I came across a wickedly clever form of “link bait” today from a company called Banner Blindness.

(In case you’re not some marketo-blogging tech-geek, let me explain: link bait is basically a way of baiting other sites to link to you. Sometimes it’s written linkbait, and some people in the blogosphere would happily spend hours debating over whether the space should or should not be included. Quite frankly, unless you paid me a boatload of cash, I couldn’t care less.)

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It’s simple, folks. Just don’t post for five months! Yes, do this one simple thing, and your blog will fall flatter than the poor creature pictured to the left.

That was basically my lame attempt at apologizing for not having posted anything on this blog for 5 months.

Basically, I got carried away with trivial stuff like “earning a living” and things like that. Unfortunately, I neglected the more important things… such as you good folks, who are training to become Master Internet Influencers, or some such thing.

So then, bear with me as I blow the dust off this blog, apply a couple of coats of varnish, and generally, well… you know, keep it updated with posts.

By the way, I’m in the process of moving widgets, altering the blog’s theme and so on, so if you see any weird behaviour on this site over the next few days, it’s either (a) me moving stuff around, or (b) me just acting normal.

Oh, and feel free to say Hello in the meantime!

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In my last post I introduced you to BlogRush, the brand new blog syndication network by John Reese. However, in this post I want to share with you the deeper lessons behind the launch of BlogRush, which will become the next big thing in the blogosphere. Let me explain why I say that with virtual certainty.

In an email he just sent to members, John admitted he never anticipated just how fast word about the network would travel.

The first 60 hours since we launched the BlogRush public beta has been nothing short of EXPLOSIVE. We knew that we were developing an exciting tool that many bloggers could benefit from, but we had no idea how fast the ‘word’ would spread across the Web.

Personally, I wasn’t surprised at all. (I actually wrote a whole book about “viral marketing” back in 2000). Here’s my analysis of why I think the network is growing (and will grow) faster than just about anything we’ve seen on the Internet so far…

(Oh, and you might even be able to take what you learn here, and apply it to your own launches! All I ask for is 10% of the profits )

(1) Fill a “gap”.

Back in the late 1990’s, I built up an email newsletter to some 10,000 subscribers almost exclusively by exchanging ads with other newsletters of similar size. So, once I got into blogging, I wondered why nobody had come up with an automatic way of exchanging articles on a blog.

So when I heard about BlogRush, I almost instinctively knew it was filling a “gap” in the blogosphere that wasn’t really touched on by other blogging networks such as MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog.

So Lesson #1 for maximum viral effect is to find a “gap” in your market, a need that isn’t properly being fulfilled. Sure, they can be hard to find, but if you discover such a “gap”, you could be sitting on a goldmine.

John’s “gap” was simple - article exchanges on a blog. Maybe such exchanges already existed, but I certainly hadn’t heard of one.

(2) Create and build the “buzz” from Day 1.

A few months ago, John posted on his Income.com blog about an idea he had that caused him to lose sleep. Naturally, he wouldn’t share his idea (there’s plenty of thieves about!), but it provided a sense of mystery and suspense that drew people back to his blog.

Incidentally, this was just part of a larger “buzz” that John was already creating around his Income.com domain (which domain alone is worth millions of dollars). John had made it public that he would be launching a series of products and services around this domain, but left the details as a mystery. Still, as a regular reader of his blog, you couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of excitement and intrigue. Just what was John Reese planning?

(I should point out that John Reese was already well-known in internet marketing circles, and has been marketing on the Internet almost from the beginning. So many of his fellow marketers, like myself, were eagerly anticipating, or at the very least curious, to know what John had in mind for his next project.)

On July 25th, John dropped a hint about the first of many services he intended to launch as part of the Income.com network.

People keep asking when the main Income.com site is going to launch. Realistically, not for a couple more months probably. We just don’t want to rush it and have some major problems. Our focus right now is launching our first Income.com Network site — which is more or less a “little brother” of the main Income.com site. We hope to launch this site within two weeks or so. We had hoped it would be launched by now but we ran into some infrastructure issues that we hope to solve ASAP.

