Bigfoot Hoax Could Have Netted $2 Million

Consider the recent "Bigfoot Hoax" conducted by Whitton and Dyer of Georgia. They scheduled a press conference that was attended by the entire world media. The way they were able to generate so much free publicity amazed one veteran internet marketer.

"Think about what these two hayseeds accomplished," said Darren McLaughlin, the President of Performance Marketing Group Inc., a leading web marketing firm. "They bought a $30 rubber mask, took a picture of the mask in a freezer, and sat back and watched their stats program explode. Now I'm not sure if these two are web monetization experts, but with the kind of traffic they generated from their low-tech hoax, they were able to generate over $2 million worth of web traffic by modern internet marketing standards. That's right, imagine making $2 million in a few days with no initial investment."

McLaughlin analyzes traffic trends as part of his day to day job, and he said with a proper landing page and the correct monetization scheme in place, Whitton and Dyer should have made enough money to retire in a few days worth of work.

"Using a proper blend of CPM traffic, Google Adsense, in-text publishing, and even a few affiliate programs, Bigfoot traffic should have generated them $2.5 at a minimum per 1,000 web visitors. Since they were linked from so many web pages, they could easily have hit the target figure of the 800,000 unique visitors or so it would require to generate that dollar amount. 800,000 unique visitors who visited an average of 2.5 pages on their website that were paying evn $1 CPM would accomplish the $2 million figure. If they were more skilled, the amount could have been much higher."

For this reason alone, McLaughlin says the internet can expect many more such scams in the future.

"Let's face it, how many industries actually exists that allow someone to invest under $100 and return millions? Exactly none, my friend," he said. "People have kids to feed and mortgages to pay. Someone who is desperate enough because they're house is being foreclosed on will do anything short of robbing a bank to right their ship. And it's not like getting someone to look at a picture of a rubber mask is a crime now, is it?"  - toi

Wow, okay, now I'm more inclined to believe the motive was money.

With the hits I'm getting on this blog I could probably make a few million dollars over the next five years by putting ads up, but honestly, I would rather have a blog free of advertising than a million dollars. I've known some millionaires and they aren't any happier than I am. ;-)