I took some pictures while at the Boston.

A few pictures:
Jim Boykin celebrates his 27th birthday.
Tony Spencer had his birthday.
Joe Morin gives me clothing intervention.
Andy Hagans says thumbs up.

View the Boston Pubcon 2006 pictures.

Ever since I started doing some of the Q&A posts I started making many of my other blog posts unnecissarily long just because I got used to it.

I felt I was doing a bit too much rambling. I was right. Not 1 but 2 friends today told me that they wanted to read what I was writing but did not because it was too long and packed too many ideas into the posts.

Short snappy posts focused on 1 topic work well if you actually want people to read them. Seth is a master at this.

Here are the problems with rambling:

• too long and nobody reads it

• the added content dilutes the value of each point (to readers and search engines)
• wastes content by making 1 post instead of 5 hyper targetedc posts
• if too many ideas are in one post it is hard for you to reference your earlier content
• it is hard for others to reference

If you are going to be longwinded make sure it is so focused, topically relevant and interesting that it becomes the industry standard for that topic. Elsewise you are best off writing quick posts.

I wrote this more as a reminder to myself, but if you ramble and want people to read it hopefully this helps you too. Feel free to call me out if I am not following my own advice ;)

Many markets are said to be hyper competitive and beyond competitive reach for most people. Amongst this group are porn, pills, and casino sites. But most websites are garbage, and lack passion.

I am not advocating this idea for everyone, but...

Imagine a blogger who created the ultimate fan blog for one porn star. Reviewed all of their work. Eventually the porn star finds the blog and likes the blog owner so much that they want to have sex with the blogger as a thank you. The blogger, being a savvy business person, decides that they should shoot a video and sell it directly and exclusively on that blog.

Ultra targeted readers and an easy marketing story to spread. What more do you need?

Now I know that idea sound ridiculous to most people, but that is exactly why it would work so well if it was done well.

In a recent post I mentioned a couple Viagra humor examples and there are many ideas that would work equally well in the gambling vertical. All competitive markets are less competitive if you think of them in terms of how people share ideas and information.

What about a more mainstream vertical that is hyper competitive? How big of a competitive advantage would it be for an online flower shop to buy and integrate a design color tool like this one into their site? Something that no other site has.

Sell water purification equipment? Talk about how many people are going to be without clean water shortly as the population grows. Source other important documents, create an authoritative topical document and channel. Teach people how to solve the problem even if they do not buy your equipment.

In any and every vertical there are ton of easy marketing opportunities. How does your product, service or idea relate to people? How can you invoke an emotional response or get them to want to share it?

If you get to where you are evangelizing your industry instead of just selling stuff it is going to be hard to fail.

Internet to peak soon - the guy is full of shit with his claim, but it is an easy claim to link at.

Viagra Prank - hahaha to $5,000 a day

how many ways can an email spammer spell Viagra? - imagine that, another funny Viagra page that became a high ranking advertorial

Like humor, it is just as easy to work the ethics angle and then switch the purpose to promote what the site once claimed to hate. Even if you are creating a fake business or site that will be hated many of the people hating it will be so stupid that they link at it anyway.

penny stock scams - decent link popularity

Google is an easy target. Google China's name is no good - link link link

You can even run ads that are irrelevant or violate Google's guidelines, then claim that Google censored you as a link building trick. Just get Google in the press release and some media person will be dumb enough to pick it up.

Suing Google is, of course, easy press.

And everyone loves sex. if you link at me I win sex - long after the traffic falls the links stick, which can be leveraged in a nearly unlimited number of ways, although it helps if you can get the perfect anchor text built right into the initial marketing.

As long as you are first with the angle you take (see point #4 here) and know a few people who can help spread the message you are good to go.

Dominic posted on DP about flowing Wikipedia PageRank internally to pages where you are mentioned.

Search wikipedia in goog for a mention of your keyword / phrase. Edit those wikipedia pages to link to the lovely wiki page that links to your page.

And, of course, if you can't get your stuff linked to then a few additional options are:

• point Wikipedia pages to other pages that link at you

• add links to your Wikipedia profile page (and link to your profile page by commenting on a couple high profile controvercial subjects)
• add links with questions to talk pages for controvercial subjects.

Some people may also point Digital Point coop weight or other external links at the pages linking to them to help build up their citation value.