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I walked past a poster on a lightpost. It said "Discover the truth about 9/11" and it had a web-site address (no doubt some Michael Moore fan).

I was thinking then if we can use posters "Who is John Galt? Discover tht truth at... www.objectivismOnline.net"

Actually that is a good idea. I remember a marketing experiment in Austin that had billboards around town that simply said "calvincoolidge.com", that's it. When I first say them they reminded me of the "Who Is John Galt?" billboards that were created to advertise Atlas Shrugged in the first place. (Bonus points to who can tell me the advertising exec who did that was) The advertising company behind the WWW billboards had some insane numbers they pitched to my company at the time about how many people followed the link just to see what the heck it was about. The page itself told everyone it was an experiment and if they wanted to actually know about Coolidge (who I think is one of our funnier presidents) they had a genuine link to info.

From real world experience, my company has tried every type of web ad possible and our greatest response rates come from the simplest ads that are either teasers or state a single simple point. We're in the top 10 of ad impressions worldwide so we have to make it as effective as possible. Plus when you only have 1/2x1 inch to advertise, you gotta keep on message.

It'd be pretty cheap to print up something like you suggested, run of about 10 per page. Just blanket a campus with one on every place you can legally post at. Plus, you have to assume that LOTS of them will get taken down by people who don't agree with us, so the cost of replacement comes in labor. It wouldn't be hard. Dating myself here, but we thought it was a minor coup that we got Dan Quayle to come to campus. (No I'm not proud of it but it was a long time ago) We only had 24 hours notice from the Bush/Quayle people so we had to think fast. We did exactly what I mentioned above. Ran off a gazillion simple ads that said "Dan Quayle; 10am; University Center; No Joke", and simply "DAN QUAYLE!; DAN QUAYLE?".

Total production time was under an two hours for the printing and then it we blanketed campus. The turnout was obscene especially when you consider it was Dan Quayle.

The Students of Objectivism originally had some downright gorgeous ads but the ones that most people noticed were "Why Can't Johnny Think? Attend a lecture...."and "The capitalist solution to apartheid". They had a reference to location to the club carrel where there was free literature and usually someone willing to talk about Ayn Rand.

Note: my suggestions are really more germain to a student club advertising but still it's something that OO.net and the student clubs could go in together on. Actually following the link from David's site for the A&M club is how I found OO.net. David could always exchange something like hosting the club's site in exchange for their labor doing the advertising. Mind you, I've got no idea of the cost of the additional bandwith and aggrivation that would cause but that might be offset by selling google advertising space on the club's sites.

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I had a thought about Google key-word ads. I suppose OO.net is associated with "Objectivism" and "Ayn Rand". Anything else? For example: "Philosophy" or even "Libertarianism". With terms like those, the eyeball-to-good-response ratio might be way lower, but it might hit a broader audience. Difficult to say if it would bring more bad than good. Also, there is the question of cost. Nevertheless, something to think about.

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Thanks for the tip.  What I could really use help with is catchphrases for the ad text – like say, “Who is John Galt?”

I recommend using the text from the bumper sticker you sell on cafepress, "Practice Principled Acts of Self-Interest and Ruthless Logic".

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How about, Learn to act more selfish.

Or, Learn why money is the root of all good.

Or, Boost your Ego, learn more about Objectivism.

Or, Have you rejected God today; learn more about why you are moral.

Or do your hate the religous right, the socialist left, and anyone in between; learn THE alternative, Objectivism.

I don't know thoses are off the top of my head.

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How about, Learn to act more selfish.

Or, Learn why money is the root of all good.

Or, Boost your Ego, learn more about Objectivism.

These two are good.

Or, Have you rejected God today; learn more about why you are moral. 

Or do your hate the religous right, the socialist left, and anyone in between; learn THE alternative, Objectivism.

I don't know thoses are off the top of my head.

I would steer clear of statements that put the focus on a negative, such as hate or rejection. That paints an unfavorable (an inaccurate) picture of Objectivism.

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First off--I am 18, and there is NO category for me to vote in in the poll! I am neither "Below 18" nor "19-25." I'm surprised nobody caught this before me, esp. on this site! I'm like 18.5 or thereabouts.

Second--people find this website because they want to. People find objectivism because they want to. They best way is by word of mouth, not advertising, although that will help a little. To get college kids to talk about this--you need to target the website for college kids!

What I am thinking about is setting up subforums for specific Objectivist clubs on campuses (upon the request of the student leader). Then this leader will get all his or her members on the site to coordinate activities. If there's not an Objectivist club at my college campus next year, I will probably start one, and if you (Greedy) set up a subforum for just us and nobody else, we would certainly use it.