Then, on September 12th, a bit later than he’d hoped, in a blog post entitled “It” Finally Gets Revealed - BlogRush, John spilled the beans about his new service:

A few weeks ago, I explained how we’d be launching something that would become part of the Income.com Network that we’re building — and then Income.com would launch after that. Well, this mystery service is all set for a public beta launch this Friday, September 14th. We will probably launch around mid-day. I’ll post the exact time soon.

BlogRush is the name of the service we are finally releasing (after many months of development). It’s a free service that will help any blogger generate more traffic and readers for their blog.

Within hours, marketing and blogging forums were alive with chatter about this new service - “buzz” at its best.

John set the launch date for Friday 14th September, but various technical problems meant it was delayed slightly. Although it wasn’t deliberate, I really think the delays actually helped to fuel the buzz. It was so effective, I actually wanted to be the first to review the “live” service - so I stayed up until 3am hoping to catch the launch. (Yeah, yeah… I do normally have better things to do on a Friday night!)

When I woke up, BlogRush had launched, and had already been reviewed by Andy Beard (The guy lives in Europe, and was up at 6am. To me, the only thing for which I’ll get up at 6am is a fire. Even then, it would have to be a big fire.)

The real “buzz” had begun.

(3) Build in the “desire” to be an early adopter.

I wasn’t the only one to stay up late to catch the launch. Several other marketers had done so as well. (Or, in Andy Beard’s case he’d been a bit more sensible and had gone to bed earlier, so he could get up early.)

Why were we so keen to “get in” on the launch? Well, if we’re all honest, although I certainly believe this is a great concept, the real reason was that John’s service rewards early adopters. You get credit at a ratio of 1:1 for both your traffic, your referral’s traffic, and their referral’s traffic! After that, the ratio is less, but you still get some credit down to 10th generation of referrals. Here’s the exact breakdown:

Your Traffic = 1:1
1st Generation Of Referrals = 1:1
2nd Generation Of Referrals = 1:1
3rd - 6th Generation Of Referrals = 1:4
7th - 10th Generation Of Referrals = 1:8

In other words, the earlier you “get in”, the more likely you can build a decent size “downline”.

Some have expressed concern that this is some kind of a “pyramid” scheme. Well, it is more akin to “multi-level marketing” (MLM) which in most countries is tightly regulated, mainly because when the emphasis is placed on recruitment rather than product, people can get caught up trying to earn the most money recruiting others - which is often when an MLM business gets into trouble. By itself, MLM is a legitimate business model - the problems usually arise when recruitment becomes the driving force of the business.

In the case of BlogRush, I think John and his team have got the balance right. Sure, it’s based on an MLM model, which rewards early adopters - but late adopters still get the benefit of a 1:1 exchange, while being able to earn 1:1 from their referrers also. And it’s free, so no money is changing hands.

So Lesson #3 if you want your thing to go “viral”, is to build in both the mechanism and the desire for others to want to spread the word and adopt early.

(4) Use near perfect viral mediums.

John has another advantage - his service aims to benefit the blogosphere. Fortunately for him (or maybe “fortune” has nothing at all to do with it!), the blogosphere happens to be one of the most viral mediums of all time!

You can post about something today, and tomorrow it could be echoed across the collective blog mass we call the “blogosphere”.

That’s why, to me, it’s a near perfect viral medium. I say “near” perfect, because there is always a certain element of resistance - people don’t have to put the widget on their site, after all…

But when they do, they are automatically contributing to its growth!

As I’ve pointed out before on this blog, this is the major difference between “word of mouth” and “viral” marketing - although there are similarities, they are not the same thing. A virus spreads by itself, as long as it has a “host”. Word of mouth does not necessarily spread beyond its immediate audience.

Word of mouth marketing is me raving about BlogRush to you. We do that all the time, with movies we like, books we love, and so on. It only becomes “viral marketing” when you, in turn, adopt it and want to rave about it to your audience, who also do the same.

By building a service which benefits the blogosphere, it’s almost impossible for the blogosphere not to talk about it!

In his email to members, John said: “We had no idea how fast the ‘word’ would spread across the Web.”

Well, now you understand just precisely why word has spread so fast. When you fill a “gap”, create and build a “buzz” right from the start, build in the desire to become an “early adopter”, and use near perfect viral mediums such as the blogosphere, you have the blueprint for viral success.

