Like most people who make money from the internet I am always on the lookout for what might be an opportunity and testing things to see what works. I might do a test run of a new type of spam or I could hear about the launch of a new community or service and decide to do a few tests to see what potential it has for delivering adverts or leeching off visitors. This is the brief story of one of my experiments, a tame one but it nearly had a rather scary outcome.

Anyone making a living from the internet or even those using the net to supplement their day job should be testing all the time, it doesn’t have to be writing scripts and doing large runs just testing the water with various ideas can unearth a gem that will make you thousands. This time I decided to continue to mess around with Gumtree, a Craigslist like classified site with a large user base in the UK.

In the past I have done (Like so many others) simple dating spam to Gumtree where the purpose is to entice as many people as possible into signing up at a dating site where I will get an affiliate payout. An example of a longer term test I had been running is www.picdating.co.uk which goes several times a day an aggregates (Posh word for scrapes lol) the dating adverts that feature a photo into one easy to laugh look at page, when it works well it’s surprising how many people seem to find value in not having to read all the adverts when they could easily decide which of the people are sex offenders (I’m definitely not suggesting that any of them are though) from their picture. Anyone in any doubt should view this picture taken at random from a typical day

Why would any lady be worried at going on a date with this chap?

This experiment then was setup as more of a test in social manipulation. What I planned to try was a simple advert with a picture on Gumtree where the headline would be all I could use to entice the visitors into making contact. I had decided that there would be no advert or affiliate angle yet, just a test to see how many people would be curious enough to make contact based on the headline alone.

So first off I had to go get a picture, something that would be appealing yet I didn’t want anything trashy or suggestive. So a quick visit to one of the many places where people leave their photos lying around (Flickr, Facebook – any social site really) and I had a pic of someone that fitted the bill. I chose a pic of someone from Australia to ensure that they would be unlikely to see the advert.

Next we needed a headline that would draw in the curious Gumtree users so I decided I would run with
“Know my secret?” and a body text of simply “I have a secret”.
There, that should get someone curious enough to pop me an email.

Here is the actual ad

The advert on Gumtree

Next to make life easier I created a new Gmail account to collect the responses.

So once the ad was set up I forgot about it for a day or two and set a Google Calendar reminder to ping my forgetful ass when it was time to check the mailbox.

Ping… OK time to stop work as an SEO company and have a look. Woohoo there were some responses waiting for me, this should be amusing.
Here’s a few of the early responses, some people are curious and most just seem to be having a boring day at work: -

” wats ur secret
tell me please i will do wat ever u want me to do
thanks”

” yeh i know your secret, …..
your a tranny”

” tell me yr secret an i’ll tell u mine x”

“Hi,
OK,you have a very good secret.Would you like to see any my pics?What pics would you like to see?- body pics, cxxk pics or whatevever else pics.
Cheers
Dxxxxxx”

“s your secret that you are some kind of robot?

That would be sweeeet.

if this is _not_ your secret, then i have no interest in what your secret could be.

With love,(1001010010100101001010100101)

R2D2

*bleep!*”

“You’re part of a viral marketing campaign?”

Some people closer than others I think youll agree

So buoyed by the early replies I set another reminder for the end of my ten day experiment and went about my normal work.

Ping… Ten days was up, lets have a look at the total haul and draw some conclusions!

• 10 days experiment
• Responses received: 249 !!

A full mailbox of wierdness: -

And a few people even felt desperate strongly enough to send a photo! Quite what type of life you lead where you feel the need to send a photo of yourself to someones classified advert on the off chance is beyond me. I mean have you ever met anyone at a dinner party and said “So how did you meet your wife?” “Well she posted a picture of herself in the classified ads and so I emailed a picture of my manhood to her, the rest is history” – Not that often I bet!

It was then that I noticed something odd, something that would make me suddenly as curious as the Gumtree people. The second to last response that I got wasn’t from a lonely guy in his underwear but from a woman. A woman using her works email address (Dangerous thing to do – as my next post will show you)

With sudden suspicion I clicked on the email, here’s what I saw.

Quickly I googled the company and it appears they produce many reality TV shows in the UK and that their flagship show is one of the UK’s most popular daytime shows.

I cant ring that number, can I ?
Can I get someone else to do it for me ?
Hmmmmmm

OK as it seemed unlikely that I could do a good enough impression of a lady to pass even on the phone and saying “Yes the secret is in fact that I am a fat balding northerner called Paul” didn’t seem like a better plan so I pinged an email off asking what they wanted.

It seems that they were curious enough from seeing the advert that they wanted to discuss including me and my story in an upcoming show they had in development. I haven’t admitted to them that the person in the ad isn’t me and to be honest felt it was better to leave it there!

So what did I learn?

• A good advert headline will get results (If the amount of people that went to the trouble of emailing me was anything to go by, many more than that would click)
• Gumtree has a healthy if sceptical user base looking for dating (I think that there is plenty of opportunity to exploit there for someone)
• Its amazing what a simple classified advert could have lead to – A real person would now be on TV as a result.

Oh well there goes my glittering TV career!

So what do YOU think would be a good variation on this experiment and do you have any stories of tests you have run?

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