By Karl Moats
I started off small. A guppy with a clunky, glitchy sports video website, we pitched as the Youtube of sports. I scuffled for the first months, believing the cream would rise to the top. And some of it did. There was the video of a kid who lit a basketball on fire and tried to kick it like in the old NBA Jam video game (he set his backyard on fire instead) or the geeky Celtics fan who lost his mind dancing to Jon Bon Jovi on the Jumbotron.
But not enough. And certainly not enough to live off of. But then I found Santa. Or rather, a Power User dressed up as Santa Claus at New York’s City boozy Santacon. We shared egg nog, a couple rounds, and he shared his industry secrets:
The first rule about Internet marketing is: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT INTERNET MARKETING. The Power User never reveals the patron company. Web administrators and their friends abound everywhere. If they catch wind of you promoting one company over and over again they will find you, they will ban you, and they will blacklist your site. It’s even worse for the company. Disclosure is disastrous. A major sports magazine was recently busted for soliciting Power Users for help. One of the users posted the email and disseminated it for all the world wide web to see. The email went viral and the publication is still reeling in online circles. But it’s a risk companies are willing to take.
The second rule about Internet marketing is: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT INTERNET MARKETING.
The third rule about Internet marketing is its not what you have, it’s who you have. Power Users don’t ask for much. Don’t be obnoxious. Don’t be a spammer—that means you Indian call-centers. Vote for their stories early and often and they’ll soon return the favor.
I built up my GChat contacts. You probably have 20 or 30 people in your IM. Max 50. I have over 600. I can’t see them all. I don’t know most of their names. I don’t know where any of them are from. But I know they’ll vote my stories, often without even looking at them, and vice versa. This is how Power Users spend their days, pinging Twitter or Digg links across IM, 10 windows open at a time. The best part is you can do it anywhere. It’s why my protégé is seriously considering a move to Panama.
The fourth rule of Internet marketing is: its not what you know. It’s what you know Google knows. In theory, Google scours the Internet for the crème de la crème of everything. In practice, Google needs a little nudge. A whole cottage industry has sprung up out of getting your website listed higher up on Google search results.
The experts, they call it search engine optimization, or SEO for short. See Google is governed by the nebulous sounding Algorithm, an abstruse formula that sifts through the Internet favoring some web sites and burying others based on everything from the headlines you use to the other websites you link to. Google recalibrates the Algorithm every few months or so to throw us off but we hitmen hone in on the weak points pretty quickly.
I could go on but there’s a new World of Warcraft freak out video to promote. Skip to 3 minutes in. It’s epic:
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