(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, April 21, 2015 ) Columbia MO -- Collin Bunch, an advisor with the Small Business Technology Development Center (SBDC), a free resource for entrepreneurs and small businesses in Missouri, worked with entrepreneurs in Columbia, Missouri and organized a weekend event called Domain Purge. The event was organized by five key entrepreneurs: Mattew Murrie www.whatif360.com, Matt Fishcher www.sportsformulator.com, JC Holmes www.everfin.com, and Sean Lander and Mike Phinney who are college students at Missouri University in Columbia. The event was organized as an effort and goal to look at unused domains to see if any one of them could be used as a draft idea for a functional business in a weekend, and then build the business to generate passive income, with low effort.
The weekend started on Friday, April 17th with roughly 10 domains to start the team's conversations, and as the weekend progressed there were four strong contenders that turned into solid projects. One of those projects went live on Saturday, April 18, called: www.badartauction.com, which is a website to help get art out of the trash and onto the walls. It is for any person who likes to buy art, create art, or just look at unique, one-of-a-kind pieces of art. The owner of the URL badartauction.com, Matt Murrie, who also owns www.whatif360.com, bought badartauction.com a couple years ago. He was inspired by vintage tee shirts, and thought if people would buy old tee shirts, would people buy old art. The plan for the art auction website is to measure success, and see if they can get people to rank or review the online art, as well as create a site to start conversations about art.
There are two ways to enjoy the Bad Art Auction website. First, anyone can rate and leave a review on just how "bad" the art hanging in their gallery is. Or, second, they can place a bid and take home their very own work of fabulously bad art. The pieces are one-of-a-kind in both scope and execution. The bidding process starts with a person looking for art. Whichever work of art in online gallery has the best rating becomes the next work up for auction. People can stay up to date on which work goes up for auction next by following timely announcements on Twitter and Instagram. Once an auction closes, badartauction.com will send the highest bidder the art.
The website is not only a free website to post and bid on artwork, but a celebration of art where people can share art, have conversations about art, and a place where people can generate art. This website makes it possible for people to find art, and a place for artist to be able to get their art in front of a larger audience to sell, and best of all - share their work with the world.
With this unconventional approach in mind to sell art online, the entire team worked together to make it a reality. Matt Murrie had the concept, is the Project Manager, and managing the social marketing; Olivia Gill works for Regional Economic Development Inc. (REDI) designed the logo; Blake Anderson owner of Expressive Analytics, along with Sean Lander, (Missouri University Student) Mike Phinney (Missouri University Student), Frankie Cancino (Missouri University Student) developed the database, and the auction site. Dan Komo partner of Intelixseo (an internet marketing company), was involved with creating the landing page, video production, SEO, and will continue to work with the team to market the website.
The teams were very inspired, and the Small Business Technology Development Center plans on doing many more events like this in the future.
Entrepreneurs in Columbia, MO organized a weekend event called Domain Purge that pulled together college students, community entrepreneurs, designers, and developers around the city to create a business around an idea and domain.
