Urban legends + CPA

leonidt · Jan 29, 2009

This idea was originally inspired by a reply to the Only in America thread by cskgsquad.

cskgsquad said:
There is no such thing as the "Criminal Lawyers Award Contest" mentioned in the version of the text above. Plug that phrase into google and you'll get many different Web sites, all leading to a form to fill out for legal advice from an organization identified as the Legal Assistance Network. Unfortunately, no information is available about that organization without filling out the form. This sends up a warning flag that this may be a front for a scam to obtain contact information, cashing in on the popularity of this legend.

Now, personally when I read that last sentence, ideas started flying through my head. Urban legends are popular. I know I get at least a couple every week. Now, I get a lot of spam every week, but the difference between spam and urban legends/chain letters like this, is they get forwarded to me by my contacts, and thus not treated as spam.

So, I started thinking; "how can I promote something through an urban legend"? I went to snopes.com and just started reading. After about an hour (hey, that site is addicting), I found THIS legend about a bunch of people winning the lottery because of a fortune cookie. (Coincidentally, that story is true, but it does not matter.)

It's perfect, because it gives people something desirable (winning the lottery) and a place where we can stick OUR affiliate link. Now, obviously I'm not going to be promoting fortune cookies, so I re-wrote the legend, using horoscope instead of fortune cookie. (A good niche right now)

Here is my re-written urban legend: (you can read the original on snopes and compare)

Amazing Story! Man wins $13.8 million lottery because of horoscope!

You HAVE to read this amazing story.

When the results began coming in from the 30 March 2005 Powerball lottery drawing, lottery officials suspected fraud was underway. While there had been only one winner of the $13.8 million jackpot, a record 110 players were claiming second prizes of either $100,000 or $500,000 (depending on whether they'd paid an extra dollar for the Power Play option that multiplies a win) for having matched the first five of the six numbers drawn. Normally the lottery, which is held across 29 states, pays out only about four or five second-place prizes.

Having 110 claimants of second-place money appeared highly suspect. Yet it turned out there had been no chicanery afoot the unexpected result had been the result of an on-line horoscope.

The roughly one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, and 39 had been selected by so many hopeful lotto players because it had been the "lucky numbers" given to them in their daily horoscope. (The horoscope missed on having all six winning numbers by a mere matter of recommending 40 rather than 42 as the red Powerball number.)

The lucky online horoscope was distributed by *YOUR AFFILIATE* of XXX XXX Inc. The XXX XXX, in business since 1999, sends out roughly 1.2 million free horoscopes daily, which is how the horoscope came to influence lottery players in so many states

Stunned lottery officials heard time and again from the second-place winners that they'd gotten their numbers from an online horoscope. Additional confirmation of the claim came from the lottery tickets themselves: nearly all of them listed "40" as the Powerball number, and 40 had been the final of the six numbers given in the horoscope.

While not everyone plays the numbers that are suggested to them, a great many do. A March 2005 episode of television's ?Lost? included a sequence of lottery numbers, and hundreds of viewers subsequently played that combination. It didn't win.

Isn?t that crazy? Talk about lucky starts changing your life! If you believe in the power of your fortune, forward this email to everyone in your contact list, so they too can see it?s power!

All I did was buy a relevant domain and redirect to the CPA landing page. (In this case, a free email horoscope submit.)

Then I just created a new gmail account, and started sending the thing to a bunch of emails (harvested off CL. search if you don't know how to do this). In my opinion, the great thing about this is people don't treat it like spam. Yeah, some people don't read those things, but all they will think is "sigh, someone auto-forwarded me another one of these things"....not "who's this guy spamming me?" The best part is, a lot of people DO like those things, and they forward them to THEIR entire contact lists. Do a good one, and you will get a viral marketing effect going.

Disclaimer: Treat this post as purely hypothetical. Have I made money with this? Maybe, or maybe not. Decide for yourself if you want to try this or not. If you do, use your imagination. Don't just blindly copy my shit word-for-word.

Good luck.

xenter · Jan 30, 2009

very creative!

ur disclaimer made me laugh lol

gabixxx · Jan 30, 2009

Nice.

aмillionaírе · Jan 30, 2009

Smart thinking and good idea, I only have one question, what do you use to send out your mail?

kayden89 · Jan 30, 2009

This is very sneaky, and clever! i like it, haha..

leonidt · Jan 30, 2009

Caesar said:
Smart thinking and good idea, I only have one question, what do you use to send out your mail?

Plain old Gmail, 50 people at a time. Why complicate things? 5 minutes of copy-pasting = 500 emails sent. There's no reason to send any more than that a day. A good "legend" that plays well on psychology is the key, viral effect will take care of the rest.

I'm sure you could think of a way to use something like Alex's Xrumer for this too. Or Yahoo Answers("is this legend real?"). There's lots of ways.

BlackBeret · Jan 30, 2009

Why not sell fortune cookies? That guy over on WF ran a WS0 for his fortune cookie affiliate program. I think it had something to do with evil or funny fortunes. I don't know if there are even lottery numbers on them.

darkchillie · Jan 30, 2009

I love this idea. If you had a email/legend go viral that is potentialy 100's of thousands reading. Take a legend, spin it and add an affiliate link.

Will have to look at getting this implemented.

dannyhw · Jan 30, 2009

I have to say this is a very nice idea. My whole family forwards these things around like crazy. I had to teach my mom about snopes not too long ago.

You might even try this with myspace bulletins, facebook notes, whatever. Should work on any site where people forward each other shit without doing any research. You might even combine this with e-whoring. Post personal ads and do a little bit of back and forth. You know if guys want to get into "your" pants they're going to read anything they think "you" are interested in.

leonidt · Jan 30, 2009

You could do this anywhere. If you wanted to go all out, you could set up your OWN site like snopes.com, except with 90% of the legends and stories having your aff. links. Then SEO the shit out of it.

mrsmirf · Jan 30, 2009

Great Idea! I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets those emails claiming that Microsoft is going to shutdown hotmail.com if not enough people forward the email to all their contacts. There are so many spins on this you can make it a fulltime job.

Urban legends + CPA

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