#also i just think the ancients of this local group generally tend to suck balls . Badly

[simcardiac-arrested]

it’s all a bit vague in my brain but i just think fhat like. a senior being unable to fulfill their duties is kind of shameful. and then a senior trying to share their burden with not even a co-senior or anything or an iterator from another group, but with an iterator from their own group? even if they’re good friends ?? i jst feel like that wouldn’t really be accepted . at all. does anyone see my vision

[topicprinter]

About this post: This isn’t a guide on clickbait or a how-to article. This post is nothing more than a fun little project for myself where I write about stuff I find cool.I’m just an average entrepreneur who finds certain marketing, advertising and business stuff fascinating. What I’ve wrote below is a look into the history of Clickbait, purely because I think it’s fascinating. That's it. Nothing more.Enjoy:..“Earn $57,426 Per Day Using This Weird Method”.“Down Syndrome Dumbass Licks Potato And Discovers Ancient Secret To Losing 2.1kg Of PURE Fat OVERNIGHT!!!”.“7 Steps To Enlarging Your Dick So BIG That You’ll Need To Rush Your Girlfriend To A&E Everytime You Fuck”.Clickbait. If you’ve spent 5 minutes on the internet you know what it is. It’s a word synonymous with deception, disappointment and disgust.Yet the internet is over-run with the stuff.So the question remains… “How come, despite the intense hatred towards clickbait, is it that so many advertisers continue to use it?”The answer is simple – It works!Clickbait has made – and continues – to make millions upon millions of dollars for individuals and companies smart enough to use is wisely.In this post I want to take a deeper look into the controversial phenomena that is clickbait, and get to the bottom of why it’s gathered so much hate, and what exactly makes it so powerful..What is Clickbait?.When most people think Clickbait they think internet scammers, yet in reality it’s more than that.Clickbait when boiled-down is simply an enticing short piece of text designed to arouse the curiosity or interest of a certain group, and compel them to take some sort of action to learn more.The action could be to click to a link, enter their email address for an e-book, or call a number for an information pack. This action is the first step towards the advertiser convincing the user to buy something!That’s all it is – the first step towards trying to make a sale. Now, many of you will have heard of the old-age sales motto A.I.D.A which stands for:Attention – Interest – Decision – ActionThis represents the stages of how a sale is made. It says that first you must get the attention of the potential customer, then get him interested in your thing, then get him to the point he decides to pull the trigger and get your stuff, and finally take action and hand over the cash.The selling of anything – whether it’s good, bad, great or downright god-awful – first begins with grabbing the attention of a potential customer.And that’s all Clickbait is – a tool to grab attention.So here’s the question…If ALL sales (regardless of quality) begin with the grabbing of attention… and if clickbait is merely a tool to grab this required attention… then why the fuck is it so universally hated?Buckle up. To find the real answer we need to take a quick trip down the ol’ time machine..Pre 1998: Before the Internet – When ‘Clickbait’ Didn’t Exist.Ahh the good ol’ days before technology reached fever pitch, when terrible fashion and fantastic music reigned supreme. But it was more than just a time when 5 hour drives across the country were passed with simple conversation, occasional naps, and desperate games of eye-spy.The world of business was entirely different.You see before the internet you were pretty limited in how you could grab the attention of the public in order to make a sale. You pretty much had newspapers, magazines, radio and direct mailings – and that was it!This meant it was much harder to be a successful entrepreneur for various reasons:.1) Advertising was expensive: Advertising in a local paper or small-circulation magazine would cost a few hundred dollars. Radio, national newspapers and large-scale magazines would regularly cost you a few thousand to run an ad.Even once you acquired someone’s mailing address, you’d have to factor in printing and postage costs to mail a promotional piece. Literally every attempt to make a sale cost serious money.This meant only serious businesses were around. You either had to have the capital or balls to give it a shot..2) You needed customers to buy more than once to be profitable – With advertising so expensive it would often cost anywhere between $20 to $200 dollars to acquire a customer to buy something. That meant you couldn’t make a profit of a one-off $30 purchase..Instead you needed them to keep coming back and buying from you. It meant your product or service had to be good. If the customer was disappointed they wouldn’t buy again, and you’d be at a loss.These two factors prevented quick money-grubbing individuals to get anywhere. They simply couldn’t make the economics work. They either didn’t have the money to give it a shot in the first place, or their product/service was so crap nobody came back for them to make a profit. The only businesspeople left tended to be delivering a decent product in return for any promises made.But even with a great product, you could have your ass handed to you if your advertising didn’t compel anyone to take notice.It was during this period that brilliant advertisers and entrepreneurs realised that by writing the headlines of the advertising in a sharp, punchy curiousity-arousing way – you could get more people to take action – which lead to more sales – and hence more profit.It was generally a good time for the mass public. Those who made bold claims and promises generally tended to deliver on them. Everyone was happy!But then came the rise of a medium which was to not only revolutionalise and rock the entire fabric of existence and society – but also the business world once and for all….The Internet: The Birth of Clickbait.Sometime during the late 90s / early 2000s the internet took off. And oh man what a time it was.The internet came into my life in my early teens. Slow-loading porn, the ability to download shit for free, and the ability to check out whatever weird interests I had lurking in my mind with total anonymity. Simply put it was magical! Soon pretty much the whole world was on the internet.Now for the businessman this was a golden opportunity. Until now reaching the masses was limited to print and radio – all which cost serious money.But now there was a new medium – one which had more people than any other out