Category Archives: Star Wars

Want a Nintendo Wii? Become a child murderer!

In ten days the Star Wars game comes out on the Wii, and I’ve been planning on getting one just for that game. Thing is, the Wii is £179, which isn’t cheap. I’d quite like one for free.

Wouldn’t we all?

Of course getting a Nintendo Wii for free isn’t really going to happen, unless I murder two ten year old girls. Yes, that would do it.

No, I haven’t got mad… but I am pretty mad, there is a difference. You see, the Soham murderer Ian Huntley, who tortured and killed the two ten year old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, has a Nintendo Wii, and he had one for free.

Worse yet, the taxpayer, me, paid for it!

It seems that the murdering scumbag was given a Wii by the government to stop him going through with his threats to commit suicide. Call me heartless, but so what if does? Does the world really need to keep a child killer alive and entertained in the lap of luxury?

A spokesman for the prison service stated:

Huntley has been asking for a Wii for months.

When he moved to Frankland in February he was given a Nintendo Game Cube – but after only a few weeks he began complaing it was out of date.

Management are desperate to stop him going though with threats he’s made to kill himself and by giving him a Wii they believe they can take his mind away from harming himself in any way.

Many of them don’t want to get involved with him because of his crimes.

But they know it’s more than their jobs are worth if they don’t comply.

I can’t imagine why nobody wants to get to know him, he seems like such a nice chap!

He has almost everything done for him and is waited on hand and foot by the officers assigned to his care.

He lives in luxury – yet the parents of Holly and Jessica are living a nightmare.

How sick is this world? Kill two young girls and get a free Wii.

What Internet Marketers can learn from George Lucas

George Lucas is a multi billion gazillionaire. He’s made more money from Star Wars than I have Star Wars figures, but then by virtue of the fact that I have a lot of Star Wars figures he’s bound to have a lot of money. That’s economics!

s George Lucas seems to be all about making money, it makes sense that Internet marketers could learn a lot from him, so without further ado…

If you find a niche market, exploit it.

It really doesn’t matter how good you are at something, if you find a niche market that no one else has discovered, exploit the living crap out of it. George Lucas isn’t the best director in the world. His script writing skills are entirely suspect or ‘shit’ as Harrison Ford once labelled them. This didn’t stop George creating one of the biggest franchises in movie history. He found that he could exploit the nerd culture for every penny of their allowance, and he gleefully took it.

This applies to Internet marketing as well. You don’t have to create the best website, or the biggest, or have the most Wookies. You just need to attack the niche with a fervent passion and saturate it. If you own the leading news site, the leading forum and the leading community site all within the same niche, you become the dominant player. As George Lucas has found, this brings very lucrative rewards.

If something works, re-skin it and use it again.

How many costume changes did Natalie Portman have in the Star Wars prequels? I’ll tell you, it was 7,963*. The reason for this was that George Lucas could then sell 7,963 different Amidala Star Wars figures. She’s the same figure, but with a different costume; and the nerds bought them. This couldn’t be truer of Internet marketing. If you create a site that works and earns you money simply copy the site, re-colour it, re-package it and use it for another site.

Repeat the process ad infinitum and then in a few years you might have as many websites earning you money as I have useless Amidala figures, all running off the same template.

Know when to delegate

Even a megalomaniac control freak like George Lucas knows he can’t do everything, so should you. If ideas are your forte and your time is best spent thinking, pondering and coming up with obnoxious CGI characters then that is how you should spend all of your time. If you need someone to write the code or design the site for you, hire a freelancer. Prices are cheap and money spent at this stage can be recouped easily on the time saved and the fact that you’ve had something done correctly by a skilled professional.

George Lucas tried to re-edit Empire Strikes Back when he thought that Irvin Kershner was ruining his film with all that ‘love’ crap between Han and Leia. Thankfully for all of us George quickly realised that Kersh was in fact correct and he let him finish the film his way.

See the bigger picture

I constantly get people wondering what it is I actually do, and how I make money. It’s not obvious to the average 9-5 guy. When George Lucas made Star Wars he waived his director’s fee in exchange for merchandising rights to the film. People at the time wondered how he was going to make any money from the project, now he has enough money to buy a small island, Australia perhaps. George had faith in his idea and knew it would work. He could see the bigger picture, something many people can’t.

To succeed in Internet marketing, particularly affiliate marketing you need to be able to look beyond the wage-slave existence that most people experience. Being paid a flat rate fee for a set amount of hours didn’t interest George, and it shouldn’t interest you.

Don’t be precious about your website

In ‘Return of the Jedi’ the battle on Endor between the Ewoks and the Storm Troopers was originally supposed to feature Wookies. I know, Wookies don’t live on Endor, but they nearly did. George changed the battle to Ewoks because he thought fluffy cuddly teddy bears would be more merchandisable. When everyone else told George that 3 foot teddy bears fighting Storm Troopers was ridiculous, he said “No… I’m going to make more money this way”. By Christ he was right.

The moral here is that you shouldn’t be afraid to make changes to your website that, although may appear to be at the detriment of the website, in fact make more money. George Lucas’ goal wasn’t to make a compelling film; it was to make a mountain of cash. He did this spectacularly well because he never lost sight of his goal. Always remember why you’re in Internet marketing.

* The figure of 7,963 was made up. I’m not certain Natalie Portman had this many costume changes during the Star Wars prequels as I fell asleep during the Phantom Menace and woke up around the time R2D2 was flying in Attack of the Clones. I presume the figure is fairly accurate however based on the crap that filled the shelves in Wal-Mart shortly after.

I’ve got my Jedi outfit back

You might know that I’ve recently been attempting to recover my 2 Michael Jackson tour jackets and my Star Wars Jedi Knight costume from my old house in Wales. As with a great many of my possessions in that house they were removed by ex-wife.

Well, after going through my solicitor and visiting my old house this week I found that they had been returned. Great stuff, if only the Jedi outfit had been there in time for the office Christmas party last week, then I could have worn something truly Seventies.

As it stands I haven’t worn the Jedi costume since Halloween 2006, which was a great night for many reasons. If and when I ever wear it again, if I have half as good a time I’ll be delighted.

My first Affiliate Window Payout

Today I had my first payout from network AffiliateWindow, who I’ve only been with now for a few weeks. This is a very positive start because it took me months to get my first Adsense payout in 2003, and even longer to get my first Amazon payout back in 2000.

Maybe I’m better at launching with new networks, maybe Affiliate Window have better potential. Whichever the case I’m very pleased with the performance of the network and encourage anyone who’s interested in making some serious money online to give AffiliateWindow a try.

On a related note, one of my best performing merchants is Toys R Us, so if the guys at the nation’s favourite toy store are interested in keeping affiliates sweet, I’m very into Transformers and Star Wars.

Just a hint!

Yoda is a benefit cheat from Cwmbran

Yoda with caneHere’s the conclusive proof, Jedi Master Yoda was a benefit cheat.

In Attack of the Clones he’d limp along supporting himself on that cane of his, acting all old and shit just so he could claim some invalidity benefit from the Imperial State. No wonder Palpatine wanted to eliminate the Jedi if that’s how they act.

As you can see from this photo to the right, Yoda, just like my ex-wife’s father, can be seen supporting his ‘frail’ body on a cane. But then when it comes down to it he drops the cane and his ‘inability’ to walk has suddenly gone away so he can bounce around like a muppet fighting Dracula.

I swear Yoda is from Cwmbran. The benefit cheating bastard.

Yoda