for these truly original monikers.
Loser!
Daniel says
Hi Andrew,
We saw your post—-thank you for alerting us of this domain being listed for sale at Sedo. We wanted to assure you that our Legal and Security & Compliance teams are taking the necessary steps to remove any domain names that are related to the Trayvon Martin case from use of Sedo’s site and services.
Sedo’s marketplace is open to all users who want to list with us, so from time to time, domains such as the one you mention above do make it past our initial security checks. However, we’re grateful that the domainer community is so vigilant, therefore we are able to catch these names and remove them.
Our policy is to not allow names to be listed for sale that are associated with tragic current events, as both a courtesy to the parties involved, and to ensure that domain owners are not selling domain names over our marketplace based on these news events. Any user who repeatedly infringes on our policies will have their privileges with Sedo revoked. In this case, we have dealt with the domains in question, and the issue should be resolved.
Thanks,
Daniel @ Sedo
Andrew Allemann says
@ Daniel – I’m glad to hear that’s Sedo stance on this type of thing. The point of my post wasn’t to blast Sedo, eBay, or GoDaddy for allowing these domains — I wouldn’t expect you guys to have an automated filter that could catch something like this. It’s great that you’re taking action.
Sedough says
Tragic names are excluded from Sedo’s sales platform however if you are interested in GoogleGab.com
XBoxXtreme.com
MirosoftInstaller.com or any number of other trademark inclusive domain names Mike Mann has them listed for sale on Sedo.