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This is the seventeenth day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

I found this article from Commercial-News.com where they talk about having two different shopping nights for men and women. It is a pretty creative and interesting idea that caters to both men’s and women’s shopping habits. Not sure how many mall owners read this blog but I do know that the idea of catering to men’s and women’s different shopping patterns is a pretty good idea. How can you change the sales and deals you offer to better match the patrons frequenting your business?

The largely known difference in men’s and women’s shopping habits, with women often shopping early and men often waiting until the last minute to shop, was seen with a promotion that started with a Girl’s Night Out last week and will conclude with a Guy’s Night out on Dec. 16.

Mall administrative assistant Cindy Compton explained that women who participated filled out their own gift registry or wish list of items from mall stores.

The lists then will be made available to their guys on Guy’s Night Out. There also are sales, door prizes and free gift wrap on the Guy’s Night Out.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Now that all of the madness is over and the election is out of our control, it is time to pick up and move on. For the last year and half we have been completely inundated with political ads and rhetoric. Campaigning for the 2012 presidential election officially starts on November 5th 2008.

One of the last papers I wrote for my political science major was about the effect of the Internet on future elections (including this one). My argument was that the Internet leveled the playing field and would continue to spread videos and political messages even though election laws forbid certain campaigning the day of election.

I think the return on investment of an online video is far greater than that of a paid ad placement on one of the major networks. I talked about a video called Keating Economics released by the Obama campaign about McCain’s ties to Mr. Keating and the S & L scandal. The video was mini-documentary style and garnered 1.7 million views on YouTube. As far as I can tell, the Obama campaign is out the production and website costs. My guess is a couple grand.

I am also sure that the page more than paid for itself by all the donations buttons scattered about. So, technically I am sure the site netted a profit for the Obama campaign as well as shaped opinions about John McCain.

Could websites and YouTube videos be the future of marketing and advertising?

I think it is pretty obvious that the Internet and all online components have a significant effect on the future of marketing and advertising. Now with social networks, emails, newsletters, SEO, internet marketing, videos, Meetup groups and on and on, you can effectively build residual traffic and income for a tiny investment.

People are looking for ideas and other people that are just like them. When they find their community or “tribe” they feel at home and are comfortable. The key is to realize that you can’t just create a community or tribe and expect people to jump on board. They want truth, passion, excitement, entertainment, gossip and whatever else they might be into. If you can attempt to create something like that out of thin air without the full conviction or passion behind it, you’ll be called out and will most likely crash and burn.

Thankfully, starting ideas online is a lot cheaper than starting them offline where overhead costs can run very high. 13 years ago Matt Drudge of Drudgereport.com started posting up-to-date news articles he found online. He runs a single page website that received just under 800,000,000 page views last month. His site is now the 6th most visited news website. He makes his money from ad placements and with 800 million views a month, I am sure he is doing pretty well.

What we online have known for a while and what those outside of the Internet are learning is how effective advertising online can be. When your message has a clear purpose and contains relevant information to your tribe, the message will spread to millions in a very short time, like drudgereport.com or a YouTube video.

It amazes me that every segment of the evening news isn’t broken up and uploaded online to easily distribute like a YouTube video. You would think they would want people to spread their content and video far and wide. Who knows, maybe they would even get views from different countries and states who simply like what they have to offer. Not to mention they could embed advertising into the videos to boost revenue.

How about newspapers allowing their readers to write and add commentary to their online web pages? A news collaborative that builds upon itself like a mini Wikipedia. Simple measures like flagging inappropriate articles and comments could allow discussion to continue without the direct influence of the company or organization. The future involves catering to your readers and subscribers needs to enable them to share and take part in the activities surrounding your community (tribe). If they like what you have to offer they will stay. If they really like it they will share. Be an enabler to your community.

A large percentage of new bloggers want to make it big, to have a blog that tons of people visit and money pouring in. The truth is this rarely happens, and if your goal is to make money online, getting tons of people to your site is the wrong way to go about it.

I will probably get booed off the blogosphere for stating the obvious and so many people are ready to defend social media successes, but rarely do any of those defending it actually make money from the traffic that sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon deliver.

I won’t lie to you and say that if you make the front page of Digg you won’t get a ton of traffic, because you will. But did you know that most of Digg’s front page stories are generated by just a handful of people? The rest of the stories are generated by everyone else who is using the site. (Grip time) The traffic from these sites rarely comment, subscribe, buy, share or hang around.

When I first started blogging I used to think that social traffic was the end all and be all of blogging and that having good stats was better than anything. But if your goal is to make money, go where the money is and where you need to go in order to get paid. Provide for or target the people who are looking for a solution to their problems. Digg users aren’t looking for something in particular, they are looking for something random or weird that they can entertain themselves with for a few minutes while they kill time at work. They aren’t going to sign up for an affiliate program or buy a book. They are simply wasting time and floating from one thing to the next.

Making money online more often than not requires you to do and talk about the things that social traffic sites shy away from. This would be the niche blog or abstract art dealer site. By catering to the people who are looking for specific things like a service or collectibles you will find there is money to be made.

Before you persecute me saying you can convert that massive social media traffic, I will admit that many people can convert that traffic and have perfected the monetization of mass traffic flow. In the end, for me, if comes down to the amount of time spent achieving that goal and if that can sustain itself. If you stop for one week pressing, shouting, friending, digging, stumbling and so on, your business will wither. But if you set up a site that generates nice and consistent traffic and money you now have a business model. Don’t forget that a lead in the hand is worth more than a thousand fly by.

*For the record I have obtained mass traffic including having a number of posts hit the Buzz page on StumbleUpon, netting upwards of 35,000 page views per article. So it is possible, but simply unsustainable in the long run.

*Inspired by Vic and Grizz