Feel Reality

Catching Trends Before they Blow Up

It’s easy to get caught up in hype and get all excited about an idea that you think will be the next big thing online. The problem is, by the time you hear about it, a lot of times it’s too late to act upon it.

I was reading an article in an old Domainers Magazine about investing in profitable ccTLDs.  Frank Shilling, a highly successful domainer with millions invested in his properties, stated that the domaining industry is becoming gentrified.  Large VC firms and hedge fund investors are now taking note in the value of online assets which is pumping the value of the properties held by first generation domainers.  One of the more controversial “golden rules” of online marketing is that you need to have first movers advantage to really profit from a new idea or trend.  A lot of us jump in early at every profitable opening that we see, we don’t invest the proper amount of time to exploit the effort and we jump out as become discouraged and enticed by the next big thing. 

However, as Frank pointed out, first movers advantage does help, the rich will always get richer, but exposure and publicity allow MMO efforts to remain profitable as they head into the the long tail.  For example, in domaining, quality, industry specific domains that lend well to the online arena have always commanded top dollar. Purchasing a domain like cars.com, sex.com or even something plain like “walkers.com” is going to be a 8,7 or 6 six figure investment respectively. What the general public doesn’t understand is that ccTLDs and platform specific TLD’s (like .mobi) can still command a good 6 figure sell price.  If the domain industry didn’t garner the attention and participiation that it has today, this wouldn’t be possible. The more eyeballs you have monitoring something, the more profitable it becomes. Domaining is often compared to the real estate market since it is in a since a “virtual property”, but as investors build domain portfolios, we know have a currency exchange on our hands, a stock market if you will.

As I mentioned in my about me page, I often catch myself losing focus and getting caught up in the next big trend. The ”Crazy Catch by Ball Girl” viral video post on my blog received over 1,000 uniques this month as a result of one small digg comment that was later deleted.  I tried to spike traffic again in a similar trend post (the one just before this) and failed miserably. I even took a risk and posted something that could be seen as controversial, knowing controversy sells. In this case, it didn’t. 

The moral of the story (for those of us with morals remaining) is that jumping after trends will leave you empty handed. You need to make a solid investment of time and money into your efforts to make money online (and in life for that matter).  Get rich quick is always appealing, no matter how many times we fail at it.  So it’s back to the grind.  I promised a projects post on a few MMO blogs earlier and I didn’t come through w/ it.  I’ll try to get that up by the end of this weekend. I hinted at it in an early post… it’s related to proven methods to make small amounts of money on a reoccurring basis.  We will see how it works out, but the lure has been cast and I’ll continue to throw bait out there (just maybe not jail bait).

Posted in: Internet Marketing | comment here | no trackbacks | Permalink

Crazy Catch by Ball Girl

There is currently a video circulating the internet of a Ball Girl making a crazy catch. In the slow-mo instant replay you see this girl make a 6 foot vertical leap up the wall to catch an otherwise instant double. Or is that just a little league rule? I don’t follow baseball. Here is the clip:

The video seems plausible and it has everyone debating whether it actually happened or not. If it was staged it was an excellent staging, like the moon landing. In all reality the girl did not make this stunt and the video is in fact fake. The production is a viral ad created for Gatorade by element 79 a viral video and marketing agency.  I’m not sure how it ties to Gatorade. I’m sure the folks at element 79 do. 

I’ve always wondered how these agencies ensure that a viral ad sticks. There has to be some formula and the select group of agencies that understand it are raking in cash from big brand companies.  The one piece I missed is how this video ties to Gatorade. Once people discover it, Gatorade will get a lot of “word-of-mouth” press coverage. But does that help their already recognizable brand?  What does this video sell? 

Traditionally viral videos were placed on sites that had non-obvious links to the benefiting site or brand.  For instance… I remember a site with a girl participating in a wet t-shirt contest, the headline read something like “I see your sister made it to spring break” and it had a “send to a friend” form on the side. The footer had a key word stuffed link to the site that was really benefiting. The basic premise was that you had a viral “host” page feeding PR, relevance and traffic to the “parasitic” beneficiary site.  The beneficiary site was of course, the company paying for the ad. 

Did YouTube and the other slew of online video sharing sites kill the benefits of viral marketing? Or is their other trickery involved? Maybe it’s more subtle… like Tyler Durden at work splicing images into the video. Watch it and then tell me if you’re thirsty.

Posted in: Internet Marketing | 8 comments | no trackbacks | Permalink

Page 1 of 1 pages