Filthy Stinking Friend Whore

My good friends at eHow still have the site jacked up, so it looks like I'll be holding on to my submissions for a bit longer. No sweat though - there's plenty of other crap to get into. I was reading an article on problogger.net last night titled, '9 Things to Do To Make sure Your Next Blog Post is Read By More Than Your Mom'... some real decent ideas, but it's not anything I haven't heard before. One tip, however, suggested using Facebook (and other social media) status updates to lead your "friends" to your site. Although it's a no-brainer, it's a damn good suggestion. Right now, I have 254 Facebook friends. If I update my page, letting everyone know that I recently posted a new blog entry, all 254 of those sorry bastards who've claimed me as a friend will be alerted of the update. Chances are pretty that good a few of them will take the bait and visit the site.

But why not take it a step further? I mean, 254 potential unique visitors to the blog isn't a bad start, but it's not gonna make me much money. Not to mention, even if I capped out at Facebook's 5000 friends limit, my page would still be hidden from the rest of the Internet. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I've posted some pretty screwed up stuff to my page in the past (think Tubgirl), but to really milk Facebook, I need a hell of a bigger funnel, and a page accessible to the public.

Enter the Facebook Fan Page

A few months ago, Facebook released the Fan Page. When it comes to driving traffic to your site, the Fan Page gives Facebook's ordinary profile page a butt-full of stitches. There isn't a cap on your fan base (that I could find anyway), your page is public-facing (as are the links that lead to your site), your fans automatically receive any updates from your blog, and when someone joins your fan club, all of their friends are alerted through a status update (viral potential).

You might ask, what kind of egotistical d-bag would want a Fan page for himself? Well, that would be a d-bag who needs to get out of debt. Let me explain with an example. Being a realist, I'll float some conservative figures to estimate the online revenue potential of having a solid Facebook fan base:

• Let's say I have 100 million fans, which isn't even half the U.S. population.
• Let's also assume that I make 10 daily blog posts, each one alerting my fan base with an update.
• Assuming I'm currently able to get about 8% of my Facebook friends to follow my update links, 98% probably wouldn't be a bad estimate once I hone my skills a little.
• Now, once they get on the site I need to consider the advertisement click through rate (CTR). 2.5% is roughly the industry average, but c'mon, these are my fans - let's say that 50% of my visitors see an ad that they like.
• Finally, how much are my ads worth? Well, right now, I'm doing a lot of my blogging on residual income, which has an average cost per click (Avg CPC) of $2.95. This New York Times article says that Google keeps 21.5% of the revenue, but since Google and I are pretty tight, I can see them leaving me with 95%.

So, let's do the math:

(2.95 x .95)(carry the 4)(.5(.98(100 million x 10) ) = $1,373,225,000/day

$1.37 billion every day - that's why I want a Facebook fan page. Now, I just gave you the variables involved - you can figure your own estimate, but you're wasting your time - mine's pretty sound.

What's my plan?

In the spirit of making how-to articles, I'm going to make a 'How to Create a Popular Facebook Fan Page' hypothesis. Why just a hypothesis? Because I've never technically made a Fan Page, my plan may be subject to change. Here she blows:

First, I need a solid friend foundation. If the maximum number of friends you can have on Facebook is still 5000, then I need to get 5000 friends. As the title of this blog suggests, I need to be a 'Filthy Stinking Friend Whore'. I started this project this afternoon, and this is what I've done so far...

I created an alias named Duke Laserwood. I used GIMP (open source Photoshop) to make a sweet hybrid of John Wayne's (The Duke) face on Laser's (former American Gladiator - Larry Csonka era, not Hulk Hogan era) body. You can check it out on the widget to the right of this blog.

Armed with the perfect name and the perfect picture, I started inviting the crap out of some friends to join my new network. In order to reach the 5000 friends mark, I'm going to have to stray from my circle a little and introduce myself to some new people. Although no one can resist The Duke, I don't want them to know I'm a total nut job, so I built a nice base with some of my current actual friends.

I just sent them a friend invite from Duke Laserwood's account saying something to the effect of, "Hey, this is actually Dave Lopan. I'm conducting a social experiment, and I'd really appreciate it if you'd accept this invite". So far, about 60 have bitten. My brother and sister are both social butterflies with around 800 friends each, so if I need to, I'll cannibalize their networks as well.

Next, I joined two 'Big Trouble In Little China' Fan pages, and around 10 'Big Trouble In Little China' group pages. Once I clean up with my "real friends", I'm going to invite some BTILC fans to join my crew. How do I know they'll follow? Look, our profiles may not share the status of "friends", but I know these people...anyone who's in a 'Big Trouble In Little China' fan club will have a hard time resisting a guy with John Wayne's head and an American Gladiator's body.

I'll probably continue this method by roping in the 'Remo Williams' and 'The Running Man' crowd until I hit my 5000 mark.

This is where I think it'll get silly

At 5000, I'm going to throw together a nice shiny fan page. I haven't decided yet, but I'm either going to stick with Duke Laserwood, or create a Cash Money Retards page. Regardless of the title, I'm going to invite my 5000 friends to come along. Honestly, I'm not expecting more than 500 to follow me, but that's ok.

As I mentioned before, Fan Pages aren't just a place to rack up arbitrary popularity points, they're valuable tools used for growing your brand, which in my case is an imaginary bad ass named Duke Laserwood. After stuffing the Fan page with content via a feed from this blog, I'm going to seek out other pages to trade with.

I'll look for bloggers and webmasters who not only share similar content, but a like sized fan base as well. The Mashable network (Social Media News), for instance, boasts 42000 fans. Even rollin' 500 deep, they'll probably be a bit out of my league. No worries though. There are a lot of other similar sites out there flirting with numbers in my neighborhood. These are the dudes I'm looking to trade clout with - at least till I hit my 100 million mark.

I'll be monitoring my Friends/Fans count, as well my Facebook referral traffic from here on out. At the top of every blog entry, I'll post my current statistics. I need to check Google's TOS before I do this, but I'd also like to include my AdSense statistics (click-thru rate, revenue earned...).

Well, this is by far the most whopping of my five posts - coming in at 1300 words, I'd say it's quittin' time. Content is king, bitches.

Crap, one more thing: someone actually posted a link to my post yesterday regarding eHow's shenanigans at Propeller.com

Hip hip!