Chatroulette.com was a fast growing cam site where people can randomly chat with others on the network via webcam. It is a one to one set up. As reported at a large webmaster forum, most of the users of chatroulette are GUYS. We’re talking smelly sausage factory levels of guy saturation. While this might be bad news for dudes looking to chat with a hottie on cam or much less SCORE with such a hottie, this is a potential MARKETING bonanza for webcam programs or studio affiliates who have girls working for them. Apparently, they are already marketing on that site by having hot women say “Hi, my name is XXXXXXXXX” quickly followed up by “Visit me at XXXXXXXX” and quick click of the NEXT button. LOLz.
Anyway, before you get in on this game, make sure you check the TOS of that site. Also, keep in mind that they have recently announced that they are tracking IPs now to solve perv issues. One other spin on this situation: some chatters on Yahoochat (the ones pushing cams and dating) allegedly have come up with prerecorded “cam sessions” that they feed to the system. I haven’t personally seen this but it does seem ingenious. The question that comes to mind would be if this “solution” applies to the chatroulette.com situation.
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As part of Craigslist’s evolving efforts to crack down on fake ads and “e-whoring”, Craigslist is now using GEO-IP detection for its ads. It used to allow people from outside a particular city to post ads for that city. Eg. someone who lives in Seattle could post ads in Washington DC. That’s all changed now. Your IP must reflect the location you are posting to.
I am not sure how effective this would be in the long run. Craigslist is so lucrative for blackhat marketers that they have successfully bypassed previous antispam efforts. Even Craigslist’s lawsuit against one of the biggest CL ad posting software companies don’t deter other apps from popping up to take its place. Here’s a quick history based on a historical observation of craigslist’s ad volume/section activity (NOTE: we don’t condone any of the behaviors discussed in this entry. This is purely for news commentary purposes only.)
Antispam measure: community flagging of ‘suspect’ ads Workaround: post tons of ads to compensate for the kill rate.
Antispam measure: autoghosting of ads Workaround: posts tons of ads to compensate for the ghost rate.
Antispam measure: Phone verified accounts Workaround: Spammers would place free ads on other sites that trick people inito phone verifying accounts. They then turnaround and sell these in bulk to other CL posters.
It is an evolutionary arms race. Similar to how predator and prey evolve in the natural world. The prey would evolve a defense, the predator evolves to defeat that defense. Never-ending.
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Google Reader recently added a “social networking” capability to Google’s feed Reader online app.
Here’s a screeen shot
The great thing about this is when you click the “X people liked this post” you’ll see a list of names. The names lead to profiles. The profiles lead to links. Why is this important: OpenID users are “filtering” themselves based on content they like. Talk about a targeted marketer’s dream come true…
Whenever a webpage lets users post live links that link out to sites outside, it’s a marketing opportunity. I’ll let you fill in the blanks on how to turn this into $$$.
Remember, folks: Don’t be evil. Use this awesome opportunity for good–use it to network and build relationships. Those are the kinds of traffic deals that pay off for the long haul.
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4Chan is one of the Internet’s leaders in spreading memes. It’s also a great source of free traffic methods such as its rumored gaming of Google Trends for the search term “hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha”
Well, 4Chan prankster are at it again with a massive porn prank raid on Youtube set for June 12. Click the thumbnail below.
What’s the lesson to learn from this? If you have a massive base, media can be manipulated through crowdsourced options. Another lesson, learn to piggyback on crowdsourced efforts. As always, make sure your own attempts at milking free traffic from high traffic sites comport with the letter and spirit of their TOS. DO NOT copy the 4chan prank described above–it obviously violates tagging/labeling and content rules. While observing how these pranks work is educational, make sure your own traffic generation efforts comply with all relevant laws. Usually, if you provide content (which you rightfully own) in exchange for traffic, a win win situation is created.
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Despite its fairly obvious vulnerabilities to nefarious online buzz gaming schemes, Google Trends has a lot to offer webmasters. In particular, it gives first mover advantage for webmasters looking for new domain niches to buy and new keyword clusters to capitalize on.
