Nearly everywhere you turn, girls are more successful at what they do online, despite the fact that guys outnumber girls by a large margin. Rubbish, you say? Let me prove it.
There are countless examples of this online, in nearly every segment of the web, but stick with me as I take a look at a few that you might be more familiar with.
Let’s say I am a girl… a very attractive girl, and I have a Myspace page. I post a lot of “revealing” type pictures of myself on my profile and my photo albums. It wouldn’t be uncommon of me to get 50-100 new friend requests a day. After a while, I would have built up a friends list of several thousand people. Great, I have a ton of “friends”… so what?
Having a huge friends list gives you direct access to each and every one of these people… that type of advertising is priceless! I could set up a 3rd party website (related to your niche audience), throw some ads on it, then make a bulletin post on Myspace, asking all of my friends to go check out the site. If your site is useful, word will spread and you’re off to the races. A perfect example of this is 17-year-old Ashely Qualls, who started a Myspace Graphics website, threw some ads up on it and is currently bringing in $70,000 per month. Yes, it’s really that easy.
This type of “marketing” isn’t limited to Myspace… or even to girls! Another perfect example is a story that I read over at John Chow’s blog about someone trying to make money from Facebook. The “person” in question claims to be a 19 year old girl who got caught drunk by her parents. The story goes on to say that her dad is going to kick her out… BUT WAIT!! She struck up a deal with her parents, that if she could create a Facebook group and get 1 million other teens to join and admit they have drank under age, she would be allowed to stay.
Sounds like just another cheesy Facebook group, right? Wrong! Here’s the catch: an Ebay auction went live yesterday for a chance to advertise your site/business/company on the group’s “Contact Me” section… genius! I’m about 99% sure this whole story is a total hoax, with intentions of simply making a lot of money by selling this “ad spot” on the Facebook group. As of writing, the current bid is up to $50.34. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this sell for several thousand dollars. Not bad for making a quick Facebook group, throwing together a sappy story and adding a picture of an attractive girl. (UPDATE: It looks like Facebook may have shut down this group!)
We can take this same strategy and apply it to another online social scene, lifecasting. What is lifecasting? This term is very easily defined as broadcasting your daily life via the web in real time, using a webcam and a computer (laptops are preferred, so you can “go mobile”). Sites such as justin.tv and ustream.tv allow members to broadcast live. Both sites are free to join but you must be ‘accepted’ to justin.tv, whereas anyone can join ustream.tv and start broadcasting right away. I encourage you to check out both of those sites… for a day, for a week, whatever. What you will find is the same thing I found: girls dominate. Sure, there may be more guys broadcasting, but that is not important. Look at the “current viewers” - odds are, girls will have more viewers than guys at any given time.
So, how can you earn money from lifecasting? Well, you could take the Myspace approach; set up an outside website with advertising, then simply drive traffic to it. Include links to your site(s) on your lifecast homepage. Or, you can do what many others are already doing: simply ask for money! Yes, as crazy as it sounds, asking for donations via lifecasts actually works. Don’t believe me? Ashley recently had a viewer donate $500 to help her “go mobile” and her sister Amber had a user donate $250. This is FREE MONEY folks… it doesn’t get any easier than that. Would someone donate that kind of money to me, a below-average looking guy? HA!
The same can even be done with blogging. Blogs in general tend to do better with females behind the keyboard… granted they follow the same set of criteria that a guy would use to drive traffic (content, interaction with readers, etc.). Once you have a large reader base, you can throw some ads on your site, register for Review Me, sell some private ad spots, etc. and once again, let the money roll in. There is huge money to be had in blogging!
Even subtle attempts can carry you a long way. Take MyBlogLog… this popular blogging social networking tool allows you to see who has recently visited your blog by showing a small avatar, so you can put a face with your reader. Many people also use this to drive traffic to their own blogs. I have seen time and time again where a blogger (usually male) will use an avatar of an attractive girl, in hopes of luring other bloggers to their site. Does it work? You bet it does. Score for free traffic!
Ok, so girls have a better chance of “success” online, but why? Well, that’s really simple. Most guys online (and when I say guys online, I mean people who spend more time online than they do in “real world” social settings) have nothing better to do. Perhaps they are social outcasts, you know, the kind who couldn’t get a date if their life depended on it. That is why they turn to the internet. On the web, you can be anyone, say anything or do anything… stuff that you may not have the guts to do in “real life”.
And naturally, being a guy, they are attracted to girls. Online guys like the attention that they may get from online girls. They feel a connection with these web personalities, and face it, if a girl has never given you the time of day before… well, you’re going to be drawn in to this. If the online girl (or guy pretending to be a girl) is aware of this, they can play into this role and further lure the guy in. Hook, line and sinker!
Bottom line: sex sells… always has, always will. Do you think it’s wrong or unfair of girls that use this to their advantage? What about guys who set up fake profiles, pretending to be girls, with the hopes of luring in unsuspecting guys and at the end of the day, make a quick buck?
