check it out here http://lootmaar.com/auctiondetails.php?itemname=Lunch-with-Jawwad-Farid-at-Roasters-Cafe&id=1175

i like the spirit of lootmaar people ..

best of luck to them.

*curses youtube for removing the series from their servers today :-/*

The point is who understands it in time before its too late. I think for Nilaam it should be a shocker!

But I do absolutely disagree that this is generating publicity for them.

I’ve designed and run new media marketing campaigns and I can tell you that there’s a reason clients engage with ‘new media consultants’ – its because web.1.0 SEO spamming today is hurting their business more than it is raising their pagerank. If that way was still effective (or if new media ROI wasnt higher) wouldnt everyone still be doing it?

I’m not ticked off because the SEO firm is active (which, really they’re not compared to typical effective campaigns), but I’m ticked off that (1) their SEO firm is using all the wrong channels to build up page rank and (2) its doing so in a direct conflict of interest with Nilaam’s potential consumers.

Google etc are getting at recognizing comment spam and aggregation spam every day. It is debatable just how effective some forum entries on topix is going to be.

This might be considered a pagerank building exercise (by getting more pages with Nilaam’s name in the Google Index) but in no stretch of the imagination is it publicity.

Nilaam’s name might be in a few forums here and there, but publicity means that your consumers are getting excited about your app and there is a definitive buzz and anticipation for launch. The context around the way Nilaam’s name is mentioned makes it obvious that it is spam-bait and turns your potential traffic away.

If a handful of commenters here, e.g., were able to do a few quick google searches and find many reasons to dislike a firm, it doesnt matter if that firm is #1 on google results. People will do their research before choosing to adopt systems.

Just my thoughts.

Nilaam is saying that they will help 1 kid for every 5000 signups. They aren’t asking anyone to purchase anything, or pay them money. They are just asking people to sign up. That’s harmless right?

I mean, yeah it sounds like cheap advertising but in a competitive world, what’s wrong with that? They aren’t harming anyone, just trying to promote their business.

They hired an active SEO firm to do their marketing, which basically ticked off lots of bloggers and ‘new media consultants’, but the fact is that they are generating the publicity they were looking for. I think their only problem is that they are doing things in the so-called web 1.0 way. But at the same time, i don’t think there is anything wrong in it. I see their strategy as follows:

Pre Launch: plain old SEO marketing (spam ‘em!)
Launch: SEO marketing + blogs + offline media marketing (newspapers, billboards etc) + Google ads
After some traction: Radio / TV ads

However, as mentioned before what remains to be seen is whether Pakistani public will indeed hook on to nilaam. There are many challenges like lack of credit cards, trust, enough people to put their stuff online… etc etc..

Also would regular shopkeepers really go ahead and open their shops if regular users can’t really buy anything online?

Disclaimer: I do NOT approve of the way nilaam is doing its marketing (though I do think it’ll work!)

They are auctioning their own brand against desprivations of the deserving. So so so SAD!