Here’s the results of the PickFu.com test to see which ads people would respond best to (respond = click on).

ONE VS. TWO:

TWO! http://pickfu.com/P0MHP9

THREE VS. FOUR:

THREE! http://pickfu.com/J73MZC

FIVE VS. SIX:

FIVE! http://pickfu.com/2RMLXB

SEVEN VS. EIGHT:

EIGHT! http://pickfu.com/BLW8YM

For the next round, we will be going : Two vs. Three and Five vs. Eight

Possible ads for the film Master of Inventions

Here’s the 8 ad variations I will put against each other on PickFu.com:

ONE
(the one I’ve already used)

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

One of the reasons this movie is about inventions is because I plan to make an online ad campaign that resembles ads for the fake products in the film. My hope is when someone sees an ad for a ridiculous product like the Waterproof Blow Dryer, they’d click on it with curiosity and be introduced to the film.

First time out I took a blind stab and created the ad below, which lead the the trailer underneath it on vimeo, which had a link to the MOI page on my site:

The user path would hopefully go:
1) see funny Facebook ad and click on it
2) see the trailer and get introduced to the film
3) click the link to learn more
4) become a Facebook fan / mailing list subscriber / watch videos on vimeo / a combination of these

I’m looking to use these ads to gain more fans and draw more attention to the movie. Success will be measured in the increase of:
- Facebook fans
- Vimeo subscribers
- Video view count
- Email list subscribers

There are so many variables one must consider when using an ad campaign on Facebook or Google. I decided to jump right it. Here were my stats before starting:

Vimeo – 53 contacts
Facebook – 278 fans
Mail Chimp – 143 subscribers
(I didn’t pay attention to views on the videos. I will in the future.)

I put $50 into a 5 day campaign ($10 a day). There’s more details to the campaign, but since it had terrible results I won’t bore you with them. Halfway through the campaign I changed the link to go straight to the MOI splash page, skipping the trailer. The campaigned stopped on the 3rd day for some unknown reason. I’m guessing it’s because I changed it.

After $16.94 I gained 1 new fan on Facebook.

Variables to play with / explore:

The visual make up of the ad:
- Title
- Picture
- Link
- Subhead

The workings of the ad:
- Where the link takes you
- How much you spend per day
- How long is the campaign
- What’s your CPC (cost per click) bid
- What is your target audience
- How many steps until you give your potential fans a chance to act (subscribe, become a fan, etc)

There’s a bunch of things here to figure out, so I’m going to start at the start of the user experience: the ad itself.

I think something as weird as a Waterproof Blow Dryer ad would get people’s attention. My first step is to play with visual combinations of the ad, as well as some other ad visuals, to see which grabs people the most. I’m also going to make ones with pictures of Jeff (the films star) that read ‘Master of inventions’ or ‘Meet the world’s worst inventor’.

MOI fan Rishi has recently used/blogged about a site called PickFu.com. The site puts any question with 2 answers to a 50 person survey for only $5. I will pose the question: Which ad are you more likely to click on? and create 8 ads and pit them against each other to determine the best one.

OK college football fans: how many matches will that be???????

7. At $5 a piece, this experiment will only cost me $35. Ads coming soon!

Joe

My piece for the October Ray’s Tap reading series. The theme for this reading was based on a Line a Day diary kept from 1938-1941 by Nellie Allyn who wrote 1 sentence every day for 5 years. It was called the unreadable diary. See images of the diary here.

This is a forward in the published version of  the diary, written by its author, Nellie Allyn.

—————————————————————————————————

Forward to The Line A Day Diary
by Nellie Allyn

Hello! It’s a pleasure to meet you and thank you for reading my critically acclaimed Diary ‘A Line a Day’, and you’re welcome. You’re choosing of this very diary is a testament to your great taste in literature and diaries, unless this was given to you as a gift, in which case never mind.

What makes me and my diary so great? You ask. Well, along with Anne Frank and Samuel Pepys, this diary will go down as one of the most important diaries of the 20th century.

Editors note #1: Samuel Pepys’ Diary was published in the 18th century.

