Disparaging comments that garner tens of thousands of likes can be seen as either a business opportunity or a cautionary tale for online businesses. Rage bait is an economic strategy where an advertisement is inserted into the middle of content to generate revenue for the creator. Promoting strong emotional content for your online business can be massively profitable, but care must be taken to prevent your business from becoming a cautionary tale for other creators.

Intentionally making your content emotional involves baiting your audience. Engineering content to provoke rage often results in maximum engagement, clicks, and shares. Whether it’s rage or some other emotion, exploiting it to keep users on your platform longer increases ad revenue and data collection.

Every online business seeks to generate emotion in its fanbase. It’s fundamental to a company’s success. But provoking rage or fear is not the only emotions that work. Ask yourself these questions,

• Are you serving people?
• Is your cause worthy?
• Are you trying to make a difference?

If your answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then the economy of emotional content is an opportunity.

Baiting is a tactic where content creators gain engagement by evoking strong emotions in their audience. Rage bait is the most effective form of clickbait, at least in the short term. While using rage may seem deplorable to some, it works along with other emotions. A tool isn’t evil; instead, its ultimate evaluation comes from what it accomplishes.

Being deliberately antagonistic, snarky, or enraging, yet being more mild-mannered, sells. Consider the history of superstars. When performing live shows in a medieval village hundreds of years ago, a celebrity’s range was limited. But with improved technology, actors nowadays are not limited by how far their performances can reach.

This change in reach caused by technology cannot be understated. Being your village minstrel was an excellent local career for your lifetime. But with technology nowadays, the city of Reno doesn’t just care about singers who grew up in Reno. Instead, Reno residents witness the very best performers the world has to offer.

With the range of internet and cable channels, content creators have virtually no limit on how far they can reach. Social media platforms are attention machines that recognize, boost, and reward strong engagement. So, get your community via social media for massive results.

Using rage becomes a cautionary tale when long-term results fade after a rage-driven audience grows tired of it. Yes, some audience members become addicted to rage and will always be fans of it. Otherwise, the economy of rage is short-term success only.

One way to end the rage economy is to help your audience get involved. Participating in activism is more inspiring than succumbing to an addiction of rage. Making a difference that matters can lead to long-term business results, while emotion without action is short-term and ultimately meaningless.

Eventually, some will choose to stop being consumed by rage-driven content. In essence, rage will burn itself out, eventually. We can already see this in the abysmal poll numbers for certain politicians who depend on a rage economy.

The lifecycle of rage ultimately ends with only a few die-hard fans remaining. You’ll want your business to end up in a good economic position after the rage ends. So, manage your rage-inducing content.

Consider being kind or thoughtful to people, as many will likely resent you while the economy of rage exists. In this way, you’re engaging in a short-term rage economy, which will position you for a long-term business once the rage dies down. This will initially attract massive attention, but it also appeals to the silent kind or savvy observers who are being served your content.

I’ve done this on other channels for years. I’m intelligent, educated, and skilled in a specific hobby that I’ve leveraged to build an online business. I am hated by many in that niche, including other creators, which earns me attack videos that feed my content to their audiences. Every time another hate video comes out, my channel grows tremendously, because not everyone watching is a hater.

Generating massive revenue by provoking fear in people can be highly profitable. However, if you didn’t already know this, making money alone isn’t fun; it is pretty dull. The challenge of helping and serving your audience is far more interesting and, in the long term, more successful as a business.

If you’re not having fun, it’s hard to stay motivated, even when you’re generating money. Without motivation, creators encounter burnout and subsequent business losses. Your best path to success is to be true to your values and beliefs, to be yourself.

Instilling rage and anger in an audience you’ve collected is a business, but if you don’t keep them interested, then fans move on to the next enormous outrage. To prevent that, you need to keep feeding them red meat. If you don’t, one downside is that you become the red meat they’re looking to devour.

You could create an audience railing against your competitor because they have an online course, and you fundamentally oppose any such business plan. They provoke hate and rage in an audience by claiming that “selling” content is evil, yet they create and distribute free content, only to place it behind a paywall to generate massive revenue. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make sense.

But that is part of its charm, what an audience comes to expect. And it does work successfully. Say something, then thirty seconds later, say the exact opposite, and everyone is overjoyed.

All you need to do is never get caught. And if you do get caught, deny it. And if you are convicted, never admit guilt.

Rage is contagious, but so is being kind-hearted. Haters are terrible at humor, so mock them. Doing so supports your hard-won community of non-haters.

As with any business, consider your exit strategy. If you build an audience of haters, make sure you can’t be found later. Start your business with a big bushy beard, an outrageous hat, and sunglasses, so you’ll never be recognized without them. Oh, and avoid using your real name, so most will never know who you are when you walk past them in the future.

If you are building an audience of non-haters, consider converting haters into non-haters by turning their anger into action. Get involved in the communities you care about.

Promoting strong emotional content for your online business can be massively profitable, but care must be taken to prevent your business from becoming a cautionary tale for other creators.

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