If you’re to the point that you’re ready to sit down and develop your idea into a post suitable for the farming of the elusive ALLOD tater, you’ll need to know how to build it. Before I start, I want to dispel a misconception that has simply never been true: “Conservatives only read headlines.”
At the height of the operation, ALLOD hit 56 million page views in a year. It was bigger than the Onion. It doubled the Babylon Bee. The only reason the sites aren’t viral all the time is Facebook doesn’t want them to be. If you know how to build a headline, then you can get them to click. It’s that simple. The faulty “they don’t read” info isn’t necessarily untrue on the pages themselves, as typically, only the most ignorant reply and no, they don’t read anything. If you really pay attention, however, you can see them. They ask questions about the strange things in the articles. They mention things that make the fact that they believe even funnier.
Where I see the theory at work most is with new writers. Almost inevitably, a new writer’s first article is an insult-laden stab at everything about the headline that is ridiculous, from beginning to end. That’s okay if you’re looking to just troll and get them riled up, but it won’t help with two very important things: Reach and revenue. If you piss them off from the start, the first thing they do is bounce, which means that Tater earned nothing. The next thing they do is hide the post, or hide all of our posts, before reporting the piece as fake news. None of that affects the page too much overall, but it’s the kiss of death for a story.
So…this is the way:
The 7-Paragraph Perfect Post
Every ALLOD post has two basic styling requirements: A 200-word minimum and EXACTLY 7 paragraphs. The 200-word minimum is the publishing industry standard, and it also works well for the paragraph count. The seven-paragraph rule is easy enough to explain with a screenshot:
As you can see, the rule isn’t about anything but the perfect advertising setup. It’s also the most readable setup on mobile. Directly above the body of text is another set of political ads and directly below the post is an “infinite scroll” of native stuff. I’ve tried a dozen different ad setups over the years and this works the best by far.
That just leaves the content.
First and foremost, a “paragraph” can be a single sentence. The size of the paragraph isn’t nearly as important as the content. The posts are divided the way they are for a reason: Most Taters leave after two paragraphs. That’s why the most valuable ad lives there. The second highest reach is the 4th paragraph. Natives work great for these taters because they have a slightly higher attention span. The last three paragraphs are dead space to most. They’ve scrolled past and landed on the political ad or made their way elsewhere, hopefully the natives down below.
So…how do we get the best engagement with that information? We structure our post accordingly:
- The first two paragraphs should affirm the headline. Stating your version of facts like a reporter is the best way to do that. There can be all kinds of made-up people, places, and things, but the overall tone is “This is what happened.”
- The next two paragraphs can slowly devolve into the ridiculous. Throw in a curveball here and there and enjoy the “wink wink nod nod” type of posting we did all through 2017. You’ll still have Taters on the hook at this point.
- The final three paragraphs are no holds barred, troll as you see fit. This is where “every post must be discernible as satire” comes into play. Remember, you still have to follow the editorial standards against hate speech, etc, as the sites can be dinged just as easily as an account.
There’s a good chance someone on the outside looking in would look at this tutorial and say, “You’re definitely doing this for profit.”
Yes. Yes, I am. I make no excuses for that. There’s a level of deception with these idiots that I’m perfectly okay with. I know who they are. I know what they stand for. And I know that in the end, what I do is a victimless crime that has people clicking ads based on their search criteria. If I could figure out a way to exploit them further, I would.
Are you ready?
That’s the end of the lessons and the beginning of your opportunity to submit material. If you think you’ve learned enough from this to submit a piece, send your headline, featured image (or idea for a featured image), and your 200-word minimum, 7-paragraph story to:
americaslastlineofdefense@gmail.com