No joke. But you really need to start paying attention to how bloggers use their wording to grab your attention because time is precious and it can be used to manipulate your perception of success.
Take a look at the screen shot:
According to Google, traffic rose by 35,350% which is such a bullshit number when you consider that the website was only truly receiving about 20 – 30 hits a day.
A point I’m trying to make here is that there are a lot of internet marketers, bloggers and individuals trying to use this type of hype to get you on board with their products.
Say it with me: due diligence.
Get Your Head on Straight about Copy
Copywriting is powerful as shit. It’s what gets you to buy the items you don’t really need by spending the money you don’t really have. It what gets people to drop a hundred bones on a new pair of shoes that are replacing the perfectly acceptable set already owned.
In terms of the title of this post – it’s legit, I didn’t stretch the truth but since you rarely see the context of these sorts of claims, you can easily get swooped up by the copy.
Like I said: due diligence. This is the term used for taking enough time to do your research about a claim. Really, it’s just common sense if you ask me.
Example: What if I made that a title of an ebook like “Grow your Traffic by 32,350%!” Sounds scammy but I bet your ass that someone is going to bite and shell down some cash for a report that basically says that it was a one day spike that was cause by sharing the post on Reddit.
You too can make $1,000,000!
What people expect from "make money online" apparently.
If you spent $999,999.
What I’m trying to say is that without knowing how much effort and resources were put into a venture – you really can’t trust the vast majority of claims online.
Yes, you could make a million dollars if you spent $999,999 of it on advertising but that’s defeating the purpose – but I guarantee you that there are many marketers out there pushing the million dollar copy line as part of their product promotion and people are eating this shit up.
So, what do you look for?
- Screenshots
- Case studies
- Bank accounts
- Reviews (that don’t come from fellow bloggers in their “circles” or “tribes”
- Analytics
The review part is a big one. Take a quick look around at a lot of the current products being pushed around – see something funny? You see a lot of bloggers endorsing each other. Why? Because many of them are a part of “tribe” that looks after one another whenever someone is launching a new product.
Is this ethical? It’s hard to decide. Hell, I admit I’ve given endorsements to products from friends after I’ve reviewed copies and testing them out. Their words may be true but at some point you need to question the authenticity of the endorsement especially if you notice the same group of people making these claims.
- More? Read: Fuck the Hype!
You’ll get a lot of information from that.
Okay, So, How I Did It
Sorry for that long diatribe of due diligence but I thought it was a good opportunity to catch your attention before jumping into the meat of the content. After all, this isn’t rocket science and I’m going to summarize it with a few bullet points.
How it went down:
- I wrote a post called the 25 best personal finance podcasts. Simple stuff.
- I browsed sub-reddits related to personal finance
- I posted a link with a casual title vs. one verbatim to the post
Done and done. Simple. Effective.
It’s niche marketing, plain and simple. You find a highly focused group of people and plant your message. In this case, it’s a sub-reddit dedicated to personal finance so it fits perfectly within the group and for discussion.
I did this for a few other article pieces in /r/entrepreneur which gave me a quick 1,500 additional visitors to Murlu over the last few days.
Need I say more? Not really, simple, remember?
Conclusion
Okay, we’ve had two topics in this post which is totally against the idea of being focused in your writing but whatever. First things first, do your due diligence when it comes to online claims. Secondly, find those niche communities and tap them for traffic.
Want to do me a favor? Share this and see if we can overhype this shit.
This is epic and straight-to-the-point… Hehe… The human mind is pretty weak at figuring the underlying context of sales copies, especially good ones.
Great post and tip about reddit.
Dave T
Hey Murray – what do you mean by “casual title vs. one verbatim to the post”? Titles are so important…