Provide a great service, and you have virtual guaranteed success!

That is why, love it or hate it, BlogRush will be BIG. Very quickly.

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• 2537 Comments

I don’t usually get excited about the launch of a new blog network. After all, who needs yet another MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog? There’s only so many of these I can put on my site, after all!

However, when John Reese recently announced his new network, I knew there had to be something different about it. After all, there are already plenty of blogging networks that enable you to promote your blog. So what could possibly be different?

The answer, is BlogRush. And it’s about time, too! If you’re not as excited as I am about this network by the time you read all of this article, then you need a vacation - seriously.

With BlogRush, you put a “widget” on your blog. (So far, nothing new). Each time one of your blog pages loads with this widget, the widget will refresh with 5 blog post titles (along, optionally, with the name of the blog or author) and a link to the full post and blog of another member.

Now, here’s where it gets “interesting”: every time the widget gets served up on your blog, a link to one of your articles gets served up in someone else’s widget!

However, John is a master marketer. So, as I fully expected, John hasn’t just left it at “interesting” - he’s taken it to the level of “darn exciting”. Think of roller-coaster exciting!

You see, on the widget you’ll add to your blog, you’ll see a little “Add Your Blog Posts - FREE” link. When someone clicks on that link on your blog, and becomes a member of BlogRush, you get recorded in their system as the “referrer” for that new blog, and you earn additional “syndication credit” on all the traffic that the referring blog produces — every single day.

Now, the system already sounds great, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t even stop there! If that new blog refers another user, you then earn credits based on this new user as well! It continues through 10 “generations” of referrals with no limit to the number of blogs and/or traffic that can be produced by any level.

Are you beginning to imagine the kind of power this network can have?… especially when you get in early?

To me, this is a stroke of genius. The concept of traffic systems based on “levels” of referrers is nothing new - it’s been around almost as long as the Internet - but this is the first time I’ve seen it applied to articles within blogs. Hats off to John Reese!

Now, you lose absolutely nothing by joining under someone, because it’s free to join, so here’s what I’d like you to do. I’d like you to click on the “Add Your Blog Posts - FREE” link on my BlogRush widget (to the right), and join up with me as your referrer.

And here’s what I’ll do for you in return. Once your widget is activated on your blog, post your blog link here as a comment to this post.

The first 10 people to do so will get a copy of my ebook Small Changes: Big Profits free of charge! This book will be released to the public for $47 over the weekend, and has been getting some rave reviews from some of the top marketers. (Paul Myers of TalkBizNews.com called it “essential reading”, and I’ve been told that Mark Joyner is enjoying it at the moment!)

And for everyone else who posts their link on this thread after signing up under me: once I’ve become fully acquainted with the BlogRush system, I intend to write a special report on how to get the most out of the network, which I will share with you for free.

Either way, as a thanks for me sharing the news about BlogRush with you, I’d really appreciate if you’d sign up under me.

I’ve been in internet marketing for nearly 10 years now, long enough to recognize a powerful system when I see one.

BlogRush is a powerful system for bloggers. I hope you’ll join me in discovering it together.

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• 11 Comments

You’d think giving away $100 bills would be easy, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. Take a look…

Mike Enlow, an internet marketer, ran an experiment to literally give away $100 bills! He set up a site offering the money, promoted it on search engines and through advertising, and left the site up for several months:

Not a single person took them up on the offer of the free $100 bill!

Here is the ad they ran on the Freeyellow website:

I’LL SEND YOU A $100 FOR FREE!!!! you just pay the cost of $10.95 to have it mailed to you by overnight delivery!! My supplies of these $100 bills are limited if I run out your order will not be processed so act now!!!!! Act now to get $100 (U.S. Currency) by overnite delivery!!!!!! WHERE ELSE CAN YOU GET $100 FREE? <Click Here To Order Online

In an article explaining why he did this, Mike listed six reasons why he believed the ad didn’t work…

1. Too many exclamation points!!!
2. No “clear identity” in the ad.
3. No credentials.
4. No testimonials.
5. No contact details.
6. No reason given for why the money is being away.

However, someone pointed out something which - at least to me - was even more important than the reasons listed in the article: it’s that you have to pay $10.95 to have this $100 sent to you!

