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help us buy hiphopinfinity.com - at a discount of nearly $48,000! · by Rafi Kam
For nearly a half-decade HipHopInfinity was the nerdiest hip-hop store/site around and we liked it that way!
There was so much to laugh at there and on the other hand there actually was a smart community and coverage of a new underground hip-hop scene that wasn’t being covered elsewhere.
I had been quasi-terrorizing the site for a few years by hacking its forum and creating occasional mayhem. All in good fun of course. I basically learned the basics of PHP by exploring around that web site to get the forum to act the way I wanted.
In February of 2003, the site owner approached me and told me he was planning to get out of the online hip-hop business. The store was no longer profitable and running it was taking a toll on him and his wife. He thought I had the ability to take over the site and run it as a content site and he would send me a proposal for the sale of his domain.
The mind-boggling offer arrived a few days later. He was going to liquidate the store portion of the site and sell me the site’s content, brand and domain name….. for $48,000. He assured me that a man of my ability could have a content site generating thousands of dollars in ad-revenue and would easily make up the money in the first year. Better yet he was looking to move fast so he would lower the price to $36,000 if I could decide that week.
The proposal letter told me that now is the perfect time for me to take this kind of risk because I have a young family (my son was just a year old at the time) to support me.
Even though the business was tanking for him he wanted me to remember “the sky’s the limit”.
One day that week I may have considered if there was anyway this made any sense at all. That same day I was rear-ended by an SUV while waiting at a stop sign. This was the universe’s way of giving me a whack in the head. And I appreciate it. Good looking out universe.
I never told anybody about this offer until HHI shut down at which point I blabbed all about it at Gossiping Bitches. Forgive me Seagraves but a story like that needs to be told.
Anyway, here we are now in June 2007. Last month hiphopinfinity.com’s multi-year registry finally expired. I put a bid on it for $60 in order to nab it when it expired. It looks like 3 other people did the same.
Over the next two days there’s an auction between the 4 of us.
I don’t know who the other 3 bidders are but I assure you that it will be in the best interest of the infinite hip-hop world if this domain ends up in Oh Word’s hands. And I’d love to buy this site at less than 1 percent of the original asking price.
The problem is I’m fairly broke right now due to a few recent personal emergencies.
So, if you want to help us buy hiphopinfinity.com, send a paypal contribution to paypal@ohword.com
If we don’t win the auction, your money will be reimbursed minus the paypal fees. If we do get the domain, all money will be put towards hosting the new HipHopInfinity.
Peace to the masses.
Excelsior!
Comments for "help us buy hiphopinfinity.com - at a discount of nearly $48,000!"
if i send money do you promise to use that same sky blue for the background? and can i run the forums? by the way, how is jay nowadays? no more politics?
— G Jun 7, 04:26 PM
definite yes on the blue background.
i have no idea how jay is. i was in touch with him when oh word was about to launch and he was considering my request for an interview. but i haven’t been able to reach him since.
this auction is not to buy the domain from him – he let the domain expire. instead it is to buy it from whatever domain registrar before it becomes unclaimed.
— Rafi Jun 7, 04:34 PM
You’re trying to buy the domain but are you going to restore the site?
Is this like a personal, nostalgia thing?
I have to admit, it’s hard to beat that discount!
— Clyde Smith Jun 7, 04:37 PM
Yes, it’s a personal nostalgia thing but it may be a personal, nostalgia thing for other members of a large community in a long diaspora.
Does that sound too dramatic?
— Rafi Jun 7, 04:51 PM
I bet when it’s back up the forums will still be closed for registration
— drew Jun 7, 06:45 PM
why would we want to “donate” to help you buy a business that you’re gonna make loot offa?
— brian Jun 7, 06:49 PM
Brian,
If you have no connection to HHI then you wont want to.
If you want to have it back up and running then you may.
In any case, making any real loot off of it is highly unlikely.
Oh Word is one of the biggest rap blogs around and as a result it brings in literally dozens of dollars every couple of months.
— Rafi Jun 7, 06:53 PM
“Does that sound too dramatic?”
Maybe a little but I get your point. Good luck in your quest!
— Clyde Smith Jun 7, 09:02 PM
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://hiphopinfinity.com
There was a duo from Santa Cruz, I think, that got reviewed there. I’ve been trying to remember who they were for a while now. Too bad there isn’t a decent exchange rate on my years-old curiosity. . . . Good luck . . .
— Fletch Jun 7, 09:05 PM
I hope you get it man I’ll try to donate when I get some money in my paypal account, I’m gonna get a new domain soon too and I know what a pain it can be. Good luck.
— Rekzai Jun 8, 01:31 AM
Fletch – The Santa Cruz duo was Genelec and Memphis Reigns
— David Jun 8, 02:24 AM
if you expect us to give you some money then we should get a fuckin percentage. That dude was trying to screw you over pause (no homo)
— d-boy Jun 8, 03:55 AM
Who’s offering the bids, because I just checked Afternic and saw nothing. I would have bid on the site myself.
— DJ Flash Jun 8, 04:52 AM
If I donate $5, will you be able to bring back The Black Panther to HHI forums, too?
— Perttu Jun 8, 05:53 AM
flash,
i’m using snapnames but it’s closed since it’s already past the expiration period and in the auction stage.
apparently snapnames is the one to use if the domain is registered to network solutions.
i knew nothing about these services and learned about snapnames from this informative post while researching how to nab an expiring domain.
yes d-boy, there will be many riches to share!
perttu, we can only hope.
— test Jun 8, 08:54 AM
Wow! Only 48k? Is that guy serious?
I would have loved to been on your end of the negotiations when that went down and (hesitates) give that guy a piece of my mind.
— SukedowN Jun 8, 12:04 PM
That dirty rotten Jay Seagraves would shut down the forums whenever he felt like it. And whenever a problem arised from the store where someone complained, he took it personal and made stupid remarks, something you never should do in a business.
— Jay B Jun 8, 08:46 PM
David, that’s them. For a while I thought I was imagining it all. Thanks man.
— Fletch Jun 9, 06:00 PM
Doh, we didn’t get it.
About 15 minutes before the auction ended the high bid went from 98 to 105 and was now held by someone named “bonkerstwo”.
I googled the name and learned that this was some kind of professional domain squatter so at that point I was 99% sure this would not end well.
This same user had paid over $9,000 for tuxshop.com according to a blog post i saw.
I started bidding with about 7 minutes left on the clock and drove up the price from 105 to near 250 before figuring this was a lost cause.
Oh well. That domain will now undoubtedly become some domain parked / advertising page.
I’ll refund the donations that we got (just shy of $50 in total) minus the paypal fees.
Thanks anyway to those who threw in.
— rafi Jun 9, 06:22 PM
Now it’s time to get moving on sohiphopinfinity.com
— grief Jun 10, 03:56 PM
Damn i miss HHI...there hasn’t been a site remotely as in-depth, entertaining, and frustrating as HHI since it’s demise. Bring that back!!!
— skav-injure Aug 2, 03:35 AM
I remember HHI. I actually uploaded some stuff back in the day. Bring back HHI. Kids need that.
— Mindshyne Dec 16, 02:11 PM