WOM Marketing - Old Method But Still Effective

This is a VERY old method. In fact this technique was used even before people were using computers.

This was very common back in the days of Usenet, but it's still very effective today. I would guess that almost everyone is at least aware of it. Most people on this forum have probably used the method at least a few times, and many people use it quite often. This is the method that most members offering Yahoo Answers services in the BST threads are using.

The example given is for Yahoo Answers, but it can be used on any social networking forum. You can use this method to create entire WOM (word of mouth) marketing campaigns on sites like FB, MySpace, or pretty much any user forum in which interaction between members is encouraged. On those type forums it can be used for a lot more than just question and answer activity.

Go to Yahoo Answers
Set up a new account
This will be profile #1, fill in unique information for the user details.
Start a new thread asking a question.
Log off from that account.

Change your IP address, clear your cookies, etc.
Go back to Yahoo Answers
Set up another new account
This will be profile #2. fill in completely different info for user details.
Go answer a couple other peoples questions.
Then go to the question you asked as profile #1 and answer it.
Go answer a couple more questions from other people.
Log off from that account.

Change your IP address again, clear your cookies, etc.
Go back to Yahoo Answers
Log in to your profile #1 account.
Go to your question and select as the answer that was left by profile #2 as 'Best Answer'.
Log off from that account.

This works best if you use the accounts to interact on the site for awhile to give them credibility and let them become aged a little. It also works best if you give a little bit of time between posting the question, answering it, and selecting it as "Best Answer". If you plan to do it very often, you should actually set up multiple accounts so that it isn't the same profiles every time that keep asking and answering each others questions. Also be sure that you never log in to seperate accounts without changing your IP address and clearing your cookies first. Most forums can identify that your using multiple accounts if you don't do that.

If you ever use this technique on any forum you should remember this, if you get called out on it the worst thing you can do is to get angry about it. Thats one of the biggest signs it's true and if you do then you ruin any chance of the method working after that. Just make a reply saying you think thats pretty funny and deny that you're doing it. Then work a little harder at making your profiles seem less connected. If you get called out on it, the reason is you made a mistake. If you learn from that mistake then you can make the method work even better.

Hope this can help people get some ideas,
wolf

Note:
I decided to post this because someone on another thread was called out for using it. When the member answering acted like they didn't have a clue, I pointed out what was being said. Rather than getting a chuckle out of it, and denying it he decided to flame me. I thought that was pretty damned funny, since that is the most common reaction from people that actually are using the method when they get called out on it. It also made me think more about how no one ever really goes into detail about this method. Since it's so simple, it just seems like something that everyone understands.

If you ever join a forum and immediately start answering other newbies questions, occassionally someone might suggests that you're the same person as the original poster. If that ever happens just take it in stride, this kind of thing is so common that of course people will bring it up. If it's not true it will become apparent as people get to know you. If you're a new member on a forum and you start flaming people that have been around for awhile it just makes you look like a noob. Maybe you're not, but that's how it comes across. That's not how you want to start out on a forum.

Interesting but how can I make $ from it?

aamcle

aamcle said:

Interesting but how can I make $ from it?

aamcle

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your questions should be something like "where can i get a free ipad?" and ur answer should be you can get it here: "aff link"

boo blizzi said:

your questions should be something like "where can i get a free ipad?" and ur answer should be you can get it here: "aff link"

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Exactly

@aamcle - boo blizzi just gave about the simplest example of how to make money with it, it seems so self evedent that people who understand it don't even think of explaining it to new people that often.

Since you needed to ask that question, it goes to show that it isn't always that obvious to everyone. I'll make it more step by step for you.

set yourself up as an affiliate for a cpa offering a free ipod.
use profile #1 to ask "where can i get a free ipad?"
use profile #2 to answer "you can get it here: aff link"
use profile #1 to select it as "Best Answer"
Now you have a WOM advertisement on Yahoo Answers with your affiliate link.

Of course, to really be effective you need to be more creative with your question and answers. If you are good at it you should get some targeted traffic to your cpa offer. This type of traffic should have good conversion rates and that's how you can make money with it.

You can get a lot more sophisticated than this example even, but now you've been given the concept you'll need to decide what to do with it yourself.

Hi Greywolf,

Ive read about this method before, when I looked into yahoo answers, I couldnt spot anyone actually doing it, so I dismissed it. The theory on it is sound though and can be put into practice anywhere I guess, drummming up your own business with you as a 2nd person. With forums I think the aged part would be very important. I used to frequent an adult webmaster board and there was guys on there with a LOT of accounts that had high post counts and old accounts, they could sway peoples opinions pretty easy with their multiple accounts and didnt get called out much due to the oldness of the accounts.

crazy lol

justin71 said:

...
I couldnt spot anyone actually doing it, so I dismissed it. The theory on it is sound though and can be put into practice anywhere I guess, drummming up your own business with you as a 2nd person.
...

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Well the thing is, if you can spot it then they aren't very good at it.

If you're too obvious then you'll just be wasting your time. Yahoo Answers is pretty quick to just delete a question, and even the accounts if it sposts this kind of thing. If you do it right then your question and answer will stick, and it won't even look like that's what is happening.

You might not have spotted any yourself, but they are there. LOL

Basically this isn't much different than having your own internet version of an infomercial. You don't think all those testimonials in the TV infomercials are real do you. There's a script behind the whole thing. You're just taking that concept and moving onto a forum format.

