Off Topic: One Billion Page Views

He's trying to become the next milliondollarhomepage success story, slightly different approach. Bet my ass. You guys are too gullable. ;)
 
FilmJumper said:
If it was a site with a short film on it selling the DVD or for that matter... Anything.

filmy
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He's selling advertising: http://www.adbrite.com/mb/commerce/purchase_form.php?opid=74141&afsid=1
He's also trading links for link count in search engines: http://www.onebillionpageviews.com/links.shtml
His posts are all over the net, I saw one on a site I visit. Soon enough, he will try to sell his venture for a million dollars. This is nothing new. Ever since milliondollarhomepage, they are a dime a dozen.

PS - Viral marketing doesn't mean you're selling something, it just means it works by friends telling friends. This is viral marketing. Someone told Poke, and Poke told us.
 
PS - Viral marketing doesn't mean you're selling something, it just means it works by friends telling friends. This is viral marketing. Someone told Poke, and Poke told us.
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You're absoltuely right. But filmy's point is a good one and it high lights the key drawback to viral marketing. This guy is able to get a lot of hits to his site because he seems to be asking so little and in return we get a tiny bit of entertainment (liking the idea of helping a guy win a bet). This is an almost perfect viral because people do exacty what poke has done (posting a link which has generated hits) or the way I did for "Brokeback to the Future", which is another viral.

The only problem for someone looking to then translate that viral effect into sales is that the second the viral becomes and attmept to ask for money in some form (even for a product) people change the way they view it, it's now not a gag to be shared with mates, it becomes a scam.

Now, I'm sure you're right when you say he has another agenda - but as indie film-makers I guess understanding web marketing is probably the most important thing we can do. So, for me the most interesting thing is how he's building up his hits and how we can then translate the technique into a way of getting people to watch a film trailer.

My guess is that if you could get a million people to view your trailer, that you'd have a good case for attracting distribution, or perhaps better than that, a way of driving sales through customflix that could generate real income.

I think if someone wanted to write a tutorial on web-marketing I personally would be fascinated.
 
business cards are cheap and can contain a URL...from doing websites before it was cool to have them, the biggest hurdle is to get people to your site...they can get there one of two ways:

click LINK
type URL

make sure possibilities of these two happening are as plentiful as possible...URL that is easy to remember, business cards, mention it everytime you meet someone...mention it in the restroom while you're dehydrating to the guy next to you. Put links up all over the web and make sure you submit the sites to the big search engines so they know they can search your sites...otherwise there will be a lag between when you post and when you get search hits...webrings...link trades with other indie filmmakers, anything you can think of to get your name out there.
 
clive said:
You're absoltuely right. But filmy's point is a good one and it high lights the key drawback to viral marketing. This guy is able to get a lot of hits to his site because he seems to be asking so little and in return we get a tiny bit of entertainment (liking the idea of helping a guy win a bet). This is an almost perfect viral because people do exacty what poke has done (posting a link which has generated hits) or the way I did for "Brokeback to the Future", which is another viral.

The only problem for someone looking to then translate that viral effect into sales is that the second the viral becomes and attmept to ask for money in some form (even for a product) people change the way they view it, it's now not a gag to be shared with mates, it becomes a scam.

Now, I'm sure you're right when you say he has another agenda - but as indie film-makers I guess understanding web marketing is probably the most important thing we can do. So, for me the most interesting thing is how he's building up his hits and how we can then translate the technique into a way of getting people to watch a film trailer.

My guess is that if you could get a million people to view your trailer, that you'd have a good case for attracting distribution, or perhaps better than that, a way of driving sales through customflix that could generate real income.

I think if someone wanted to write a tutorial on web-marketing I personally would be fascinated.
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Exactly. That's why there is no obvious sale here. If there was, people would hit the delete button. That's the challenge we face with viral marketing. How do we get our stuff out there without mentioning a sale or anything to do with money? Blair Witch was the first viral marketing success story. Anyone remember exactly what they did? That'd be a good place to start studying this.
 
Well for one, they hinted heavily that the events were real and not staged. And after the fake/not fake concept worked so well on the web, they released a trailer that played up to that hype.

Poke
 
My understanding is that they started with a website and a fake documentary, which got a TV airing without the "fake" tag. The whole thing grew in a very viral way, and Poke's right the hook was that this was a true story. There was a legend of the Blair Witch; three film-makers had gone missing.

I suppose that the fore runner of the viral was the urban myth, or the friend of a friend story.

I actually had a similar campaign plotted out for a screenplay I wrote years back, which had UFO's running through the storyline. I'd planned to put together some fake UFO footage and centre the reports around my primary locations. I'd even figured out how to do it with a LED light unit attached to the underside of a remote controlled airship. With enough gain, a little bit of rehearsal on the sound track and plenty of shaky-cam I didn't think it would be that hard. I was even planning to do some faked (face obscured to protect witnesses) air traffic controler interviews to give the whole thing radio credibility and also add in enough conspiracy elements to make people wonder.

In the end I never went through with the production, I got side tracked into other projects and eventually I optioned the script out to a mate.

Like I said before I think that I'm going to study Barum and Bailey. My gut feeling is in Barnum's approach to showmanship are a lot of the keys to effective viral marketing. I'll let you know if I find anything interesting.
 
clive said:
Like I said before I think that I'm going to study Barum and Bailey. My gut feeling is in Barnum's approach to showmanship are a lot of the keys to effective viral marketing. I'll let you know if I find anything interesting.
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Also check out Ron Popeil (Ronco). He's the innovator of the "tell a friend" thing. You may not know who that is in the UK. He sold products on infomercials and made the buyers promise to tell a friend to get the special price. It was more of a way of making it look like you were getting a special price. I don't think they cared too much if you didn't tell a friend. :)
 
Also check out Ron Popeil (Ronco). He's the innovator of the "tell a friend" thing. You may not know who that is in the UK. He sold products on infomercials and made the buyers promise to tell a friend to get the special price. It was more of a way of making it look like you were getting a special price. I don't think they cared too much if you didn't tell a friend.
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Good tip, I'd heard of Ronco and I've vague memories of hearing about Ron Popeil, but I can't remember a thing about either.
 
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