The science: In the December issue of Journal of Consumer Research two scientists wrote an article that can increase Your sales in the 14 to 18 year age group: "Growing up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in Children and Adolescents" The two authors, Deborah Roedder John from the university of Minnesota and Lan Nguyen Chaplin, assistant for marketing at the university of Illinois could show, that under certain conditions people from 14 to 18 years spend more money. Basically, they write, the lesser the self esteem of a person in this age group the more money they spend. Details are in the article. How to apply it: You can use this knowledge if You have a webpage with this target audience. You have to lower Your audiences self esteem and then tell them to buy Your products. You could show a video advert with 2 groups of young persons. The first group outsiders with cheap clothes. The 2nd group wearing clothes from popular brands. Then a group of girls comes and sticks to the second group. Another method could be through text if You have a forum. Create fake users who complain, that they feel worthless because their female classmates flock to the cool guys. Add a affiliate link to a hot clothes store at the end. If Your page is more for female readers create a fake forum entry in which a female complains, that other females get treated better all the time, because they wear more makeup. More evil: Start a self help forum to attract low self esteem people in the 14 to 18 year gap. However make sure that users who bring good real life help (guys who are cool in real life) get banned, to ensure Your regulars remain low self esteem. Keep Your audience entertained with some not working cliché crap and sell stuff to them. The ethics: Don't think about this too much. TV commercials and TV shows use this way of thinking all the time. Not using it will just leave You behind. -------------------------------------- Please leave Your comment on this stating if You like it or not and how to improve this technique.
A lot of kids these days, in this age group, don't have a viable method to buy stuff online. Which explains why ringtones are so popular. They buy a tone but it goes on the phone bill. Who pays that? Their parents usually! I believe this audience would make you more money with adsense and other forms of advertisement rather than online purchases. I think it's much easier to squeeze this money out of youngsters in real life because parents give them cash or they have a part time job. Even tho many work theres still quite a few that don't have debit cards.
Yeah, a lower age group isn't usually where a lot of money comes from when it comes to online goods. However, maybe you could attract them to get publicity in a facebook group or something...