I don’t know about you, but if I’d read that ad, my immediate suspicion would be: scam.

(Like the letters that say you recently won a prize draw, and the $10 million prize fund is waiting for you, if only you send back a form along with your “prize administration fee” of $14.95. Sadly, thousands of people - especially the elderly - fall for them each year.)

That was my main impression of the ad, at any rate. Not only did it have zero credibility, it actually read like a scam - no matter how great the offer.

The funny thing is, in so many aspects of our lives, we’re all trying to give away hundred dollar bills. Maybe not that specific dollar amount, but we may be trying to give away something we think is of value.

For example: maybe it’s the drink you’re offering to buy that hot guy or girl in the bar. Maybe it’s the free email subscription you’re offering to your site visitors. Maybe it’s the RSS button you’re hoping your visitors will press to subscribe to your blog.

If you get turned down, maybe you’re simply offering the $100 bill the wrong way.

Seriously. If someone came up to you in the street and offered you $100, I’m betting your first reaction would be, Why?

In fact, given that I’m intimately familiar with the “weapons of influence”, I’d be very wary of taking money from someone for nothing. What are they expecting in return?

One of the simplest and yet most effective things you can do in life to improve your marketing and, quite frankly, just about everything you do to persuade and influence others, is to look at it from the other person’s perspective.

That girl in the bar for whom you’ve just offered to buy a free drink, your thinking it sounds like a good offer, but maybe she’s thinking: “Oh, great. Yet another guy that wants to get into my knickers.” And then when she says no, you go back to your guy friends and blame your hair, or her sexuality. (Come on guys, admit it!) Really though, you offered her one thing, she saw it as something else.

That visitor to your site to whom you think you’ve just made a killer offer in exchange for signing up to your email course, maybe they’re just thinking, “Oh no. I like the offer, but if I fill in this form I’m going to get yet more offers for things from this marketer. I get too many emails already, so I won’t bother.”

Shift your own perspective. Stop seeing your offers through your eyes.

Giving things for free should be easy, shouldn’t it? But it’s not. Otherwise everyone who visited your site would sign up to your free email course, or your RSS subscription. Or every girl and guy would take you up on your offer to buy them a drink.

(The exception, of course, is my blog… where most new visitors subscribe, because they’re a smart bunch of people who want to develop their influence, persuasion and marketing skills, and don’t want to miss out on all the great future posts.)

At its most basic level, the key to influence and persuasion is simply to know where a person’s at, and then to know how to get them to where you want them to be.

Most people are poor persuaders simply because they don’t get the first bit right - they don’t realize where a person’s at in the first place!

In the case of the ad for the free $100 bill, the reader is “at” a position of deep skepticism. Why would anyone give away $100? This looks and smells like a scam.

The ad did absolutely nothing to take readers past their initial skeptical state. And hence nobody claimed their free $100 bill.

So what’s the “key point” you can take from this article and use today? It’s that: whenever you’re trying to persuade or influence, which includes when you’re offering something for free, recognize the other person’s state first.

In the case of a free offering, most people’s initial state is skepticism. Why is this being offered for free?

If the initial state is negative, like skepticism, disbelief or just plain old disinterest, and you’re trying to “sell” them something (or even offer something for free), you’ll usually need to overcome this initial state before you have a chance of persuading them.

In the end, Mike Enlow revised the $100 bill offer, established credibility and believability, and “sold” a hundred dollar bill to the very first person he contacted.

He took them out of a state of skepticism, and into a state of trust.

So next time you want to wield your persuasion and influence skills on your husband, wife, children, site visitors, or even that hot guy or girl you noticed at the bar, make sure you’re able to recognize where they are “at”, i.e. what state they are in. If it’s not a good state, change it first!

(Oh, and if you’re asking yourself, “So how exactly can I recognize that state?”, or “What do I do once I know their state?”… sigh… do you want everything on a plate? Maybe you’ll find out soon if you’re signed up to my RSS or subscription feed… )

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We’re all familiar with the concept of scarcity - we experience it enough times in our lives. Yet most of us don’t realize just how much of a powerful influence it is. It’s one of Cialdini’s six “weapons of influence” - along with social proof, liking, reciprocation, commitment and consistency, and authority.

