If there was only a free way to mass post up ads/text combos lol.

Scripts that performed the features that brad had originally announced when he made the absolutely dumbfounded mistake of promoting his script on the Wicked Fire forums were around long before he was the first to “have the idea” or even “the first to code it.” It’s called Google. Use it. A suggestion for search phrases could include even the most asinine “facebook ad scripts.” They’ve been around, and posted for free, for a lot longer than Brad has even had access to their advertising functionality.

I called Brad a clown for two reasons:
-He tried to market a $100 application on a forum that is notorious for people that really ‘don’t fuck around’ when it comes to online advertising , an industry that maintains a fairly large collective of active and talented programmers.
- He called Nathan, the WF member who shot back the response to his attempted marketing blitz, a clown for having given away the code for free (I’m not big on name calling so i figured it’d be appropriate).

You see, Brad made pretty much every mistake possible when it comes to any type of marketing… just the top 3 off the top of my head (sorry, this all happened a month ago and it really isn’t worth my time to go back to become re-acclimated with the original postings):

1) you gave away the recipe before charging for the cookies
– if you want to generate buzz for your application/script, don’t give away everything it will do before you actually can sell it (or in your case, learn how to program it)….otherwise people will either look for it elsewhere or code it themselves. BTW, you can find job orders and offers for similar applications all over sites like elance – some dating as far back as a few days after FB released the advertising functionality. FYI, i only remember the winning bid for one of them…..and it was $20 if i remember correctly….If I were to list the top 20 mistakes you made, “Sell your product at a competitive rate based on it’s features & benefits (whether direct or indirect)” would have been on there to address that.

2) If you’re going to advertise, it’s important to pick the correct avenues of promotion.
- I.E. Research where you’d find the largest and most targeted segment of consumers who would be most likely to shell out $$ for your product. Sometimes that might even mean holding off on any sort of announcement or release until a suitable venue has been discovered and/or exploited. WF was absolutely the last place this type of product should have been marketed on. He would actually have had better success just making comment posts on the thousands of blogs/forums(excluding WF + any other SEO/SEM/AM ones) that had users bitching about the lack of functionality telling them about his new app.

Now this one applies to marketing, AM, and well…LIFE:

3) If you ever find yourself the butt of a joke, don’t spread your cheeks and become the a**hole.
- After the various posts regarding the greasemonkey script and brad’s mistake, he made comment of it on his own blog (as mentioned in my original post). If you actually read it (you’re not missing much if you didn’t.. i’ll explain why) you would have seen that he called the coder of this firefox add-on, Nathan, a ‘clown.’ Hmm…. now do you see why I might have decided on that word to best describe it’s original author? If you’re the butt of a joke, esp. on somewhere that carries a reputation for hazing like WF does, take it in stride….don’t try to lash back or worse, leave comments on blogs well after the incident just because it left a sour taste in your mouth…. just let it go and move on. It was actually all forgotten until I noticed that someone had just recently added a crass comment to this thread. Think of it just like you would any AM campaign, if something doesn’t work, Google slaps the life out of your site whether via de-indexing or pagerank, everyone copies your LP or whatever else happens on a daily basis in this industry……just give yourself a pat on the back, go through the logs/analytics to see if you can learn anything and MOVE ON. Whether that’s starting over or just trying a different angle in the same game, you just drop what didn’t work and try to find what does.
———–

I could obviously keep going… there are so many other ‘basic’ marketing principles that were completely missed in Brad’s original marketing ploy…but i’m sure the only person reading this is Marc..or whatever your real name is (keep in mind when u leave post comments i get to see your IP, which comes in handy when matching them up to irc/forum/website analytics that also show me who you are…you can do the math on that one)… also, by responding i’m actually breaking a rule of mine about ‘hate-comments.’ They’re best left without ever even addressing them. I guess it’s just the language used that made me feel like writing this little response up.

Why do I despise responding to these types of comments?

“Hate-comments” in response to anything on the internet that you don’t agree with really bring out the true character of its author. I guess it must have something to do with our false sense of anonymity on the internet that brings out the urge to create or respond in non-progressive ways. It’d be one thing if he had a valid argument (whether i agreed with it or not), and presented his opinion as a way of showing my error….but he didn’t.
Quite frankly I feel that it’s pathetic when people resort to name-calling or other forms of derogatory vernacular on the internet. If you’re not willing to present your opinion or argument to me personally (which in this case would even just mean via email), then why waste your time? You just end up looking like a jackass, especially when you leave no ‘public’ form of contact/rebuttal. I’ll even go as far as saying that makes you look even worse…it strips your comment, regardless of what was said, of any validity or authority that you had initially intended it to carry. No one respects someone hiding behind a feigned sense of anonymity….no matter what it is you’re trying to say…..

bah, this ended up being much longer than originally planned… no editing though so please forgive my piss-poor grammar… if any of you ever have an issue with anything found on this site, try contacting me directly via the contact form in the menu – I can promise that you will always find much better results that way.
-QA