BUSINESS
Here’s why OnlyFans banned explicit content
Don’t be angry at OnlyFans. Blame Mastercard.
The background: Last week, OnlyFans announced that they will ban explicit content beginning in October. This is like Google announcing that it will no longer be a search engine or Netflix announcing that it will no longer stream movies.
The “real” reason: Mastercard has introduced new rules as of October. The rules require adult content sites to verify every user and post.
OnlyFans will need to hire hundreds, if not thousands of people and invest millions in new processes to comply with this.
Sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, and choosing the path of least resistance, as OnlyFans did, is the most logical choice.
Wonder if they considered switching to crypto, though…
MARKETING
Don’t make marketing decisions based on psychology studies
Keep a skeptical mind the next time someone tells you to “do X in marketing because Y-psychology-study proved…”
Why: The social psychology world is currently being rocked by news that a study on honesty conducted by Dan Ariely, a well-known psychologist, was…well…dishonest.
What’s going on: The study found that people who signed an honesty declaration at the start of a form were less likely to lie than those who signed it at the end.
It’s a lie: According to a group of outside investigators, the study was “beyond any shadow of a doubt” fabricated. Apparently, the insurance company that took part in the study provided Ariely with false information.
Plus, years after the original study, Dan Ariely and his colleagues did a follow-up and found the difference in dishonest behavior is not the same as in the original study. Which brings us to…
The replicability crisis: Imagine you’re conducting a psychological study.
The same study is then repeated years later, but the results are not the same.
This is known as the replication crisis and it happens more often than you think. For example, one team of researchers tried to replicate 21 popular psychological studies. Only 13 succeeded.
What all this means for you: Test everything. Never change something and then stop because a marketing study said so. And keep track of the results to see if the change you made is better than the original.
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SEO
How to drive $540k worth of organic traffic per month, with a single landing page
Do you know the 80/20 Pareto rule?
Shopify is a strong example of it:
Their blog ranks for 400k keywords that “only” drives 765k sessions per month.
Out of those 765k sessions per month, 400k are generated by a single landing page, that ranks for only 18k keywords.
It’s Shopify’s Business Name Generator tool page.
Ryan McCready from Foundation explains to us how they did it.
The starting point of their strategy is diversification: Shopify wants to dominate the name generator space, no matter which industry searchers are in.
Expanding the business name generator tool in every niche meant they were able to target a huge batch of long-tail keywords.
How did they do it? They expanded the subdirectory structure. And this came with many advantages:
- It made it easier to target long-tail keywords: a massive subdirectory structure allows Google to better categorize your content and landing pages. This ultimately leads to more traffic.
- With this structure, each page shares the same backlinks, page/domain authority, and other ranking factors of the original root domain. Hence, a backlink to the Bread Business Name Generator page sends “link juice” to the main Business Name Generator page, too.
- Creating specific pages for each niche communicates to Google their authority around business name generators. Plus, all these landing pages were the same. The only difference between a Gift Wrapping Business Names page and Bread Business Names pages is the keyword they target.
- They are able to target a lot of long-tail keywords with few searches per month (100 to be exact), but with $15 CPC: Low volume, but high intent.
Why all this effort for a free tool?
Think about this: If a person is looking for a free business name generator tool, they probably don’t have the budget or the technical expertise to build a website.
Hence, Shopify is a great solution for them. And their Business Name Generator is designed to make them sign up and turn into customers.
Ryan McCready explains how they do it. And even how they create the 200+ Business Name Generator tool pages.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
CONTENT MARKETING: Learn how Morning Brew went from 0 to 1 million super-engaged readers. All their growth tactics are unveiled in this deep dive from Insights. The full deep dive is only available for members but you can check out a free preview here.*
ADVERTISING: Shopping. Automotive. Business. These are the top three app categories that are most likely to ask you to enable Apple IDFA. Can you guess which ones were the least likely to ask for tracking permission?
AFFILIATE MARKETING: Promoting audio? Apple is increasing the affiliate commission for Podcasts from 50 to 100 percent.
SEO: You’re not alone. According to a Twitter poll, most SEOs frequently fail with their projects.
FACEBOOK: What Facebook claims to be the most popular may not be the most popular. The New York Times discovered a Facebook draft report on the most viewed stories in Q1 2021. The first one was fake news.
GOOGLE: We previously reported on a bill that seeks to end the App/Play store monopoly. This leak might speed things up.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
Some kids were doing a science experiment on an extremely hot day in Vienna. They brought 10 gallons of water to the top of a hill, and poured them all into a very large barrel. Then, they pressurized the water, turned the barrel on it’s side, counted down from 10 to 1, opened the lid, and watched all the water rush down the hillside. When will the water stop running down the hill?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
This radio will play TikTok songs 24/7
If you find TikTok songs annoying, we hate to tell you this: something worse this way comes.
SiriusXM, a satellite radio service, has launched “TikTok Radio,” which features the platform’s most viral hits.
To make things even more interesting (or annoying), the radio will host a show in which TikTok creators will present and share stories about current trending songs.
Nothing like a 17-year-old explaining how they danced to Megan Stallion’s “Savage.”
In all seriousness though, this might be good for market research if you’re trying to start with TikTok.