It's official... Wizardworld.com is no more...

[lighthouse]

From the Pulse...

 

Employees of 800America who were responsible for Wizardworld.com and other websites have received their termination notices, according to Wizardworld.com Managing Editor Janet Hetherington.

 

As reported earlier in the Pulse, 800America's owner, Elie Rabi was arrested for various financial crimes, and all of his assets, including Wizardworld.com were put into receivership.

 

Hetherington received a letter dated December 3 from the Receiver for 800America.com, Michael Sommer, terminating her employment and was sent home before any of the material for that day could be posted.

 

As was discussed earlier this week, the parent company has been in free-fall for nearly a month. I think a previous poster was correct that anyone who has data stored with WW should get it out ASAP, else they lose the opportunity. The DNS still resolves as of right now, but it may not by Monday.

[Guest]

It doesn't surprise me....when the site started charging to access portfolios and buy and sell, I knew it was in decline. Still, it's not a bad site, but I must admit it was pretty poorly designed and maintained. Sad loss...it was nice to have an online area to post up moderns and silvers for quick sale without going the ebay route.

[snizzenfixit]

What is UP with that icon? It reminds me of some little kids toy, that I would feel compelled to knock over and watch it try to dance from on its back.

 

Phil

 

 

[fantastic_four]

when the site started charging to access portfolios and buy and sell, I knew it was in decline

That wasn't a sign of decline, that was their plan all along. That's a guess on my part, but a very well-educated one based upon my observations of Internet marketing and Wizard's above-average marketing savvy. What Wizard did is the most popular way for subscription-based web sites to promote themselves:

 

• Start out free for X number of months to get people interested in the site
• Closely monitor usage of the areas of the site you want to charge people for
• Once you find there are enough people using the premium areas of the site, begin the change over to a pay service.

People are so used to the web being free that you often 50% to 75% of your users off and they never pay, so you've really gotta make that subscription content compelling and get a ton of people using it for that approach to work.

 

I was never very compelled by Wizard's content. I tried it from the first week they started listing prices online right up until they went to a subscription service, but I found it only minimally useful.

[Rickdogg]

In honor of the great downfall.......