You’ve come up with a brilliant scheme in order to make some fast cash, but your inimitable brilliance is stunted by the fact that you can’t come up with a marketing gimmick. How, oh, how will you reach your audience? Just how will you raise awareness of your illustrious product on unwitting innocents all over the world?
Will you take out clever ads in hand-picked magazines and newspapers that target your audience? Nah–that’s probably more money than you can afford. They say you have to spend money to make money, but why spend it when you can get your advertising for free, right?
Will you, then, shrewdly take out some text-ads on Google that will match your product to individualized searches? Nah–that’s probably too risky for you. I mean, who knows if anyone will really click on it? And, besides, there’s still that pesky problem of the cost.
Perhaps you’ll go construct a thoughtfully laid-out website, using Web Standards to increase your visibilty in search engines? Gosh–that’s far too insightful, for you, isn’t it? I mean, if you were that sharp, you wouldn’t be getting involved in quick and dirty schemes to make a fast buck.
Ah…I know. You’ll go haunt the personal weblogs and online journals of thousands of people all over the web–the sites into which people pour their lives on a daily basis to keep touch with friends and family. You’ll pepper their commenting systems with subtle, seemingly relevant references to their content, and strategically link your name back to your product website.
It’s free. It raises the visibility of your website without your having to clean up your disasterous markup. And–best of all–you really didn’t have to think about it at all, did you? It’s such a easy and simple scam, that even you could come up with it!
Well, I just thought I’d warn you that I pay close attention to our comments. You should know that any and all comments that refer–even in the slightest way–to some sleazy marketing product or website are instantly and unceremoniously…
Now, do us all a favor and go do something more reputable with your time, won’t you?
I can’t believe people would be so low as to include things like T-Shirts http://www.cafeshops.com/theforgotten advertisements in a personal web blog. Even the ones that link to Baseball Caps http://www.cafeshops.com/theforgotten.6558118 are terrible, terrible people. These people should be lynched. Boiled in Oil. Strung from the ceiling by their thumbs. There is no punishment too great for these scum.
Seriously though. If someone happens across a blog, and an article catches their attention, because it relates to a product they sell, how is it a bad thing that they post about it?
Lets say you’re talking about looking for a new car, and a Jersey car dealer happens to do a google search and finds that blog entry. Granted he is /LOOKING/ for ways to make a buck, by searching out people that are looking for cars in blogs … but lets say he mentions his dealership, says to come down and even offers you an additional discount of some sort. Points you to a website (consumer reports perhaps), about the cars that he sells.
Or even just stops by and says “how about a toyota” and links to a toyota dealership?
I just don’t see something like that being a bad thing. Actually, if they do it somewhat tastefully, it could be a relationship building model.
On the other hand, blatant posting to sites without regard to the topic at hand would be extremely annoying, and should probably be removed in the interest of keeping a thread ontopic.
You did qualify your remarks with ’sleazy’ … so, i’m really not sure if you were refering to any and all marketting, or just the annoying kind. Or is it all annoying?
Altp.
re: “On the other hand, blatant posting to sites without regard to the topic at hand would be extremely annoying, and should probably be removed in the interest of keeping a thread ontopic.”
Mike, this is exactly what I’m referring to. I’ve had people show up at our site and post something like,
“great article! Look up zip codes [link to sleazy zip code product site]”
I’ve actually had one or two commenters link directly to porn sites, as well. This is inexcusable. I’ve worked long and hard on Our Story to have some joker come by and try to make a buck off of my work. Solicited suggestions to products are welcomed when I explictly invite them. Unsolicited comments that are trying to sneak under the radar are offensive and wrong.
This has been a prolific problem for Adam Kalsey lately: http://kalsey.com/2003/09/comment_spam/
Mark Pilgrim, I just found, wrote about this last year: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/29/club_vs_lojack_solutions/
…and appears to be dealing with the problem on an ongoing basis: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/03/the_importance_of_humanreadable_markup#c001754
“Ah, this question is definitely worth my time and considerati–DELETED!”
Ah. Ken, I think I remember saying something to you in the car on the way home from Ironworks one night to the effect of “if I bought their product as many times as they spam me… …than friggi’n New York City”. I left out the inside joke part. Dang spammers…