This is a good way to boost your revenue. Lucky bastard--I should be doing it myself instead of telling you my good ideas.

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I was thinking of suggesting this too, valjean.  I've heard that many schools actually setup their own forums on their own servers for in-coming freshmen to get to know each other.  You would need volunteers from each perspective school, though.

Right, except if it was set up simply by a request here, there would be no technical volunteers needed--just Objectivists on campus willing to organize. It would be convenient and it would keep things centralized (well, a bit).

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ARI's web site has a list of Campus Clubs. Most have an email address. Suggest you send them email to interest them in this site. I'm guessing most already know of its existence, but one never knows.

Perhaps as part of your email you can ask for their help in promoting this site, and solicit their ideas.

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I vote for paying a search engine placement firm for more words. Get this site to come up when people search: happiness, self-help, lost, maybe even spirituality, things like that.

This way we will get hits from people looking to find meaning in their life as opposed to specifically looking for Objectivism in the first place.

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I vote for paying a search engine placement firm for more words. Get this site to come up when people search: happiness, self-help, lost, maybe even spirituality, things like that.

This way we will get hits from people looking to find meaning in their life as opposed to specifically looking for Objectivism in the first place.

On that note, have it pop up when people search for reason and morality.

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  • 1 month later...
... the possibility of printing the highest quality threads into a soft-cover book ...

I just went through the "Philosophy" sub-forums, looking for topics that were discussed unendingly (I defined that as 150 replies or more in a single thread). Here is the list of "hot topics" I came up with, prefixed with the size of the topic:

589: Homosexuality

460: Determinism

363: Abortion

304: Hume

240: Favorite Music

177: Abortion (contd.)

167: Illegal Immigration

167: Libertarianism (contd.)

166: Poems you like

161: Libertarianism

159: Choose your poison: Bush or. Kerry

159: The Unbounded Finite Universe

158: AI, Robots, etc.

158: Porn

156: Death Entertainment

150: Atheism

There are probably more hot topics that simply ended up as multiple threads. (As evidence see what happened to "determinism" after Jennifer merged the threads. Also see the repetition in the list above.) These aren't the "highest quality threads", but they are hot topics. I don't know exactly how they can be made useful to newbies, but I think there must be a way, if we put on our thinking caps.

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Thanks for the tip.  What I could really use help with is catchphrases for the ad text – like say, “Who is John Galt?”

As might be gleaned from my signature, I happen to like "Get real, Man," as an Objectivist catch phrase. (I have bumper stickers.) What better, more succinct, statement can you have for a philosophy that emphasizes reality and man's life in it? It's only drawback might be that it's a little too commonplace a saying, with little or no meaning to most people. (Which could also mean that it's an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.)

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  • 3 months later...
I will provide the first idea:  currently, 100% of the spending above hosting and software licensing costs is spent on Google ads.

There are lots of other pay per click search engines besides Adwords.

Many of them are also cheaper due to less competition. Try kanoodle, for example.

The second thing I would do, is to publish releases on PRWeb.com on public events and invite people to discuss it here.(publishing releases is free and that free service alone is great, but to be included in Google News you have to pay a fee. (30$ or so))

That might get you some media coverage.

Another great thing would be email ads, preferably solo ads. This way, you can reach thousands of people at once.

A cheap way to get people might also be to write a provocative article (Something where Objectivism contradicts current views) and send paid-to-click-people there.

If you need more help (with Google Ads, too, I understand a bit about their new changes they made recently), just contact me via email. I'm willing to help. It's a cause I'm willing to support. I have more ideas. ;)

Edited by Felix
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I had a thought about Google key-word ads. I suppose OO.net is associated with "Objectivism" and "Ayn Rand". Anything else? For example: "Philosophy" or even "Libertarianism". With terms like those, the eyeball-to-good-response ratio might be way lower, but it might hit a broader audience. Difficult to say if it would bring more bad than good. Also, there is the question of cost. Nevertheless, something to think about.

Philosophy is good. That's cheap. Try all philosophers (There are quite a few ;) ) and all philosophical schools, philosophical terms ...

We need to conquer philosophy B)

Also the self-help-stuff. That's great. But there is more competition. The best alternative might actually be philosophy, because up until now nobody found out how to make money on it with google, which makes it cheap.

How about economics? Economists. Karl Marx, for example. That might prove interesting. :D

... the art world...

... ecology...

...

Oh, there's lots of stuff!

Edited by Felix
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