Demonstrating the Effectiveness of White Space

You’re Not Worthy of Your Own Social Network, Despite Reassurance From Parents

Before mammoth social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, the only “networking” you did involved 600 free hours of AOL and the Teenage Basement chat room filled with “a/s/l?” requests.

Social networking then entered the fray and helped bring together like-minded virgins. I have no problem with engaging in this form of community, despite my lack of virginity.

However, the trend didn’t stop with social networking sites. Suddenly it isn’t enough to simply be a member of a community. You think you need your very own self-centered universe.

This is where sites like Ning and CrowdVine surfaced to fulfill your inflated ego by allowing you to create and manage your very own social network.

What’s with the youcentric world? Are you the sun?

So Time Magazine named you Person of the Year in 2006. Big deal. Every 13 year old with a webcam, or anyone who’s ever downloaded the complete 3rd season of Stargate also shares that honor.

And so do Hitler and Stalin.

Even the third-party social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter let you broadcast every menial detail of your life. Some think this form communication is useful to the world. Myself and others think it’s about as valuable as an Elvis Presley Chia Pet.

“Tina is: feeling happy because her science project got an A+”…no one cares, Tina.

“Edward is: nervous about his date this weekend”…keep it to yourself, Ed.

Your mom, dad and pet turtle are the only ones who think your important enough to have your own social network.

Want to know if you’re really worthy? Unless you’ve appeared on the cover of Newsweek, People, Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic or Playboy…you aren’t.

Update: I just came across another service called Smirk, which lets people with no lives share their mood with video emoticons. It is officially the end of the world.

The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet

We’ve all seen her. You’re innocently typing a website URL into the address bar, make a typo, and there she is.

She’s the “parked domain girl”, and she’s been viewed more than the Paris Hilton sex tape or Miss Teen South Carolina’s inspirational eloquence on domestic map shortages and the South African education system.

(See an example at why5.com)

Demand Media is the company responsible for pimping out this girl on empty websites set up to generate money from accidental visits. The Demand Media business model is this — scoop up generic or keyword-rich domain names and sell advertising space despite the lack of any iota of useful content.

It’s not exactly spamming, but it’s just one notch above mass emailing Viagra ads.

This poor girl was harmlessly walking to Psych 301 class and smiled for a snapshot. Now she’s being exploited more than Miley Cyrus or teenage Chinese gymnasts by people who take domain name monetization too far.

How the guys behind this sleep at night is beyond me, but apparently they do so in a bed of $100 bills.

Who is she?

Does anyone know who she is? Does she get paid per page impression? The Baha Men swiped 10% royalty every time “Who Let The Dogs Out” played. I can only hope this girl has a similar arrangement.

In an attempt to solve the riddle behind this infamous portrait, I looked closely at the background and now believe she is standing on the University of Texas campus next to the famous 307-foot tower.

Here’s my photographic evidence:

What do you think?

Top 5 Ways to Make a Top 10 List

None can question the influence of a “Top X” list. Organize your message into a list, and you automatically make it to the front page of all major social news sites.

It’s in their algorithms. In fact, you can’t throw a dart at the screen without hitting a list-based title.

The more stupid people visit your website, the more money it can make. So, here’s how to create a popular list sure to lure in the masses…

1. Use keyword research to determine the length of your list

For this post, I extensively probed Google’s keyword analysis and discovered which numbers receive the highest search volume.

I immediately notice high results for “Top 10″ and “Top 100″. I want to use these to my benefit, but quite frankly, don’t feel like compiling a 10-part of 100-part list. So, I went with the highest-ranking low digit number.

2. Discuss a hot or trendy topic

Right now Michael Phelps is dominating the swimming pool at the Beijing Olympics, and NBC riding his wake. The only news story that would grab more attention is if Brett Farve, Heath Ledger and Barack Obama banded together to save a burning house full of golden retrievers.

Piggyback his popularity with something like: Top 10 Ways the iPhone Helped Phelps Win Gold

Check out Google Trends and the Lycos 50 to see who’s hot.

3. Insert hyperbolic phrases

These overly-inflated terms lure in more suckers than Chris Hanson. Sprinkle in a few of these words and you’re golden:

• deadly
• ridiculous
• richest
• hottest
• sweetest
• most bad ass
• without getting caught

4. Directly address a popular problem

Giving people exactly what they want or need is the ideal way to ensure success. The Flowbee comes to mind here. People in the 1980’s were sick and tired of traditional haircuts and started asking, “Why can’t we combine trimming hear with the ease and convenience of a vacuum?” A nobody by the name of Rick Hunts strapped a pair of scissors to a dust buster and laughed his way to the bank.

