Was to examine different aspects of Internet Marketing. Some of the techniques I used to get visitors were

• Submit content to social media websites such as , ,
• Mentioning my blog in comments on other blogs
• Mentioning my blog to classmates

The techniques I DIDN’T use (but could have, if the class was longer)

• SEO

What worked?

Search engines and Facebook were the major driving force of traffic. StumbleUpon, the most traffic driving social network in the world, did not work for my blog. I regard this to the short period of time I gave it to operate considering the nature of this website.

In total, I had 352 visits in 6 weeks for an average of 58 people per week or just above 8 visits per day. Visitors spent 3 minuets and 52 seconds on average on my blog. I regard this to the easy to read, viral content I created in the beginning.

What I learned

• If you want to draw visitors through social media, use “light” content like jokes or riddles. Nobody wants to read walls of text.
• Pictures travel faster than words. I added a URL stamp to the images on this blog which resulted in some direct traffic. 9 visitors from the U.S typed in my blog URL directly, yet I did not tell anyone in the U.S. about this website.
• Long wordy posts are useful only for search engine traffic. Having more words on your blog means you become more relevant in various Google search terms. This is why I got visits from people searching for “Freelance writers from India”. As our instructor Prof. Paul Cubbon said : “If you’re going to write a long post, you better be world class interesting”. Sadly I don’t fall under that category.

I had fun editing the blog and reading others and the Pulse is still active. Overall satisfaction? 10/10

1. A store labyrinth.

Ikea does this masterfully; you have to walk through the entire store before you find your way out.

2. Find it for less and we’ll match the price.

Nearly every retailer can advertise “Find the same product for less and we’ll take 25% off”. Why? Because the manufacturer gives every major retailer their own specifically named “lines”. So nobody but say, Sears, sells “PilloSoft II by Serta”, even though Nordstrom’s “SleepKing III by Serta” is exactly the same thing, with exactly the same specs, but with a different name and fabric pattern.

3. Anchoring.

During the presentation you’d always say you have 3 programs; Average, agressive, and conservative(and always in that order). The average program would be just at the edge of what they could afford, the agressive would be WAY out of their price range, and the conservative program would be what we’re actually going to try and sell them on. That way it doesn’t sound like “this product costs $8,000. Cash or check?” Instead they think “well we obviously can’t afford the agressive program, and the average is a bit much, but the conservative program is much more affordable. Let’s do that one.”

4. Leave the money out of it.

In retail, people will tend to leave the “$” sign off of price tags because the “$” sign reminds you it’s costing something, and not just the numbers. Like on certain restaurant menus, the price for a steak will just be listed as ’19’.

5. Names matter.

A friend of a friend runs a pretty popular deli/eatery in Auckland, New Zealand. They’re famous for their pies, which are made fresh right there every day.

After being open for around 6 months, they noticed that the worst-selling pie was the Mexican one. They always had at least 2 or 3 left over at the end of the day.

So, for no other reason than a social experiment to see how easy people were to influence, he renamed the pie “The Lady Gaga”. Exactly the same ingredients, same location on the menu and the pie rack, just a different name.

The Lady Gaga pie now sells out first, every single day. They rarely have any left by 1pm, let alone by the time they close. He told me that when people come there for the first time, the pie they usually have is invariably the Lady Gaga.

6. False scarcity.

Another friend worked in sales at a Smith & Hawken store that was in liquidation. They would get a shipment of, say, 20 chairs, all the same model. When the store got busy he would carry one through the store while yelling to his coworker “we only have two left now!”. People snapped these up, thinking they were scarce. An effective sales technique that works on the bargain hunter.

7. Mess with the A/C.

At certain nightclubs, one of the things they use was to turn off the AC to heat the place up. People packing the dance floor would start to get really hot and decide to cool off by buying another drink. In some restaurants they would purposefully keep the temperature chilly to turn tables faster. People would eat and not stick around to have coffee afterwards.

A recent BBC piece talks about how companies sponsor paid comments online. This is, according to BBC, damaging the ‘Trust’ on the internet. Was there ever trust on the internet? I barely trust what people tell me in real life.

Using comments for online marketing is however interesting. People seem to trust ‘unbiased’ opinions more than they do ads. Currently you could pay very little to get a lot of positive reviews for your product or service. Freelance writers from India and China flock websites like craigslist, linkedin, fiverr, freelancer.org and many others.

It is currently possible to tell apart some comments from sponsored efforts, however companies are becoming more sophisticated with their online marketing techniques, occupying  bad reviews sites as well as good. Indeed, with some industries customers are interested about the bad characteristics of the product along with the good, pushing companies into mitigating these attributes in favor of their own agendas.

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is the latest attempt to censor the internet. Fueled by the U.S. government and corporations, it will allow ISPs to censor websites they don’t deem ‘fit’. This will include illegal downloads but also extreme opinions and personal blogs, shifting the power of the internet from the individual to major corporations. It will also tremendously hurt video gamers.

The European Union has luckily decided to support freedom of speech and oppose SOPA. These are very good news but the war is not yet won. While some petitions aim to convincing the White House that the people want a free, uncensored web, some initiatives are more aggressive; Forbes recently reported of a group of users attempting to build a new internet platform which big brother will not be able to control.

When the radio was invented, it allowed open communication in a way never before seen. Individual ham radios began broadcasting thoughts that were sometimes too extreme for the authorities, which in term decided to limit radio waves and thus preventing anyone but financially capable companies from utilizing the device. If we don’t act quickly, the same will happen with the internet.

The state of piracy sucks right now. Its all Torrents or MegaUpload and Rapidshare. How lame. If you’re cutting edge, maybe you have a vpn or a seedbox to protect yourself (hardly). Meanwhile our brothers and sisters are being called to court to pay thousands of dollars for (sometimes fraudulent) copyright suits.

Why don’t we have a tor alternative that’s optimized for filesharing? How come no one knows about freenet? Another torrentsite had its domain pulled? Why were they even using an ICANN domain when they could be using OpenNIC!?

You want to write your governor letters he won’t read? You want to make whitehouse.gov petitions that they obviously don’t give two fucks about? Or do you want to beat them? I’ll tell you how we beat them: superior technology. Tor already exists. OpenNIC already exist. We already have the technology to make untraceable filesharing possible. The only winning move really is not to play. Not to play their game. You’ll never beat them at bureaucracy. But I’ll tell you a secret, technology moves faster than bureaucracy. We are faster, we are smarter, and we are far more dedicated.

When a game company spends thousands of dollars on DRM only to have it cracked in under 24hrs by a hacker. A hacker who does it not for profit, but for his own amusement. That’s us fighting back.

When the DEA outlaws ecstasy and a chemist invents 2C-B. Then the DEA outlaws 2C-B so they make 2C-E and 2C-I and 2C-P and suddenly they’re making new drugs faster than they can outlaw them. That’s… ok well that is for profit but the point still stands: TECHNOLOGY MOVES FASTER THAN BUREAUCRACY

We will win, but it won’t be through the courts. We’ll make piracy impossible to stop, impossible to track. Eventually they’ll give up, then we’ll win through the courts. Look at marijuana. Years ago it was a prison sentence. They couldn’t stop it. Now in my state even distribution is only a fine. They haven’t given up yet but they will. Pot will be legal. It’ll have taken a long time but it’ll win. Its impossible to stop.

I place $20 into a box.

So do you.

There is now $40 in the box.

I sell the box to you for $30.

We both walk away with a $10 profit.