The scarcity principle tells us that opportunities seem more valuable to us when they are less available. In his book “Influence: Science and Practice”, Cialdini gives the example of the doorbell or phone ringing while we are engaged in conversation with someone. No matter how engrossing the conversation, the caller offers something the person you’re talking with doesn’t - potential unavailability.

If I don’t take the call, I might miss it (and the information it carries) for good… With each unanswered ring, the phone interaction becomes less retrievable. For that reason and for that moment, I want it more than the other conversation.

Have you ever experienced that? Studies have shown that humans are often more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. For instance, it was found to be more effective to tell a smoker how many years of life they’ll lose by not quitting, than to tell them how many they would gain by quitting!

The principle of scarcity applies to a lot of what we do as humans, including what we buy and how to sell, and even when it comes to falling in love! We’ll talk about this in more detail over the next few posts, so make sure you sign up to my RSS feed right now. Quick, before it’s too late!

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Robert Cialdini, the author of Influence: Science and Practice, and the inspiration for this blog, wrote in his book about a woman who opened a jewelry store in Arizona.

It was the height of the tourist season, her store was unusually full of customers, and she’d got an allotment of good quality turquoise jewelry. No matter what they did, the turquoise pieces weren’t selling.

The night before leaving on a business trip, she scribbled an exasperated note to her head saleswoman,

Everything in this display case, price x 1/2

… just to get rid of them! When she returned a few days later, she wasn’t surprised to find that every article had been sold.

She was shocked, however, to discover that, because the employee had read the “1/2″ in her scrawled message as a “2″, the entire allotment had sold at twice the original price!

Cialdini explains why these kinds of things can happen:

You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex that has ever existed on this planet. To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time, energy or capacity for it. Instead, we must very often use our stereotypes, our rules of thumb, to classify things according to a few key features and then to respond without thinking when one or another these trigger features is present.

The tourists who purchased the turquoise items at twice their original price were relying on the “you get what you pay for” rule, which is often demonstrated to be true.

This is why in Small Changes: Big Profits (2008 Edition) I explain why it’s so important to test, rather than to assume, because pricing is subject to the crazy laws of influence we’ve been discussing on this blog and that you’ve been regularly reading about.

So next time you’re tempted to slash your prices, why not give some consideration to doubling them instead? (Or at least, putting the prices up.) You might be surprised…

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Do you like stories? Do you ever find yourself listening, with rapt attention, to someone who can tell a great story?

Copywriters say you should “tell a story” when selling. Well, I’d go even further and say, tell a story whenever you want to influence and persuade.

Here’s a brilliant example of this, as an Ebay auction for a set of Pokemon cards, and what I love so much about this example is the lady in question appears not to be have been aware of just how brilliant it was! I don’t know if the lady you’re about to hear from has taken a copywriting course, but she can certainly tell a story. Who’d have thought shopping could be quite so traumatic?…

LOT OF POKEMON CARDS THAT MY KIDS TRIED TO SNEAK BY ME

I’m selling a bunch of Pokemon cards. Why? Because my kids sneaked them into my shopping cart while at the grocery store and I ended up buying them because I didn’t notice they were there until we got home. How could I have possibly not noticed they were in my cart, you ask? Let me explain.

You can read the rest of the story on her Ebay auction here. If the auction is no longer available, I’ve saved a copy (without the graphics) here for posterity.

At the time of writing this post, the bid was over $100, with 44 bids and a whopping 110,000 hits to her auction - and there’s still 4 hours to go.

It’s just a Pokemon cards set, nothing more. What I particularly love about her is that she expresses the exact same sentiment!

And $40.00??? What are you guys nuts? There’s nothing special about these cards. Are you bidding on them thinking I’ll be a famous author someday?

Clearly it’s not just about the Pokemon cards. It’s about a woman and her incredible shopping adventure with her six children. (Seven if you count the husband.)

So rather than me yapping on, let’s have a discussion about it. Why do you think this worked (or not)? What do you like about it? What can we learn?