Check the most popular questions posed at Yahoo! Answers. Tons of people asking for ways to clear up a rash? Boom.

The 3 Fastest Ways to Beat Genital Herpes Before Your Wife Finds Out

5. Ensure you have enough content to complete your list

In this case, I had only four items worth mentioning and now forced to showcase my failure to plan ahead. Even FEMA finds my lack of foresight pathetic.

YouTube Comments: The Ultimate Proof of Human Idiocy

Reading YouTube comments is like reading the text messages between a 13-year-old girl and a klansman.

Nowhere is it more evident the average citizen cannot handle the responsibility of an open forum.

YouTube’s core offering is great. It enables anybody to post and share videos ranging from humorous to inspiring. You can literally spend a lifetime sifting through entertaining videos.

With roughly 80 million videos and 3 billion video views, YouTube currently eats up more bandwidth than the entire internet in 2000.

With the masses comes idiocy, and intellects such as myself are subjected to the immaterial ramblings of teenyboppers and the offensive condemnations of racists.

The typical comment thread for a YouTube video starts innocently enough. Say we’re checking out something as harmless as a sneezing panda (20 million people have).

The comments start like this…

surferchick12: LMAO! the mom is like WTF!!!!!!!!111

xXxPokemonxXx: awww look at the baby panda ROFL ;) hahaha LOL

TonyBDaMan: 8===D

It then turns political…

GreenGi2l02: whats so funny about animals in captivity??

Dave-O: Stupid liberals always trying to free lame animals. Eat pandas.

Then a couple off-topic notes…

dancefreak66: The Peruvian government cuts down 1,300 acres of forest every day. Click here to stop them.

lovematenow: You have a secret crush! Paste this message into 8 other comment sections to learn who loves you!

And then it turns ugly…

the_answer3: 9/11 was great day ever. Americans burn with Bush’s actions. Your imperialism will be your end.

Eagleface: shut up you brit. you all have small pen1s and you know it!

ShaFeLeR00: Hang minorities.

YouTube tried fixing this by adding a voting system similar to Digg’s, but this only put a band aid on the problem. Google, who now owns YouTube, does a decent job filtering spam on its other platforms but not with YouTube.

You know its bad when programmers have to create scripts to hide the comments. We’re dealing with a larger issue of global idiocy and censoring some comments is only a start.

Only a masochist gets pleasure out of reading these things. But in a way, it’s like watching two morbidly obese women wrestle in a pool of baby oil—a horrendous sight, yet you just can’t look away.

Length of Sales Page Inversely Related to IQ

People often ask me how long their sales page should be. The answer — It depends on the intelligence level of your target audience.

There is no ideal sales page length or word count, but if you’re trying to push something cheesy or borderline complete waste of money, you’d better err of the side of too long.

In this case, you’re pitching to imbeciles (For those reading this right now), and these people love them some text.

If you’re drafting an online sales letter, here’s a foolproof chart to assist your decision.

The lengthy internet sales letter model was drafted by someone who found the Telecommunications Act of 1996 extremely enthralling. This guy looked at the document and said, “Hey, throw in a couple completely fabricated testimonials, and I’m sold!”

I’m certainly not saying long copy doesn’t convert because it does. Brian Clark (who doesn’t suck at websites) over at Copyblogger recently announced the death of the long sales letter.

But I disagree. As long as there are people who just can’t get enough multi-colored text, over-hyped headlines and phony handwritten signatures, there will be people employing these tactics.

I don’t blame the creator of a long sales letter. I blame those who fall for it.

You can find a whole slew of these salespages over at ClickBank. I just looked at the current most popular product and corresponding sales page. I’d link to it here, but I don’t want to give them more traffic.

Word Count: 10,480. Who writes these things, Leo Tolstoy?

I had to scroll so much, my pointer finger cramped.

Actually read through one of these things from start to finish, and you shouldn’t buy the product — you should be awarded a medal.

I went straight to the source to discover where people asking how long their sales letter should be are getting their answers. Apparently, a sales letter should be “as long as it takes to tell your story or showcase the benefits of your product.”

Sorry, but if it takes more than 10,000 words to tell your story or tout your product, it’s probably not one worth sharing in the first place.

The only thing worse than a long sales letter? A long sales letter about writing long sales letters (e.g., Link)