Note: Please bare with this post even though I know you don’t want to hear about the “flaming” thread again. There’s actually a lesson we could all learn from it which will be talked about in the end of the post.

Seems like Jon, the owner of Wicked Fire, opened up a can-of-worms with his thread that bashes all the “Make Money Online” and “Super Affiliate” type blogs which I talked about two days ago in my post “Well-Known Bloggers Get Called Out At Wicked Fire”. I guess a member on Wicked Fire decided to take a shot at another “Super Affiliate” blogger Zac Johnson (disclaimer: whose blog I just started reading every now and then), and of course Zac Johnson responds back on his blog with an explanation in his defense. I have a feeling the thread might become one of the most popular threads to-date on Wicked Fire.

So was making that post a marketing stunt that Jon at Wicked Fire hoped would blowup into a flaming thread to gain some attention too his forum? Can anyone say “viral marketing”? Whether it was or not I’m pretty sure Wicked Fire will enjoy the extra exposure and traffic it will be receiving if all the “Make Money Online” and “Super Affiliate” bloggers start talking about it on their blogs. It’s already worked to some extent when Zac Johnson and myself blogged about it. If they are smart enough these bloggers won’t feed the flame (no pun intended), but it is part of human nature to respond back in defense.

So for all you that are just getting into the affiliate and blogging industry this is a good (or bad, however you want to take it) example of viral marketing. If you haven’t heard the term “viral marketing” before just google it. In the next week or two I’ll swing by Alexa to see if Wicked Fire receives a bump in the traffic graph on the day the post was made and a few days later.

Popularity: 18% [?]

I occasionally swing by the Wicked Fire forum to read up on posts relating to the affiliate industry and came across this post titled “John Chow, Shoemoney, Super Affiliate Mindset Camels“, and found it very entertaining. As you can see from the title the thread starter, who is also an admin on the Wicked Fire forum, basically mentions two very well-known bloggers John Chow and Shoemoney. He basically calls them out in the thread saying they are “NOT experts at anything” and goes on justifying his reasoning.

I found it a very entertaining post for reasons I can’t mention here in order to not start any ill feelings with the mentioned parties. He does bring up some good points, and I do agree that John Chow and Shoemoney aren’t the most technical savvy people in the affiliate/internet industry but does it really matter? I think the more important thing to learn from these two is how they marketed themselves into the spotlight and attracted all that attention. Was it being in the right place at the right time for these two guys, or did they in fact find a way to connect with their readers in some personal or emotional sort of way? How did they become so popular? Lets face it, success on the internet comes from being able to market your product successfully (in this case the product is themselves), and these guys seem like they got something good going for themselves. Maybe in a future post, after doing some critiquing and research, I’ll put my two cents in on reasons why I think these two rose too the top!

Interested in reading the thread on Wicked Fire? Here’s The Link!

Popularity: 17% [?]