The comments are open…

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• 13 Comments

The Internet never ceases to amaze me. It makes the concept of “six degrees of separation” (the idea that everybody is connected to everybody else by up to six connections”) sound as outdated as chastity belts. Thanks to blogging, in some cases people are now only one or two degrees away! Take a look…

On April 25th 2006, Joe Balestrino (”Mr SEO”) wrote a blog post about one of Donald Trump’s sites, gotrump.com - with a critique of where he felt the Trump site could improve on their search engine optimization. Said Joe, “The purpose of this article is to teach people that anyone, even Donald Trump, can benefit from the use of SEO.”

About a month later in another post (a post that probably could have been better optimized for search engines!), Joe revealed the motivation behind his original post:

“The purpose behind it was to attract the Donald’s attention. Which it did, after releasing the article, I heard from Donald’s webmaster with in 7 hours of its release… Then, I heard from his staff. Last I heard they were going to have a meeting on what I presented to them.”

This was fascinating by itself, but then I came across another example…

On April 27th 2007, Jack Spirko posted an article, “Why Donald Trump has a Blog That Sucks“, in reference to the Trump University blog. Said Jack: “Donald Trump has a lot of things that you would do well to emulate, but his blog is not one of them.”

The very first comment on this post was from Josef Katz of Trump University. He said:

“…If you would like to discuss the blog in more detail feel free to contact me off line and we can discuss. I would love to win you back as an RSS subscriber.”

The second comment was from Barry Lenson, the Executive Editor of Trump University! Barry said in part,

“…By the way, our readership has grown exponentially in the last year. So we clearly do not “suck.” In fact, not a single person in our organization, from Mr. Trump down, does anything that sucks. I would never go out their and say that anyone else’s content does. But clearly you have no problem doing so.”

Almost a month later, Jack wrote a post, “Why Donald Trump Has a Great Blog that is Getting Even Better“. At first it sounded like a “climbdown”, but after reading this second post a few times I think Jack was genuinely impressed that the people at Trump University had actually listened to him.

What’s more, the outcome was that Josef Katz ended up introducing a new blog on Jack’s site, and was talking with Jack about a podcast!…

“Thanks for your compliment and for posting this follow up to your earlier posts and our conversation. I look forward to continuing our dialog and joining you on a podcast once it is launched…”

To me, these are two amazing examples of the power of blogging. Certainly, Josef Katz and Barry Lenson deserve a round of applause for coming to the defense of the Trump University blog. And I was particularly impressed that Josef Katz wanted to “win you [Jack] back as an RSS subscriber” - how’s that for excellent customer service!

But the more intriguing aspect was… Did it work? Did Joe Balestrino or Jack Spirko get Donald Trump to read their blog? I don’t know the answer to that question, but clearly two well-positioned people in Mr Trump’s empire did read it, and it appears they did discuss some of the issues raised with Mr Trump - all as a result of a couple of blog posts!

Now, by writing this post I’m not trying to get Mr Trump to read it, although that would be great - my titles, dear reader, are to get you to read!

Still, these examples show the awesome power of blogging, and how the world is more connected than ever before.

Of course, there is a right and a wrong way of going about this. Chris Garrett recently wrote a post (”Don’t Fall For It!“) in which he described an attempt by another blogger to get him to link to the other blog (what we call “linkbaiting”):

“Just lately I have been the target of some pretty clumsy linkbait attempts. A couple of readers prompted me to look at one particular blog where the author on three separate occasions (that we know of) has goaded me to react…”

Clearly then, whoever the other blog was, Chris was not impressed. If you’re going to do this kind of “linkbaiting”, it has to be done very carefully and very cautiously.

Jack Spirko was playing what I would consider to be quite a risky game with his provocative post title, “Why Donald Trump has a Blog That Sucks”. I guess it worked, but reading the responses from the two men from Trump University, it appears that Barry Lenson didn’t particularly appreciate the use of the word “sucks” - and, quite frankly, who can blame him?

There are several other reasons I think it “worked” (assuming that Jack was trying to provoke their attention). It appears Jack was ultimately trying to be helpful, although provocative at the same time. And presumably he had some valid points, which it seems Trump University took on board.

All I can say is, if you’re going to write “Why Donald Trump has a Blog That Sucks”, just make darn sure you can back up your claims, and have a follow-up post ready, “Why Donald Trump Has a Great Blog that is Getting Even Better”!

Otherwise, get a very good lawyer, and lot’s of money to throw away.

