There’s always something to howl about.

The ActiveRain hokey pokey: You shoot your left foot off, you shoot your right foot off, you shoot your left hand off — and then you present the audience with an invoice…

What costs $360 a year and puts you in touch with vast hordes of sweet people who cannot do business with you? Starting today, Active Rain will cost $30 a month for new members.

That’s a load of dough. If you want to host your own WordPress.org weblog, a perfectly adequate hosting account at HostGator.com will run you $4.95 a month. Toss in ten bucks a year for the domain and you’re still less than $70 a year. For $7.95 a month, you can host unlimited domains, which puts two domains at $116 a year, three at $126, ten at $196. For $360 a year, you could host 26 unique domains. Or you could get a BloodhoundBlog.net blog for free, aliasing it to your own domain name for free.

The demurrer from ActiveRain will be that they are delivering added value. But most of that added value comes from selling the membership to each other — all with advertising and extra-cost features piled on top.

I met many of the AR folks in Seattle last week. Very nice people, fun and enthusiastic. But if your idea of a productive use of your time is schmoozing with other Realtors, Twitter is (still) free…

Technorati Tags: , ,