there – and the situation unlike other advertising mediums was entirely different:.1) Advertising costs were DIRT CHEAP: Unlike print and media, advertising on the internet was cheap. FILTHY CHEAP. It was ridiculous – I’m talking less than 1 cent per click equivalent.When Google launched Adwords in late 2000, cost per click costs were so cheap there was actually arbitrage available! Certain smart bastards who monetised their blogs, drove traffic to their blogs with Adwords at cheaper than the payout from Adsense! They literally made fortunes with ZERO risk.That aside for the everyday entrepreneur the unbelievably low advertising costs meant….2) You no could make a serious profit from one sale: As the cost of advertising was next to nothing, it meant that even with shitty marketing you could acquire a customer for pennies.This meant the sale of a $30 ebook would be close to all profit. This meant you didn’t need to have a good product. It could be dogshit. Sure the person would be disappointed and never buy from you again. Who the fuck cared! You had the whole world at your fingertips. Just keep selling to new folks and there was money-a-plenty!And remember people were used to businesses living up to promises, and bought relatively effortlessly. So the formula for making money was simple:Make a big promise – deliver shit – profit anyway!Now the big promise which lead the sale of these shit products was the same headline writing tactics used by the same well-meaning advertisers and businessmen before the internet. Internet shit-peddlers read a few headline-writing books and they cashed in nicely.As time went on internet users kept seeing big promises lead by these attention-grabbing headlines, bought with high hopes and received crap. Soon those headlines were hated the world over. Clickbait had been born!.Other rarely-understood factors.There were a few other key factors which deepened the hate of clickbait. While I won’t go into deep detail, I will mention them as I think they’re fascinating:.1) Email was and continues to be free – sending emails was free. With direct mail sending a piece of mail would cost you money. But with email you could keep spamming the shit out of your users without thinking twice.Subject lines for these email were naturally clickbait, which only deepened the hatred..2) You could get started for $5 - Advertising on the internet had no minimum fee to start. Where in a magazine or newspaper you’d have to pay a few hundred, if not thousands to run one ad – internet advertising allowed anyone with $5 to give things a shot. It meant any Tom, Dick or Harry could give making money a go.They did and the level of clickbait shot through the roof..3) Internet security sucked – Not only was there crap product which didn’t deliver on promises made, But it was easy to send viruses either through email or infected sites. Assholes did this for fun, and used the clickbait format to lure users. Clickbait was now linked to fucking up your PC!.4) You could make money defrauding users pretty easily – Many of the viruses mentioned stole credit card information and hijacked the modem dial-up connectivity (which used to connect via phone lines) and unknowingly dialled premium rate numbers charging $2 a minute!Forget delivering shit product, clickbait was now the starting point of downright theft!As you can imagine all this lead to recipe of hatred whenever users saw those big promise headlines.But it must be understood that the hatred for clickbait titles wasn’t with the text itself – but more the setting of high expectations through a headline, followed by large-scale disappointment..Clickbait Today and How To Use it For Maximum Effectiveness.Things have long changed since those early days of the internet. Online advertising is pricey. There’s better spam filters and internet protection. And users aren’t as gullible as before.But despite this…Clickbait is as rampant as ever!Can you guess why?Because it works!!! Truth is users still fall for clickbait. And not dumb fuck users by the way – just about everyone. Why do you think sites like Buzzfeed are thriving, while sites like PBS need government support?Truth is clickbait works – or more accurately the ability to grab the attention of your audience using compelling headline is vital if you want success in your business..How to Use Clickbait Effectively For Maximum Profits (Without Pissing Everyone Off).We need to re-define what we consider clickbait, and think in terms of attention-grabbing headlines.Admittedly the effectiveness of the old over recycled titles of yore such as “Amazing Ninja Secret Trick to Making $4984.42 Every Two Mins Without Lifting A Finger” don’t work anywhere close to as well as they once did.(Whilst this was once a great compelling headline, it’s now been butt-fucked into the dirt)However the art of writing compelling will never die. It has, and will always work.For example look at the title I chose for this post. I chose it intentionally with the intention of grabbing your attention to make you read this. But as you can see it has a little originality to it.It’s not my intention to make this post a how-to of writing quality headlines. But here’s an overview to it:Think of writing compelling headlines like you would with music – play the same tune over and over and everyone will grow sick of it. Instead put out something a little fresh and different, but with intention and understanding of what drives the audience to listen and you’ve got a winning formula..The Simple ‘Secret’ To Preventing Your Headlines Becoming ‘Clickbait’.Now it’s worth remembering that this title could have easily been classified as clickbait if this post was shit. (Those of you who think it is shit may consider it clickbait now).At the end of the day it should be understood that whether a headline is clickbait or not is determined by the following ‘equations’:Clickbait: Great Headline -> Shit Article or ProductNot Clickbait: Great Headline -> Great Article or ProductRemember quality headlines only became clickbait when the delivery of content or product doesn’t live up to the headline’s promise.Feel free to make bold big claims. But make it your aim to deliver on that promise. If you do your audience will look forward to your big promises. They’ll only magnify your reputation, and more importantly, your profit..Who Am I?My name is Ganon (not real name) and I’m an active entrepreneur with moderate success. What I love to do is write, and I do it for the fun of it. Hopefully you liked it - if you did let me know.(I posted this a few mins ago, but removed it as the title was itself too clickbaity in and itself. I get there's a lot of self-plugging in the sub and that wasn't my aim so I gave it a more toned-down title.)