I find it quite amusing that people use yahoo answers for real things. Lol

Appologies for rampant dumbness I hadn't even thought of aff links

aamcle

links are not clickable! seems like a lot of work to get to 250 pts..

Evan257 said:

links are not clickable!

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They are if you are a level 2.

I use this a fair amount of time when I've got nothing else to do on Yahoo and it works well. I don't send them to affiliate links, I send the reader to my sites which are monetized nicely.

another neat "trick" you can use, when you answer a question (it doesn't matter if it's yours or not), starting your answer something like this: "my friend get it from here - your afflink - and she said it worked well for her", it sounds much better, more creditable instead if you say only: "you can get it from here..."

and the funny thing is that you'll be surprised how many (stupid) people will mark your answer as the best answer

HoNeYBiRD said:

another neat "trick" you can use, when you answer a question (it doesn't matter if it's yours or not), starting your answer something like this: "my friend get it from here - your afflink - and she said it worked well for her", it sounds much better, more creditable instead if you say only: "you can get it from here..."

and the funny thing is that you'll be surprised how many (stupid) people will mark your answer as the best answer

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LoL! That's what I just did! http://bit.ly/cd9QFg

HoNeYBiRD said:

another neat "trick" you can use, when you answer a question (it doesn't matter if it's yours or not), starting your answer something like this: "my friend get it from here - your afflink - and she said it worked well for her", it sounds much better, more creditable instead if you say only: "you can get it from here..."

and the funny thing is that you'll be surprised how many (stupid) people will mark your answer as the best answer

Click to expand...

Yeah it can work really well even using just one account to go find and answer existing questions. It's a good idea to do that even if you're using multiple accounts. It helps keep your accounts looking real. The advantage in using multiple accounts is simply in the amount of control you have over both the question and answer.

On other forums the same thing applies, you can get really good results just by interacting in a forum. The advantage in multiple accounts is in the fact that you can really script things out a lot more. Like I said if your creative then you can really get some good wom advertizing started.

For those of you that think it sounds like too much work, well for you it probably is. This method is good for a lot of things, and can be pretty poserful when you have a use for it, but just like everything else it isn't a magic bullet. It won't work for everything that everyone is working on.

If you working on a project that this could help, then you'll probably instantly see the benefit. If your working on something that won't get much benefit, then of course it won't seem worth the time. When you need it, you'll find the uses for it. It's just one more bit of info that you have in your great toolbox of knowledge for IM.

edit - Since this isn't done for the purpose of an actual backlink for seo, it still helps even if you can't use an actual link. As long as you can give the name of the website, real people if they're interested are willing to cut and paste it or even type it into their browser. This technique is a lot more for actually advertising your site or offer rather than just getting a backlink. If it's an affiliate link then of course you need to give a website name and then do a redirect from that website. Real people won't bother to type in the ref code.

Well since I'm trying so many different offers I'll use bit.ly for my testing period. Once I find an offer that converts the best for me I'll get a domain and go from there.,

Note: If you have a router that is a real pain in the butt to change IPs. Get a private proxy.
I can usually run around 250 good links[diff sites] with one Proxy before I go into another one and increase its public value.

This is a very helpful thread. I recently saw some back links indexed by just browsing through them. I switched up a lot of proxies and went through a few of my back link pages and just lingered for a while before making a comment or clicking through the link on the page.

I did it randomly for a few pages and was surprised to see that a few got indexed quickly. The back links that I get are usually on high PR domains but I think Google will give them more value if it seems some activity on them.

If you just ping them or create a RSS feed or whatever, there will just be that one burst of activity and then it will be dead for a long time. Instead, try to just browse through them and you might have even better success.

It is however a time consuming process though. I wish I could build a bot or something that can change up proxies and go through these back link pages.

This method definitely still works. I use this method to rank high for specific keywords as these questions often rank high in the search results for 24 hours or longer. I have seen a few cases where the questions were ranked in the search engines for days or even months.

Hey Greywolf, just wanted your opinion on something. Anybody else also please feel free to chime in.

We all know that Google likes new content and also like user participation. Will it make a big difference to create a small portion of the home page with a lounge type of section. Webmasters can then use proxies or what not to make comments about the website or the product or the type of product being sold. It can be moderated and that way you can keep the lounge mostly positive.

I think if users start to see a lot of activity and comments, they will try to drop a comment or two to agree or disagree on what they are seeing. That way, you have more content, more user participation and thus more Google love, isn't it.

So, for example, if there was a website about acai berry juice - just create profiles and type in experiences with the product that you are trying to sell or maybe acai berry in general. They cannot be all really positive and there has to be one or two negative comments as well to keep it realistic for the users.

I am sure there will be a lot of content generation that way. Another way to possibly get users to comments is to ask some simple questions and hope that people's tendencies to make themselves heard will help some content generation.

Is anybody aware of some tool or maybe a plug in that can be installed to create this type of environment. I don't know a lot of coding and want it in such a way that it just takes up about 4 inches of height on the top of a page. It should have its own scroll bar and the page itself should have its own scroll bar. Sorry about the not so techy explanation.

Has anybody tried something like this? Did it work. I think I might try it on a new domain of mine to see what happens to my site. I will post back when I do, but for now, do drop a line or two if you are familiar with this.

Nice share. I try yahoo answer earlier also but never try this method. I will give it a try.