Brilliance or Bull****?
by undermyspell - Adult Grind

Well, once again i'm writing about an extreme marketing tactic. As many of you will recall my very first article for Adult Grind was about the Adult Dialer Solution board takeover and whether it was a good or bad thing for them. Now, another tactic has popped out of the woodwork and I think it would be prudent to discuss the pros and cons of it. Let me get one thing straight though. I am not bashing anyone but simply analyzing a marketing ploy and the effectiveness of it.

Many of you who work on the weekends as I do certainly saw the frequent posts.. "Has Xbiz been hacked". I know that it was a frequent topic on virtually all adult webmaster boards that I visited on Sunday. There was an omnipresent black screen with red lettering on any of the Xbiz url's that stated that Xbiz had been hacked and foretold of an impending date with destiny the following day at high noon. There was the general scuttlebut ranging from "poor guys" to "it was a PR stunt for a failing board". In fact, in one of the first threads I saw concerning the matter Marsha "princess" Youngs posted saying that she knew the guy that took care of all of the servers for Xbiz and he was far too good at his job to allow a hack like this and for it to remain as long as it did. She also was of the opinion that it was a PR stunt as well. Considering the fact that she once worked for Xbiz and is familiar with how the marketing machine works there it was a credible insight. So we all discussed what it is and what it will be and waited for the following day to confirm who was right in their predictions. Well, a little past the deadline a brand new design was unveiled. According to Vendzilla, one of the moderators at Xbiz, he had figured out it was a redesign after he cracked the posted "hack" message and it listed the people that were working on the new design.

This brings me to my original question of was it brilliance or bull****. First, I would like to say that the new design is very nice. It's flashy and well organized and brings Xbiz into standing with some of the other very well designed resource sites. The staff that worked on the new design is to be commended for their hard work, planning and effort that they put into the new design. From a marketing standpoint I think that the whole concept of the "hack" job was quite brilliant. It definitely created a buzz around the webmaster communities. From a webmaster standpoint I think it could have been launched in a more appropriate manner.

If you break down the concept of it being a brilliant marketing ploy you have to look at the objectives that i'm sure Xbiz was attempting to fulfill. They wanted to create a ripple in the adult webmaster community and get the Xbiz name on everyone's minds. They definitely succeeded with that objective. The "hack" job was posted on virtually every webmaster board frequented by adult webmasters and links were posted on these various boards to Xbiz. Why is this significant? Because the majority of webmaster boards that you visit do not allow linking to other resource sites on their boards. Seems like a silly mandate by the resource site owners but if you step back and think about why they do not allow the linking of other resource sites it makes perfect sense. You could have Resource Site A signing up for Resource Site B and then every post them make they post a link back to their own resource site. That would take surfers away from Resource Site B. We all know that the name of the game is to get traffic and not give it away. It's just a simple case of not wanting to boost or aide in the growth of your competition. Most of the resource site owners are friends or at least friendly rivals and it's not a case of wanting to be petty. I would consider it more a case of self preservation.

It also succeeded on another marketing level and that's not spending any money for promotion. We all know we would rather spend our hard earned money on improving the program rather than promoting it. Xbiz did just this with the "hack" job. They got hundreds, if not thousands of webmasters discussing their site and they didn't spend one red cent to do it. By employing a controversial method I would say the success of their promotion from a marketing standpoint was extremely successful.

Now, if you breakdown the concept of it being bull**** you have to look at it from a webmasters point of view and an advertisers point of view. There are many webmasters that make resource sites part of their daily business routine. They use these sites to make contacts, catch up on the current information in the industry, find new programs available and to generally blow off steam. Most of us have our preferred spots that we visit and when those spots are unexpectedly down it creates a rife in our own daily routines. I've seen many comments by webmasters that felt lost without having Xbiz available.

I also think that initially it caused something of a security concern for those webmasters that promote Gigacash which is another site owned by Helmy. If Xbiz could be compromised, could Gigacash be compromised too? The possibility of this happening could impact people financially and not just impact their daily routines. Although we now know that it was not a true hack it still raised some of those questions during the 24 hours that it was down. It also put some people on the spot in their defence of Xbiz and Helmy. There were several of the regular posters and moderators from Xbiz that knew nothing about the "hack" and were vigorously defending it as a legitimate hack. Many of them put their personal and professional reputation on the line only to learn with the rest of us that it was indeed a marketing stunt. These people could have had better things to do on a beautiful Sunday than defend a site that had not even bothered to inform their moderators of the pending event.

You should also look at the impact that it made on advertisers. There are many webmasters that are part time webmasters and only work on their adult projects on weekends. This "hack" job took out half of their work period for the week. They could have been researching sponsors or other programs to promote but were unable to do so because the site was not working. This means that the sponsors that had paid their hard earned money to advertise lost potential affiliates because they were not informed that the site would be down. I certainly hope that there was some additional time or a credit given on those advertisers accounts. At the very least Xbiz should have had the ethics to inform their advertisers and staff of the impending downtime. Sure, it wouldn't have been the surprise unveiling of the new and improved Xbiz that they strived for but I think that the majority of webmasters had it pegged as a marketing ploy anyway.

So, in conclusion, I commend Xbiz for their brilliant marketing scheme and the hot new design that they have. But, next time a second thought should be given about slapping the loyal followers in the face. Trust is a two way street and those that are loyal to Xbiz trusted that you would be honest and forthcoming with any information that could impact them and in my opinion you let them down.

Jan "undermyspell" Grady
Editor in Chief - Adult Grind