Well, if you’re a blogger, there’s no way you missed April Fools Day this year. Just about every blog had some sort of trick!

However, it’s about quality, not quantity, so here are my thoughts:

My most anticipated prank was from Shoemoney, and his Make $1000 An Hour video turned out to be pretty cool. It was pretty obvious, but still funny… and the joke kept going through the comments, so it was a good time. (Some people were fooled though!)

John Chow partnered with Coca-Cola, which was OK. The Photoshopping was great, but it was a little too obvious to fool anyone.

And the Rick Rolling stuff was pretty boring. The one from Cow was plain obnoxious.

Zac Johnson started his own blog affiliate program, which wasn’t the funniest out there, but it was believable. 75 cents per click would have been a nice payout

Darren Rowse launched PayPerTweet, which was quite amusing, although I’m willing to bet that there is already a lot of “pay per tweeting” going on. Funny and believable, it was a good one.

It must have worked, too, because it seems more and more bloggers are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. A coincidence, or are they looking to cash in?

You could even sue Facebook. Granted there are lots of lawsuit jokes, but that post on TechCrunch was so funny anyway!

Jim Kukral was in there too. His joke was the post “Stop Asking Me to Digg Sh*t”… since that was posted on April 1st, it’s obvious that he actually wants you to send him tons of emails every day asking him to Digg your stuff.

My personal favorite prank was from Tim Ferriss, a master of outsourcing, who revealed that he even outsourced his personal blog! I was torn between “wow, he is a freakin genius, I want to do that, too” to “man, this would be a crazy good April Fools joke!”

Turns out it was a prank, and it was extremely fun and realistic. Kudos to him!

The big letdowns were people that pretended to sell their blog, which is way too common, and it’s been done so much before. There are so many things you could do, why bother with lame, old jokes like that?

It would be much better to joke about SEO firms or make tons of cash. (My jokes were obviously the best of the bunch, but they didn’t get much coverage because I don’t have thousands of noobs lurking around here looking for generic advice…)

Another great one was in the form of Blog Commentator. I was in on the joke, but apparently very few people were.

You know how I love spoofs, right? Well Blog Commentator was a spoof on all the “buy blog comments” style of comment spamming services. It even had contextual analysis technology like Google Adsense so it could analyze the blog post and leave a thoughtful comment that would in no way be recognized as spam!

Please take a look, it must have taken tons of work to do the full sales letter, ordering process, and wait list! I thought it was hilarious, but no one else joined in. I can only think of three reasons for that: 1) People are too dumb to appreciate a good April Fool’s Joke, 2) People are too lazy to look at it, or 3) Blog comment spamming is so common that bloggers are no longer passionate about it.

I didn’t mean to rant so long, but a lot of top bloggers give out press coverage to real comment spammers, but they ignore a great spoof about it? WTF?

Anyway, Happy April Fool’s Day!

Did I miss any good ones?

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Shortly after Al Gore invented the internet, uber guru Michael Campbell invented internet marketing.

That’s right. I was never sure who did it, but in a recent email from, you guessed it, Michael Campbell, he reveals how when he told you to do something, he was copied by everyone else. And it’s been going on since 1999.

For example: “in 1999 I told you to focus your sites on product makes and model numbers. In 2001 I told you to go either ahead or behind the retail curve. (It’s called the Long Tail now.)”

Yes, there is complete proof that he developed the concept of making a website that does not focus on just one generic term.

Until 1999, websites only focused on a topic such as “cars.” Then once this dude came around we started seeing the sites about cars expand to include more pages, such as “Toyota Corolla” and “Dodge Viper.” I don’t know how anyone learned about new models of cars prior to Michael Campbell releasing his strategies, because websites only used the term “car” and nothing more specific.

Another example is how his innovative “mininet” idea (which amounts to linking related sites together) has been copied and called many things, including virtual real estate.

‘Start with a generic home page, link it to targeted category pages, which link to highly focused make and model number pages.’ (Which - depending on who you talk to - are now called virtual real estate, spokes and nodes, themeing, silos or pyramids.)

So “virtual real estate” is only applicable to these so-called “mininets?” What about a company like Gawker that owns multiple website properties? (In other words, they own virtual real estate.) I certainly wouldn’t call their website network a “mininet” that can only be attributed to some guru’s ebook.

Moving on…

Building landing pages targeted to items like “xyz phone model” and doing PPC to them is better than bidding on generic terms like “cell phone.” It’s because they’re “buying phrases.” Wow, no one ever would have thought of bidding on terms other than generic ones like cell phone, web host, car, mortgage, etc.

Google should send this guy one hell of a Christmas present for enlightening people to the fact that they can bid on specific phrases. (Surely Google picked up on the idea thanks to him. It’s not like they have any talent working there…)

Campbell’s mininet concept also apparently includes the concept of categorization. He says to link your homepage to broad category pages which then link to specific pages grouped in that category.

Holy crap! Just think how hard it would be to navigate BestBuy.com if they didn’t use Michael’s brilliant concept of “categories.” E-commerce never would have developed!

