The Viral Website. You know the type I’m talking about – those sites that keep you coming back time after time. Ones where the sheer absurdity and humour results in Diggs and Facebook shares. There’s a couple of favourites that I frequently visit, FMyLife, PassiveAggressiveNotes, even ICanHasCheezburger (though I’d be hard-pressed to find someone else who admits they, too, visit it!).

I’ve experimented with quite a couple of websites and blogs (such as this one). Most were created on whims, some were successful enough to earn a domain renewal, and two have managed to pull in some money. Not gigantic amounts – the first site I was able to sell for a solid $1000, the second is earning a small passive income through Adsense of about $1.00 – $2.00 a day. However all my sites suffered from the same disease. After the initial excitement of technological birth it was only a matter of time before I lost interest. Updates would come to a standstill, comments were left unmoderated, and soon the staleness would settle in.

A common and apparent denominator quickly emerged. Updating these sites required ME to generate the content and ME to keep the site alive. And the second that MY interest started waning, the site would suffer! This was not a good thing, as I can be quite the lazy webmaster. That’s when the answer struck me: Visitor-Created Content. The sites I mentioned above used it, to great success. If I relied on my visitors to provide a site with content, the effort required of me to keep the site updated would be minimal. All I’d need to do is screen, format, and edit! Tada, a new blog post!

Thus starts my first experiment into created a viral website. The idea came to me on a camping trip after I took a peek at my friend’s phone (he was checking his Facebook at the time). One of his friends had posted a hilariously aggressive Facebook status update – the kind laced with so much venom and hate that you had to laugh that Facebook was chosen as the platform to express it. A Facebook fan myself, I decided to create a viral website centered around mishaps just like that which occur on the site. Surely others would find such gems in their newsfeeds. And so Lawlbook was born!

I’m currently working behind the scenes to set up the website, but you can visit the launch page for now. Once I get this going I’ll document my progress, so anybody with a working knowledge of creating websites can try it out!

Volunteering as a research subject may seem like a crazy and slightly desperate thing to do. However, for data-hungry honours/grad/post doc students who are in desperate need of people just like yourselves for their experiments, being a lab rat may be a fun and lucrative hobby. The third head and new-found ability to telepathically communicate with pasta is also a bonus.

Most studies require an hour or two of ‘work’, but pay (on average) $10 – $15 an hour. It’s a quick way to make some extra cash and potentially participate in some pretty cool research!

Someone who hasn’t volunteered as a research subject may have some misgivings. Let me quell your fears – in scientific studies, the researcher will usually fully brief you on the tasks that you will be performing unless the way the experiment is designed requires otherwise. Privacy is a big deal and is handled very seriously by the researchers – they will not refer to you by name in their reports or release any identifiable information about you to the public. Prior to the study, you will sign a contract stating that you are able to stop the experiment at any point if you feel uncomfortable.

I will not participate in experiments which require me to consume an experimental drug or other unidentifiable items, or to receive substances intravenously (and these usually pay a lot more than $10/hr, more in the $xxxx.xx range!) since I’m a wimp. However I’ve participated in non-invasive experiments which hooked me up to an EEG Machine, required me to use a computer, or sit in a dark room for an hour listening to tones and looking for lights. Part of the fun is seeking out weird projects! With scientific research, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get something completely different each time.

‘But wait Spiffy Owl,’ I can hear you tweet, ‘how do I find these lucrative opportunities to donate my body to science?‘. Hearken my dear lost owlet, one needs only to wander through the halls of your local Psychology Department to be bombarded with the flyers of many a desperate researcher. January and February are particularly fruitful months, as crunch-time is upon these poor students to complete their thesis. You may also want to see if your local University has an online board for this kind of stuff – simply add your email to the list to be notified of future studies. Hospitals may also be good hunting grounds. Generally once you’ve applied for one study, they’ll put you on a list (with your permission) as a potential candidate for others.

I’ve got a couple of studies that I will be participating in lined up for the coming months They will be recorded here for your amusement. In the meantime, Spiffy out.

Since acquiring a free $100 facebook advertising voucher, I’m been scouring the web looking for an affiliate program to promote. I’ve never tried affiliate marketing before, but I’ve heard numerous success stories.

