MemeSeeder

As I write this I’m feeling a strong and ever present force drawing me back to the ‘grey side’ of internet marketing. It is a feeling that’s been with me for the past couple of weeks and was brought on by the fact that I’ve randomly stumbled across a number of sites and blogs that contain some great money making techniques. I’m now itching to get stuck in and try some of them out; namely a technique known as ‘cookie stuffing’.

I haven’t tried any non-work related money making projects since my AdSense / AdWords arbitrage (click flipping) went balls up over a year ago. Click flipping is basically a system where you buy PPC ads for next to nothing and funnel users through to clicking on other, higher value PPC ads which are commissionable to you. When the going was good, I was raking in around £90 profit a day on top of a £30 spend. It was so sweet. It had an automatic money making machine which rarely needed tweaking. All I did was gleefully check my stats every hour to see how much I was making. Good thing never last, though, do they?

It all ended as a result of Google introducing the dreaded quality score to their algorithm. While Google claimed its introduction was a noble act that sought to protect the advertiser and make an easier purchasing path for the consumer, it was essentially a move to cut out the opportune middleman and tighten their stranglehold on the online ad market. Over the course of a few weeks my margins began decreasing, then suddenly, overnight, I was priced out completely. My profit was directly inverted into loss. If I hadn’t been such an obsessive stat-checker, I could have lost a lot of money very fast.

Anyway, after stumbling across all these new money making techniques, I decided to do some more research and came across a great community called Black Hat World. It’s a relatively new, but very busy forum dedicated to the fun side of online marketing. I’ve joined and I’m trying to soak up as much as I can from its helpful members. I’m going to dedicate my weekends to trying out some of the techniques that I’m learning. I promise to give updates on any successes

God, it feels good to be filled with techie greed again!

Dave Balter, CEO of BzzAgent has very kindly decided to distribute a free PDF of the second volume of his book, The Word of Mouth Manual.

It consists of three humorous parts which seek to raise the profile of WoM and demonstrate that it is, and always will be, the most powerful marketing medium. A fact I happen to agree with.

It’s going to cost $45 when the hard copy is launched on Amazon. I’d recommend buying it as it would be a welcome addition to any marketer’s bookshelves. Or you could be lazy like me and grab the free one here.

I joined Twitter yesterday – yes, I’m a late comer to this too – as I’m constantly hearing how amazing and addictive it is. To be honest, when I first logged in, I failed to see any value in it. Everything seemed so transitory and pointless. This didn’t last long as I began searching for potential followers who were connected to my line of work. Within no time I had found a bunch of interesting people to follow, gathered a few followers of my own and started to see a nice steady stream of interesting Tweets pouring into my profile.

Also from a work perspective, the relationships you generate with Twitter seem to be far better than Facebook ones because you remain at a comfortable level of anonymity. I don’t really want clients to witness my bacchanalian weekenders!

Twitterers seem to be better than a LinkedIn network because everyone has a fast-paced, upbeat and positive attitude towards one another. They’re actually helpful.

Twitter even seems to be improving the traffic to this blog. Already!

Other Twitter related news that’s been in the front of my mind recently, is a post I read in TechCrunch last weekend. It was about Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron auctioning off his Twitter account.

Here’s what Baron had to say in his eBay item description:

I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.

It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be.

http://twitter.com/andrewbaron

The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that’s available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.

So basically it’s like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.

The first sign of value to most people would be the number of followers I have (the audience size). At the beg. of this auction, there are 1397 followers and I am actually quite proud of the actual quality of these followers, moreso than the number. Feel free to explore everyone to see who’s there.

Also, as with any dynamic group, there is obviously risk. My followers could jump ship at anytime. There is no guarantee on this part. People will come and go, thats just the way it is. Whether you represent a company, a group or just yourself, this group will not want to be sold to, Im sure. The successful winner will share a reciprocal value with the followers.

Incidentally, this eBay item, ‘Twitter Account and Followers for Sale’, is now valued at $1,550.00

Here’s his offer:

Being a Twitter virgin, I’m clearly not the best placed person to give comment on the man’s decision to sell. However, from a PR perspective I think it is a flawed one. In the sensitive and volatile world of social media, such a move is guaranteed to fuck people off. Private and trusting audiences should not be for sale. They should be nurtured and encouraged to exchange constructive ideas with the person who’s worked so hard make them stop and listen in the first place. This online ‘attention economy’ is, after all, the hardest market in which to be admired. Why jeopardize your position?

