You've all heard the saying, Money talks and bullshit walks. Well, in the case of ICO marketing, bullshit can get you millions.
I've been an avid crypto and ICO investor for a while now as well as a miner. My professional life evolves around the development of mortgage companies, previously as an independent consultant but most recently as the Vice President Of Sales. I'll be 40 in November and I've been around a while. I have an SEO and Online Marketing background of over 20 years, I know a lot of the tricks to building backlinks and rankings etc. Since the world of Crypto has been revealed to me, I've been a raging addict, reading and absorbing everything I can muster until the wee hours of the morning before passing out.
Through the processes of multiple transactions, wait times and their associated fees, it wasn't long before I realized some of the gaping holes in cryptocurrency and began planning out my own venture to change the world of crypto. I wanted to limit the transactions needed to achieve a goal, reduce fees, time waiting and have a wallet that I could store everything in, not just a handful. It doesn't yet exist so I reached out to some developers and formed the model for the Zempa Universal Wallet. We established some initial costs for developing Proof Of Concept work, prototypes and plugins and having gone through angel investors for things in the past and ultimately not being able to control their ineptitude yet overpowering desire to through wrenches, I mean, ideas, into everything, I knew I didnt want to go that route. This left a token sale as an idea for seed capital funding. Ok, lets do it, I said...
Well, I've learned a great deal about not only how token sales are structured but how the really successful ones achieve their success and I have to be honest, as an investor myself...I don't like it.
The first thing I wanted to do was get the Zempa.io token sale listed on all of the ICO listing sites. Problem is, the majority of them want paid and paid well just to link your site. Some of them have listed Zempa free of charge and one even reviewed the token sale based on where it is today and I thought it was very very considering the seed capital stage we are in. However, some of these sites require very high sums of money to get listed/featured etc and after doing traffic and metric reports on them I learned that many dont get much traffic, nor do they maintain many keyword positions, let alone positions in the top 10 of google. But...it's all a part of building the hype machine. If I wanted to get Zempa listed and featured on all of the ICO sites, it would cost quite a few Bitcoin. Overall, that is fine. If you have the funds and know you're wasting a lot of it just to appear "everywhere" then more power to you.
My biggest gripe however is the false hype and the primary reason for my writing this article. You see, in the world of SEO backlinks are gold and high authority backlinks are platinum and as such, you can purchase what are called Guest Posts on major sites like Forbes, Huntington Post, even CNN and the like to obtain those backlinks. You see, all of these sites have freelance writers with access to posting new content on these domains which must be unique, but overall, they can post whatever they want because it all helps that domains authority rating and traffic. So, these writers then charge anywhere from $500 to $5,000 for these guest posts which are basically paid advertising without really having to say as much. As an ICO marketer, I can write anything I want in an article and pay a few grand to have it show up on multiple high authority sites and because its there, you believe it...and the hype machine begins. While you're thinking you read that article on that site because of the merit of the story, in reality, it was a paid ad. I personally disagree with this and feel strongly that all of these pieces should be disclosed as such.
The other element to this are Press Releases. It's virtually impossible to get your Crypto related press release covered on any crypto related website without Paying To Play. Basically, if you have a budget, you can get your press releases or fake news stories spit out all over the cryptosphere and thus further enhance the illusion of success. This is how ICO marketers fake it until they make it and if it weren't for the number of ICO's out there preying on the public with these methods to pump crap or scam ventures, I wouldn't be so concerned.
Am I a bitter token sale marketer grumpy because my team and I can't play with the big boys? HELL YES! No, I'm kidding. It's really not what this is about. Zempa spawned out of a need that if it has merit, the public will stand behind it and help my team and I make it a reality. If not, well, then it wasn't meant to be right now. We will just keep doing what we can with what we have until we achieve our goal. No, this write up is coming from an investors perspective in an attempt to show everyone how easy it is to paint a turd and make it look like a golden brick.
In the age of digital marketing, there are an endless number of ways to fake results, AstroTurf social media accounts and the like and while it doesnt mean every ICO marketing effort that does these things is a scam, or even a bad ICO, what it does mean is that if all you take interest in is the hype and let that determine where you're investment money goes, you should prepare to lose as lot of money unless you really know what you're doing. At least for you buy and hold types like myself. I own 19 coins and I've never sold one of them. I add more as I can and enjoy the research of new ideas, new concepts and possibilities.
The crypto community is a very powerful entity and I am on a mission to lower the barrier of entry for new users while making it easier to trade and utilize the various currencies available so that we can all flourish and enjoy the market. Make sure that when you buy into a token sale, you are buying more than the latest ad you read or press release.
Be well.!