I came across Unlimited Wii Downloads and thought that this was something that would be of interest to the facebook crowd. This site supposedly lets you download games, videos, and music to your Nintendo Wii system. A quick search on the internet shows that this site has generally favourable reviews, and that the software works. Unfortunately I do not own a Wii, so I can’t test or vouch for the program.

Membership for the site is either $39.95 (for one month) or $49.95 (for a lifetime). Promising a payout of 75% for each membership sold, I will need to sell either ~3-4 one month memberships, or ~2-3 lifetime memberships to break-even on the $100 facebook voucher.

I’ve applied to create the ad via facebook using the following settings. I’ve heard they are quite strict on accepting ads, but we’ll see. Hopefully persistance pays off.

The wording of the ad is important. I choose a question for the title, a technique known to capture attention more often than a simple statement. A brief description of the service, as well as a call to action is included in the ad description.

I chose the United States as my target market instead of Canada, for the simple reason that the website I am promoting caters first to Americans (the price is listed in USD). I’m targetting people over 18, since those are the ones who posess credit cards. I’ve included both males and females since, despite popular opinion, there are almost as many female gamers as males (I should know, I am a female gamer!). Keywords are restricted to anything containing ‘Wii’.

And finally, I’ve set my daily budget to $5.00 and my max bid per click to $0.10. That means that each time a facebook user sees my ad and clicks it, up to 10 cents will be deducted from my account. I will probably need to adjust this later since this budget is quite conservative.

So now I just need to cross my fingers and hope that facebook approves the ad. I’ll keep you updated!

Edit: Holy that was fast. Within an hour (and before I could even get this blog post up) facebook has approved the ad! I’ll watch it for a couple of days and update the Spiffy Owl with any progress.

Yet another facebook freebie – sign up for the Visa Business Network (it’s a facebook application) and have a $100 facebook advertising voucher sent directly to your inbox!

I haven’t tried affiliate marketing yet but this seems like a great opportunity to get my feet wet. It could make me some cash, or it could be a bust. Basically what I’ll try to do is find a good program that I can promote on facebook to a target audience, and attempt to make more than the cost ($100) back. The good news is that since the voucher is free, there’s really no risk – I wont actually have to spend anything!

If anyone has some programs they’d like to recommend shoot me a comment. If you have a referral ID I’ll sign up under it if I decide to give your program a spin. And of course, I’ll document the whole process on the Spiffy Owl if anyone else would like to try it out!

Have facebook? Then you’ll want to jump at this chance to win $200. I did, and won, and got the cheque in the mail this morning!

This contest is running every week until December 21st, and unfortunately for the company (and fortunately for you!) there is almost no interest in this contest. Zip. Nada. Zero. None. The week where I entered, I was only competing against one other person. The odds of winning are pretty freakin’ good.

Here’s what you need to do: head on over to the Sprout website and download their program. I checked it over and it looks clean from any viruses or trojans. Once you’ve signed up, start using the Sprout reader – basically what you need to do is find really WEIRD news stories. Once you have something good, click the Show Location button at the bottom, and copy the URL and headline of the article.

Then, simply log on to facebook, and post both in this discussion board. You can enter as many times as you want so keep on surfing until you find something juicy! The contest closes every Sunday at 9:00pm. As of this week, I only see one person entering! Good luck!

Here are a couple of quick thoughts about Sprout. Sadly, despite their (failing) contest efforts, I really despise their program. Clicking the ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ leaves is supposed to help narrow down the types of stories that you enjoy reading, however it’s riddled with bugs and frequently gives me stories that I’ve ‘sad-leafed’ over and over again. Many of the pages it spits out aren’t even news stories, or in other languages. And most of the news stories it spits out aren’t interesting or weird or funny. When your program can’t do the one thing it’s supposed to do well – WELL – take it back to the drawing board!

Perhaps its most heinous crime is hijacking my choice of web browser. That’s right, Sprout is a stand-alone program, with it’s own built-in browser. One that is painstakingly slow, and frankly, kind of ugly. I see what Sprout was trying to do here, but they should take a leaf (hah!) from StumbleUpon. Don’t develop a stand-alone program, try a Firefox extension, a toolbar, something that lets the user control their browser when surfing the net.

I’ve won Sprout’s contest but that’s not enough to sway me to use a flawed program. I’ve uninstalled it this morning, but wish Sprout the best of luck in developing something that works!