What sets my diary apart from, say, Anne Frank’s is unlike Anne Frank, I actually went out and did some shit. As for Samuel Pepys: Fuck Samuel Pepys. No one gives a shit about some boring ass english restoration except maybe the people who lived through it. And they’re all dead. So there!

Editors note #2: Nellie has not read either of those diaries.

Why a line a day? Well, your good buddy Ernest Hemingway once wrote all he wanted to do is write one true sentence. Well, I did that shit every day for 5 years! How do you like your boyfriend now? P.S. who cares? He’s dead.

Now that I’ve established myself as a credible author, I want to address a certain criticism of my diary. First and foremost: There are almost NO references to historical events in my diary. I did this for 2 reasons:
1) history is boring
2) I wanted this work to remain timeless, and not date it with pop culture references or current events

Your bosom buddy Samuel Pepys wrote almost exclusivly about current events in his diary. What ever happened to that guy…?
P.S. He’s dead!

Oh, and P.S. to that P.S.: I’m perfectly aware that a P.S. goes at the end of a letter or forward. But I don’t care. If you got a problem with that, kiss my P.S.I.C.K.

P.S. in that last P.S. the P and the S stand for the letter D.

Now that I’ve put that to bed, I want to talk about writing. Writing this Novel (P.S. I’m referring to my diary as a novel now. Try and stop me.) Writing a novel is no small feat. It took years. 5 to be exact, working hard on it every day. Some “writers” think their novel will come to them in a flash of brilliance or they need to be drunk or high or both to create their art. Nonsense. What real writers like myself and Anne Frank know is writing is a process you go to every day. Hence the line a day. And it doesn’t have to be a lot. Just a few words every day. Maybe just one sentence. Actually just 1 sentence is all you should do. That’s what I did and my diary is great.

I would also like to help decode some of the poetic mystery hidden in the line a day text. you see the problem for me was that with just one line, there wasn’t a lot of room for creative embellishment. So I decided to save time and pack lots of meaning into each sentence by using abbreviations. Like the best poetry, words can mean up to 2 things.
Example:
John = Johnathan
Daddy = dad or father, my father
Hot = it was hot outside (temperature)
Hot! = it was really hot outside (also temperature)
Rain = it rained (outside)

Some fellow authors will suggest when writing every day, to do it in the morning and get it out of the way. I tried this once July 8-17 1938 with disastrous results. All my daily lines read:
Just woke up.
I’m tired.
Can’t wait to eat.
Cold!

The best time to write, I found, is at 6:45 pm. There’s never anything going on then, except maybe a sunset, but sunsets are bull shit unless you live in Connecticut.

P.S. If you do live in Connecticut put this book down, walk away, never look back. You’re dead to me.

A lot of people ask me “Hey Nellie, this diary is packed with adventure. Too much for one person I say! Did you embellish your life for dramatic effect? Even just a little. That that one guy who was on Oprah?”

Editors note #3: It was James Frey. The book is ‘A Million Little Pieces’ and there’s no way Nellie read it.

To them I say: Yo bro, you’re on my last nerve. Normally I wouldn’t even dignify such an insult with a response, but I’ve got some time to kill before my thai food arrives so I’ll be brief. the pages of this diary, sorry, NOVEL are 100% true.

I’m sorry if your life is so boring you assume mine’s a lie. Maybe if you stopped reading books like an loser and went out side, you too could go on amazing adventures like:
go to the movies
have supper in the evening
go to town
pack for the trip
celebrate an anniversary
walk to the village
come back
on a train
Hot!
go to the hair dresser
shop in town

or stay in like I did.  And that was all in the same week playboy. Recognize.

Well, my thai food has arrived and my lo mien is getting cold, so I’m going to leave you with this advice: go out and live a full life. No one wants to read something by a dude who sits around and writes about wanting to write and asks other writers who write how to write. That shit is boring.

And I’m out,

Nellie

P.S. I’m well aware that lo mien is a chinese dish and not thai. I actually ordered the garlic chicken pad thai. I said lo mien because I felt it sounded better. I used what us authors call a creative license. Ask a writer what that is.

I got to review on of my favorite Jams, Regulators by Warren G and Nate Dogg for the site Review a Rap.

Read it now!!!!!