Trend domaining
Domaining is probably one of the few recession-resistant (notice I used the word “resistant” as opposed to “proof”) online money making opportunities available. Stock portfolios may drop, commodities options may slump, but domains (at least type in domains) keep chugging along. Unfortunately, many inexperienced observers would probably say that “all the good ones” have long been taken? O really? I argue that domains are essentially memes–they convey a set of ideas. Of course, some ideas are more ‘durable’ than others–just like regular words, they are susceptible to fashion and fads. That said, you can easily figure out what new ideas have buzz using tools like technorati and twitter. However, the crown jewel of this trend hunting troika is Google Trends.
Google Trends is a great tool for checking the spread of an idea. People are searching for the term. Validate its latency and persistence using Twitter’s search functionality. Study the niche it falls under–what is the aggregate commercial value of this niche, among a host of other fine tuned analytical steps. Study the commercial depth of the term to see how quickly it can be monetized. If it all checks out, plunk down that $8.95 (or lower) and buy and store. Trend domains can quickly blow up in value if the niche is hot enough. Don’t have the time, tools, or methodologies to do all this? Outsource it for dirt cheap.
Trend Blogging
When a new trend starts getting real hot, it always pays to be in on the ground floor. First mover advantage is key. No wonder many blogs “pounce” on the latest trends spit out by Google trends. These blogs range in sophistication from The Inquistr to many MFA (Made for Adsense) blogspot.com blogs. One thing I’ve noticed though–the more sophisticated blogs don’t focus on “definition terms” like “bilious” but on more commercial or newsworthy terms. I guess this reflects a tradeoff between high bounce rate and temporary “trend” traffic and ROI. I would think that same calculation should be at play for any serious online businessperson–always shoot for the highest ROI and return on effort you can find. Not all “hot trend” topics are the same.
Photo Credit: Trevor Manternach
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Due to pressure from state attorney generals regarding the usage of Craigslist’s “erotic services” section, CL has decided to drop erotic services and replace it with a new “adult services” section. What is disturbing about the new section is that it will be manually filtered by CL employees. Is this a preview of ad censorship? Not like it’s very easy to post on CL nowadays: you need a PVA (phone verified account) and your ad has to make it through many, increasingly it seems, arbitrary barriers. As I’ve always maintained, Classified Ads sites owe most of their success to advertisers/posters and this new development (and its implications for future editorial control) would probably dampen posters’ appetities.
If anything, this is good news for CL competitors. For a great classified ads automated poster, click here
More information on this development here
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As you probably know from our prior posts, YouTube can be a great source of free traffic to your website. However, for really viral videos, there’s a major traffic leak in this model:
You post your popular video
A blogger gets the video url and embeds it on a blog.
End result: People get to enjoy your content without seeing your link in the video description section or your clickable name (which goes to your channel. Your channel has your link outs).
Solution: Disable embedding. If people want to see your video, they have to click the Youtube link and see it on youtube (along with your links).
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![](http://i49.tinypic.com/ilwt4j.gif")
Getting free traffic from DrudgeReport.Com
One of our readers alerted us to an interesting way to get traffic from Drudge Report, the wildly popular (#446 on Alexa) conservative news aggregation site. It appears many marketers watch the site for new updates that feature sites that allow user comments. Normally, a drudge featured story is good for several thousand views. Once such a site is included on the main page of Drudge, marketers would post in intervals using their DOMAIN as their name. Note that MOST of the sites posted on Drudge do NOT allow domain names so domains are often SPELLED OUT. See below (site name redacted).
We imagine the traffic to be good (Drudge gets more traffic than DIGG) until the article gets bumped off the main page with another update. Since many of the stories are syndicated by a HUGE network of blogs that blog Drudge’s stories, there’s probably a good chance of a small residual flow of traffic stretching for weeks.
In terms of niche, we surmise that the types of sites that would benefit best from this traffic are those that are TOPICALLY-RELATED. Conservative news blogs are the first that to come to mind. Other possibly related niches–forex sites with a conservative slant, goldbug type sites, etc. Like with any other type of marketing–niche relevance increases conversions. Jerry Garcia / Phish paraphernalia websites probably has as much chance of selling to this crowd as Obama commemorative T-Shirts at Tea Party rallies.
As always, read the TOS of the sites you are commenting on and make sure your activities fall within their guidelines.
Image Credit: Breitbart.com
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