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• 8 Comments

Over the past few weeks we’ve already seen many examples of social proof on this blog, but so far most of them have been about improving perception. Now let’s tackle a more direct question for marketers and bloggers: Can social proof be used to boost your sales?

The answer is a loud and bold YES. And if you think I’m going to ramble on about testimonials, you’re wrong. Surely you’ve come to know me better than that?

Here’s two great techniques to generate more sales of your products, at least partly involving the principle of social proof (I think you’ll love the second one!):

Studies on Ebay have shown that people often get carried away in bidding frenzies, to the point where 40-50% of bidders end up paying more than the “buy it now” price! The Romans had a name for this - they called it calor licitantis, or bidder’s heat.

The researchers also suggested a low starting price, because this tended to result in more bids - and when choosing between identical items, buyers seemed to favour whichever auction had the most bids.

This, of course, makes sense to the many readers of Internet Influence Magic (that’s you!), because it’s the principle of social proof in action. With the limited information available to us in an auction, we often have to rely on shortcuts, such as noticing what other people are doing. Whether it’s actually true or not, the shortcut that tends to runs through our mind is: more people are bidding on X than Y, so it’s probably the better auction.

Here’s another great technique I’ve seen used to great effect quite recently:

Back in 2003 I sold a script that could automatically increase your price by a certain amount every time X units were sold. So you could sell 10 units of your product at $29.95, and then the script would automatically increase the price by, say, $5 for the next 10 items… and so on. It had other features like split testing, but I eventually withdrew the script when better testing methods became available. (But that’s another story you can follow on my blog at The Smart Web Letter.)

Anyway, Robert Plank is a fellow programmer who wrote a PHP script that worked with Paypal and that could increase a price by a certain amount every time a person brought an item. So, for instance, you could start at a price like $7, and increase the price by $0.07 a time. (He calls them “dime sales”.)

That’s exactly what Robert did with one of his own products. He started at $7, and the script automatically raised the price by $0.07 after each sale. The price increased rapidly and he made 100 sales overnight.

If I remember rightly, he also did one where his starting price was $0.05 and it increased by $0.05 a pop. I don’t know the exact figures for this one, but I’m pretty sure he sold even more than the one that started at $7.

One crucial factor that made it work so well was where he chose to make this offer. In this case, it was in the Warrior Special Offer section of the Warrior Forum. This area of the forum is where members can make offers for their products and services that are not supposed to be available to the general public - although, ironically, the forum is publicly available. And with over 50,000 members of the forum, the Warrior Special Offer area is a marketplace of hungry buyers.

Plus, the forum enables people to leave feedback on their purchases, on the same post as the original offer.

Now hopefully, as regular readers of this blog, you can appreciate exactly why Robert’s technique worked so well…

(a) At a low price of $0.05 or even $0.50, people could jump on board with very little risk. Plus, Robert was already well-known to the forum members, so the trust was already there.

(b) As more sales rolled in, people would leave their positive feedback on the product, which would spur on the people who needed that extra bit of assurance. (Few people like to go first. Can you remember the last time you were first on the dance floor?)

(c) The continual price increase acted as a scarcity mechanism - something we’ll discuss another time, because it’s another weapon of influence! In this instance, the product itself wasn’t scarce, but the low price was!

(d) Since this had similarities with an auction, I believe there was a kind of “bidder’s heat” effect, but without a “buy it now” price. People who might otherwise have been hesitant may have jumped on board, simply because so many others were doing it. After all, when you see 20, then 50, then 100 people buy something you’re interested in, it becomes just that little bit more irresistible! (Have you heard of the term social proof?)

Incidentally, the PHP script that can do this is found in Volume 3 of Robert’s Sales Page Tactics. Since I’m not an affiliate, I don’t get any credits (apart, maybe, from good karma) for mentioning this, so if you feel like doing something for me as a thanks for sharing this awesome technique with you… hit up those Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc buttons at the bottom! (In other words, help spread the word about this blog.)

I mentioned the concept of scarcity in this post. Since it’s another “weapon of influence”, let’s discuss it next! We’re all familiar with it, I’m sure… yet perhaps you’ll be surprised at just how much it’s used to influence what you buy, and when you buy.

Photo credit: gallery nucleus by superfantastico

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