You may notice some really annoying links out there during the next week

UPDATE: The results of this annoying link test can be found by clicking here

(If you got to this page via an annoying social media or blog comment link, keep reading. This is all for the sake of science.)

I’m a data nerd. I’ve gone record stating such, and I’ll go on record again. Something about seeing charts and graphs and trending lines and mapping the effect of X to Y and…let me pause to catch my breath a bit. I am fresh off a really successful Goodreads.com user study thing, so I’m itching to get back to the spreadsheets.

So why tell you this? I am going to conduct a week-long test of sorts that will probably be a bit more intrusive than most of my other studies. I’ve noticed a lot of incessant product whoring on forums, blog post comments, and social status updates. You know the kind: “BUY MY BOOK HERE,” and “IF YOU LOVE VAMPIRES CLICK HERE.” Annoying right? But people keep doing it. Why? It must work, right?

Right?

Well, that’s what I’m going to find out. Over the next week or so I am going to end as many post comments and social status updates as possible with a link to the purchase page of my book. I’ll track the clicks to my website. I’ll also include a link to this blog post so that people are perhaps not entirely put off by the annoying sales pitches. I understand that having two links may dilute the test, but I’d rather play it safe and hopefully alleviate any hate.

Once I have the results, I’ll post them here. Check back in about a week. The test may last longer, depending on how things work.

I know this is risky—If I was smart I’d create fake profiles, rather than use my real ones, but I’m not smart.

An example of the links you may see:

Check out I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin, my newest novel: http://bit.ly/ReadKevin

I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin, an “American road novel from hell”: http://bit.ly/ReadKevin

“Covering ground similar to the works of Sherman Alexie and Chuck Palahniuk, this is an author worth keeping an eye on.” -Publishers Weekly. Read I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin http://bit.ly/ReadKevin

Why am I posting this annoying link? See here: http://bit.ly/AnnoyingLinks