Every few days I go through my “junk suspects” email folder to see if anyone got flagged as “spam” that shouldn’t have. I noticed a large increase in spammers using political topics as subject lines things like :
“URGENT: Bush admits Al-Quada and Iran Link False”
“IMMEDIATE ATTENTION: New White House Plan Endangers All Americans”
“ACTION REQUIRED: Show Your Support for an America Against Terror”
I imagine if they get past the spam filters they are getting pretty high open rates. What’s the take-away here well email spammers are usually on the bleeding edge of keyword research. They very often move in before everyone else, so as I suspected politics is a very, very hot topic right now, bringing in lots of traffic if you’re willing to put in the work. However after doing some quick keyword research the payouts are horrible, under $0.30 or less. Now many people stop right there but not me I’m crafty, and I know nature abhors a vacuum all you have to do is know how to capitalize on it.
Want to Know how to Win an Election?
Forget making enormous contributions to politicians or committee’s, you need to follow Guy Kawasaki’s advice and plant 1,000 seeds. What you need to do is start jacking up the amount you are wiling to pay for keywords you want people to write about. First you’ll notice the forums buzzing about price increases, then the autogen flyboys will swoop in, and once the list is pretty well defined the blogosphere will follow (you could speed up the process by leaking the list … oops did I say that). If there’s one thing I can tell you for sure about the blogosphere there are a lot of people who will blog (constantly) about anything if they think there’s money in it. Sure the other side will catch on but it will really show who’s ahead of the game and who’s email got stuck in the tubes of the interweb last friday.
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{ 6 comments }
Graywolf, once again you get kudos for the sneakiest blog post of the day. Well done.
Interesting post. Of course, this can go way beyond politics – you could use a tactic like this to push whatever cause you really want to, be it a political, social, or environmental agenda.
So tell me more about this “leaked list” Mr Wolf
You must be either working for the CIA or CBS.
That is a pretty interesting observation. I think the internet landscape is still pretty ripe for the political picking. I suspect by the time we get into the next election cycle in 2008 we will see this fully realized in terms of manipulation.
Will be interesting to see what happens as we get closer to this election.
Personally, I have recently done some things in a non-political environment to capitalize in hot topics and it has worked exceedingly well.
Interesting post Graywolf. I hope am not getting suckered into trying somthing, I am new to the blog world and I appreciate all the helpful insites.
Brendan
Sneaky stuff for sure. Thanks for sharing!
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