Not to mention the internet marketers that wouldn’t ever think to use anchor texts that actually apply to the pages. Everyone would still be linking using lists of “link 1″ and “link 2″ etc for all their uncategorized pages.

This man deserves an international holiday!

Just think if you put together this mininet concept with some sleazy Adsense tricks… you’d be a gazillionaire!

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If business meetings took place on blogs…

Part 1:

Part 2:

Hahahaha!

Thank you College Humor!

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This video goes out to everyone that visits InternetMarketingSucks.com but does not understand sarcasm:

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I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of one person that’s happy with their cell phone service provider or their long distance carrier. You just go on with life (with your fingers crossed) hoping you never have to deal with them.

But sometimes people just complain about them because it’s so common. So why not ease up on AT&T and cast your glance at someone that deserves it - Pay-Per-Click Ad Agencies!

That’s right, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all the others. Here’s why:

3. Keyword Restrictions

Whenever I call up an old buddy of mine, I regularly swear and use profanity. No one cares. I also talk about Nike, Adidas, eBay, Amazon, and many other trademarked brand names. No big deal. And my extensive slang… no problemo.

But have you ever used certain four letter words in an Adwords ad? Or bid on a trademarked name? Or used poor grammar and vocabulary?

If so, they probably disapproved your campaigns, banned your account, or sent your personal details over to the trademark attorneys.

2. Coupons and vouchers are only good for first-time customers.

Don’t you just hate seeing those offers for “$100 in Free Clicks!” that are only available for new publishers?

It’s kind of like the “all the long distance calls you want for $1.99 per month (for the first 2 days)” that you get from the phone company. But let’s say you get a new house with a new phone number - your new address means you are eligible for the deal once again.

(And sometimes if you call them and beg nicely, they’ll give out special treatment to long-time customers.)

But let’s say you start a new website and start new PPC campaigns for it. Do you get anything for it? Any good deals? NO! The PPC companies will keep screwing you until you start a new company with a new Tax ID number (and therefore can start a second advertiser account.)

To make things worse, there are sites that list all these vouchers. Even with third tier search engines. I get pissed at Adwords even more whenever I see that list!

1. You Can’t Bitch Someone Out

What’s the first thing you do when you see some extra charges tacked onto your bill? If you’re like me, you call up customer service and promptly bitch out every representative that picks up the phone. (Being rational is not something I like to do.)

There’s just something satisfying about yelling at helpless underpaid customer service reps. Yelling at their manager is great, too. Especially when the charges were all your fault to begin with.

But have you ever done that to Google? Called them up and said “Yo G, I can’t f&@$ believe this quality score $2*$&*$@!! What’s up with dat?”

Chances are your answer is “No.” That’s because you can’t talk to a real person at Google. So you have to go flame them on the message boards. And that is nowhere near as much fun.

* Note that you should still hate your phone company, but hate Adwords too.

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Ever had trouble explaining your job to friends and acquaintances?

It’s easy for spammers, because everyone can relate to getting screwed over by them, whether it’s a casual email user or a professional blogger. But if you are using affiliate programs and doing PPC marketing, things can be a little more complicated.

So you have to put PPC affiliate marketing into terms that the general population can understand. Just like this…

• Your keywords get you to the bar. They let you mingle, and circulate around the room. They allow you to see and be seen, where the people are.
• Your ads are your pickup line. It’s your introduction. Your chance to make a first impression, and to create an action.
• Your landing page seals the deal. It gets the number. It takes the person home. Whatever you consider a successful pick up.

That’s a great strategy, although with most things in business, you need to adapt it to your needs, put in some hard work, and think outside the box. (Or at least have a Web 2.0 style logo.)

[Warning: Only 18+ readers should be reading anything about bars and girls.]

So here is my plan:

1. Do keyword research for stuff that girls like.
2. Browse Google for these keywords, keeping a close eye on the headlines used in the PPC ads.
3. Go to the bar, and repeat some of these “call to action” phrases whenever I see a cute girl.
4. When they get intrigued, win them over with some benefits from the landing page.

My first attempt went like this:

1. Searched for what girls like, and I found HowToDoGirls, and one story was about sex and the company picnic.
2. Googled for “company picnic” and found an ad for Philip & Henry magic show productions.
3. Tried to pick up some girls with “Want my illusion to jazz up your party?”
4. Got slapped because my drunken, slurred words came out as “Want to lose jizz when farty?”

I think that was a little too forward…

It’s OK though, because picking up girls at the bar is all about testing. Next time I’ll just try “Want 30 minutes of high-energy entertainment with me?” or “My tricks in bed make everyone laugh!”

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If you’re having a bad day because your PR dropped or your latest linkbait isn’t working, take a look at what I found here. This is one of the funniest and most creative pages I’ve seen online, and probably the most artistic when it comes to the internet marketing industry.

Want to brighten your day?

Read some more SEO comics! They cover topics such as copyright infringement, backlinks, reciprocal links, and more, and did I mention they’re funny?

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