Cameron Olthuis

I’m stoked! It’s official, I’ve signed and sent in my 9rules agreement and I’m now officially a 9ruler. I’m very honored that I was selected for the 4th round and I look forward to contributing to a great network. For those of you wondering what 9rules is…

The 9rules Network is a community of the best weblogs in the world on a variety of topics. We started 9rules to give passionate writers more exposure and to help readers find great blogs on their favorite subjects. It’s difficult to find sites worth returning to, so 9rules brings together the very best of the independent web all under one roof.

Being a part of 9rules will push me to continually improve this site and the quality of the content. Cheers! Our company blog, Pronet Advertising was also selected.

Last night I posted on page views as a business model and why I think it will work this time around. This morning I stumbled across a new twist on page views.

The Huckin’ Chicken is a viral marketing site setup by Burger King. The site features the Burger King chicken mascot performing stunts on a dirt bike. Here’s the twist, the videos are locked for viewing and as the site gets more visitors then videos are unlocked, and the stunts keep getting better and better.

This is a very clever take on marketing 2.0 to encourage page views. However, the Huckin’ Chicken is missing a few key elements. For example, they should have an RSS feed to notify us when new videos are viewable. This would encourage more return visits that they will otherwise be missing out on.

Will we continue see more stuff like this? Absolutely, I think it’s a fantastic idea and we will definitely continue to see more viral videos like this. It’s an extremely inexpensive form of branding. However, these marketing techniques won’t work if they’re directly tied to ad revenue, you can’t just slap something like this up with some ads and expect it to work. Those that try will fail miserably.

There’s been some discussion lately on how a lot of the new Web 2.0 sites are relying on page views as a business model. Richard Macmanus says…

the fundamental reason why ‘Web 2.0′ is (dare I say it) in bubble phase right now. It’s the exact same reason the Dot Com bubble occured - Page Views

Only this time around it’s much easier to effectively track ROI. Most companies won’t waste ad dollars if they aren’t producing results, so the bubble (which I’d argue there isn’t one) is going to be harder to pop this time around. We learned our lessons.

As long as the ads continue to work there’s going to be a place for this business model. I say bring on the page views. My only concern is that some of these new companies are banking on a unrealistic CPM range.

When you think of branding techniques search engine marketing is probably the last thing that comes to mind. It’s unfortunate though, because branding through search marketing is very effective and valuable. Do I really need to point out the obvious that anytime a search query is performed for kewords realted to your brand you need to show up. It’s an opportunity that a lot of companies both big and small are missing out on.

Even if you’re not selling products on your website you still want as much targeted traffic as possible, otherwise there’s no point in having one. I can’t think of a better vehicle to bring that traffic besides search engines.

I wrote earlier today about creating hype and how 37Signals builds hype before launching new products. Apple on the other hand is just the opposite. They don’t saying anything about new products until the very last second.

Apple does everything they can to keep new product launches under wraps. However, information usually still leaks out through a few sources. Apple’s even gone as far as taking this issue to court to try and reveal these sources. I can understand the logic behind this. Apple knows consumers would hold off buying new products if new models were just around the corner.

So which is better, building hype or not?