Case Study: Earn a Million a Day

As with all of the case studies involving projects that I attempted prior to 2010, what you’re about to read is the product of my memory, some notes that I’ve dug up, and some old website files that I kept in an archive. I hadn’t intended, at the time, to do a public case study on these projects, so please bear with me. Projects from 2010 onward are far more detailed.

( 2008 – present )

This site was, and continues to be, well received. Despite the disclaimer above, I actually remember quite well the details of the creation and launch of EarnAMillionADay.com. I was in San Diego in 2008, attending my first ShareASale Think Tank event. I had spoken with someone early in the day who mentioned a site of his that was converting pretty well, and I visited the site during our lunch break. I was disheartened to see that it was a squeeze page, a type of marketing page that I’ve long hated. I had the idea to parody his site, and fired up Dreamweaver. I laid out the basic framework before lunch was over, and spent another couple of hours (ten minutes here, twenty minutes there) over the weekend coming up with the content. Before I left for home, the site was complete.

This site has not been monetized in any way, nor will it be. I decided as I was creating it that it was important that the point of the site be respected: squeeze pages suck. I felt that if the site made me any money, it would lessen the impact.

What worked

The graphical elements and design choices worked extremely well. Being a parody of squeeze pages, I chose common elements and spun them a little: many squeeze pages have a box of text surrounded by a dashed line. I added a scissors image with the instructions “cut here” when I did the same. The use of highlighting on squeeze pages had always amused me, so I took that a step further as well, eventually leading to a paragraph in which random words (and parts of words) were highlighted. Squeeze pages are well known for their testimonials, and my testimonials were pretty funny – each person was named Johnny “nickname” Franklin, even the women. The fictional company SlickBank is a thinly-veiled reference to ClickBank, the source of many, many scam eBooks and their squeeze pages.

The site played on other common elements of squeeze pages and their products: all the prices end in a 7, there’s always things they won’t tell you until you join, and the page is always “From the desk of” the marketer.

The joke that worked the most – the one that I’ve heard the most feedback about – is the graphic of the hand holding the check with the claim that it hasn’t been Photoshopped or altered in any way.

What didn’t

The site was originally tightly tied to The Big Book of Spam (the original header graphic had “The Big Book of Spam Presents:” in it). When that project shut down, I had a choice: shut down Earn a Million a Day or change the site to remove references to the failed project. I decided on the latter, and spent several hours updating graphics and changing text on the site.

I get no traffic from search engines at all. I mean, none. This is partially due, I believe, to a lack of backlinks. More than that though, the site is not optimized for any keywords.

Verdict

1. Unless there’s a really good reason to do it differently, keep your various web properties separate. Linking from one to another is okay, but when one project is dependent on another for its survival, you’re better off keeping them separate.

2. I’m a pretty funny guy when I put my mind to it. There’s a place for humor in nearly everything you do, if you’ve got a sense of humor.

3. This is a good site to mention in a forum discussion or on Twitter whenever someone brings up squeeze pages or scam eBooks or membership sites.