Mind you, perhaps I’m underestimating Baron and not seeing the full picture. He’s ‘made it’ in social media. He’s not stupid. He clearly knows what he’s doing and has crafted a successful publicity stunt through this Twitter auction. The question is why has he done it? Publicity for publicity’s sake?

Having just started this blog with a positive outlook towards the industry in which I work, the UK’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) have clamped down on a number of different viral, buzz and word of mouth strategies. They have said that when the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading regulations come into force on the 26^th May 2008, some of these online activities will, in fact, become illegal.

To quote the IPA:

One particular clause in the Regulations will make the following activities a criminal offence:

• Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand.

• Using “buzz marketing” specialists to communicate with potential consumers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors.

• Seeding viral ads on the internet in a manner that implies you are a simple member of the public.

Marina Palomba, the IPA’s legal director and genius behind these new regulations said: “If advertisers and their agencies ignore the ethics of responsible advertising, the damage to the advertising and marketing industry generally will be considerable, undermining all commercial messages, their effectiveness and the self regulatory systems.”

She then goes on to warn us that it is in all of our best interests to re-asses our business practices and adjust to the new regulations before their enforcement in May. To ignore them, will invoke hefty fines and prison sentences.

Here is the PDF of the IPA briefing.

I think it’s time for me (and the rest of you who work in this field) to track down the finer points. I’ll post an update when I find out more…

I found this interesting pdf on WoM today. Below is a summary by its author (source ):

Today, we can present a first Empowered Involvement research status. This working paper is based on the work I am currently doing for my Doctorate Dissertation, which I plan to publish by the middle of 2008. Briefly, this is what Empowered Involvement is about:

Stimulating positive word of mouth has become one of the key strategies for marketing success. Our research on Empowered Involvement suggests that a very targeted participatory approach to marketing may be a promising solution for this. And it supports the notion that a real paradigm shift in marketing – from a communication approach to an interaction approach – may become the hallmark of early 21st century marketing.

The working paper presents the conceptual thinking behind Empowered Involvement, and a first (early) empirical study. We are looking forward to any kind of feedback - the comments are open! The dissertation will add results from a second and more elaborate study, which will then present a complete picture of how Empowered Involvement works.

Online TV network Kontraband has appointed Simon Guild, former CEO of MTV Networks Europe, as Non Executive Chairman.

The company has also signed Al Gosling, CEO of The Extreme Group and founder of the Extreme Sports Channel, as Non Executive Director.

Kontraband provides the male focused entertainment video web site, www.kontraband .com, and the viral marketing agency, The 7th Chamber (www.the7thchamber.com).

Simon Guild will join the board as Non Executive Chairman.

“With over 14 years experience at MTV launching TV channels, online businesses and mobile offerings and a broad exposure to the entire media sector Simon will bring a vast amount of experience and insight to the Board” said CEO Richard Spalding.

Last Wednesday Google announced that they are going to introduce a tracking tool for YouTube. The tool, Insight, allows uploaders to gather much richer info on who’s watching their videos and where in the world those views are coming from etc. This is what Google’s Tracy Chan had to say about the new tracker:

"I remember the first time a video I posted to YouTube cracked 100 views. I wasn’t so much surprised as curious: Who were these people? How did they find this video? Where did they come from?

Today we’re taking our first step towards answering these questions with YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account — users, partners , and advertisers — to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. For now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.

Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups."

I wonder how easy it would be to scrape the data from Insight and feed it into a 3rd party viral video tracker?

This moment is long overdue. I’ve worked on the so called ‘bleeding edge’ that is viral marketing for four years now. Although embarrassingly late to the blogging scene, I’ll hopefully still be able to share some insightful industry opinion with the blogosphere. My former blog (also about viral, new media etc.) was actually quite nice, but I got bored of it and turned the URL into a dodgy looking resting place for my viral affiliate schemes. The thing I’m hosting there at the moment is an eBook on how to beat the online casinos at roulette. The system does in fact work (for a while), but punters inevitably get greedy and lose everything. As affiliate to the casinos, I receive a third of their loss. The eBook’s spreading quite nicely now and my revenue is increasing by about £50 a month. I’ve made £300 this month – not bad considering the only way I’ve promoted it was by creating a Facebook group