Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSquealer
The facebook thing was interesting to me simply because now they weren't "clicks"... they were people with friends, family, likes/dislikes, pics, hobbies etc. I just has this really weird moment of "oh shit... all these "clicks" are people just like me".
They don't ban your fb account, they ban the advertising account associated with it. They also save every single scrap of data associated with it - every access, everything you did etc. So if you fuck up even one time and break the rules, they will know. You can do this stuff... just don't use your own account, create a new one, proxies/fake user agent info, use prepaid cards to fund it, block anyone under 21 from seeing the page etc. But i also tried hard to keep it super mild with pics and text. You don't have to worry about them policing, you don't have to worry about the people liking it, you have to think "what is the guys mom going to say when the pics he "likes" and his racy comments show up on her page" or "what is the bitter, cunty fat chick going to say when her circle of guy friends is liking a chick with a perfect body". I think its good for just getting a high level understanding of who appreciates what. You'll see right away how race specific or age specific content and behaviors can be. And you'll stop thinking of it as "traffic" and start wondering, "are these unique visitors 18 year old inner city gangbangers or 40 year old IT professionals... because that's going to make a MASSIVE difference in conversions and sales". People really forget these days that with mobile traffic and prepaid phones, every idiot, even kids can visit any site. In the early days, they had to be computer geeks with some strange thing called "an internet connection". People love to blame tubes nad anything else they can, but the pace of change in terms of who is online, who is visiting sites etc has been staggering and peoples blame really reflects their poor understanding of the constant demographic shifts and ways people use the web.
I don't know that it would be a fair comparison to users/user behavior on a tube site to what you might learn on facebook. But it was sobering to post a pic of a girls ass in yoga pants and see it immediately blow up in circles of 18 yr old latino gangbangers or black or whatever. So it was weird visiting all the profiles and seeing the pics of their lives, wishing someone luck that was going to prison or whatever and you're thinking "holy shit, are these the people using my other site???... no wonder revenue is slowing down and traffic is climbing quickly". It was just a unique way to look at what might be site visitors and it was certainly interesting to humanize every single one of them and see their life story.
I have yet, in all these years to find anything online that even comes close to being as useful as that site and their studies when it comes to online marketing.
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As you know, I deal in paysites so the psychology of why someone would pay for something they can get for free (remember that oft-told argument?) is something I focus on. We, as Webmasters and people who use the Internet to make money, often forget:
1. The Internet isn't "reality". It's virtual reality that, at best, blends 'real life' with cyber graphics and, at the least, acts as a type of alternate Universe for people to play in, scam in, live out their ego fantasies, etc. But it is not 'real life'.
w. How a 'civilian' (someone who doesn't make their living online) incorporates the Internet, mobile devices, Twitter, etc into their everyday lives is not something most of us think about when it comes to marketing. We see numbers, numbers, numbers ONLY - and get lost in them, forgeting that those numbers represent living, breathing human beings.
So I often wonder, when I get a sale to one of my paysites, who is this person who just joined? I look at their names, where they are from, which kind of subscription they purchased....then also look at this data when I get a chargeback or refund. It helps me to remember that these are actual people spending actual money for something I am selling them. But what makes that ONE person who bought different than the other 999 who visited the site but did not buy?
We spend so much time in this business analyzing data that we overlook the simple, basic human motivation that's at the heart of all those numbers.