Title:
People Getting Rich Online - Viral Marketing
Word Count:
651
Summary:
As I mentioned in the last entry, I’ve been speaking with people who are
making $5000 - $10,000 or more a month online, and I’m beginning to see
some common factors.
You have to understand how difficult it is to get people to talk to you
about their successes. They remind me of the inventors I’ve spoken to
about financing their products — they are deathly afraid that someone
will steal their ideas, not realizing that their talent is part of the
success of that idea. Someti...
Keywords:
viral marketing, internet marketing, viral, affiliate programs
Article Body:
As I mentioned in the last entry, I’ve been speaking with people who are
making $5000 - $10,000 or more a month online, and I’m beginning to see
some common factors.
You have to understand how difficult it is to get people to talk to you
about their successes. They remind me of the inventors I’ve spoken to
about financing their products — they are deathly afraid that someone
will steal their ideas, not realizing that their talent is part of the
success of that idea. Sometimes it took several emails, an IM and a lot
of promises, but I got people to talk.
One of the factors that struck me very early is the fact that most of the
successful people I spoke with use some form of viral marketing in their
advertising and marketing plan.
Viral Marketing is a marketing strategy that encourages other people to
spread your marketing message, which grows your exposure exponentially.
Link exchanges are a good example of viral marketing, because people take
the link to your site and put it on theirs. When people link to their
sites, they see yours. Then they may take your link and add it to their
site. Just for fun I ran the SEOElite backlink checker on a successful
web entrepreneur’s site. There were 1498 different sites that had his URL
in them. Not bad. Affiiate programs are also viral in nature.
The guru of viral marketing has to be Dr. Ralph Wilson. You should
definitely visit his WilsonWeb site. There are many terrific articles
there.
These are Dr. Wilson’s six elements of a viral marketing strategy:
1. Give away products or services
2. Provide for effortless transfer to others
3. Scale easily from small to very large
4. Exploit common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilize existing communication networks
6. Leverage the resources of others
Viral Marketing seems to be an integral part of making a lot of money
online. It could be as simple as trading a small banner or button for a
directory listing (Income: $8000 a month), or offering webmasters a cut
of your earnings to get them to your website to view your content and
then buy (Income: $4000 a month). In fact, doesn’t that second business
model describe Chitika, the ill-fated PPC network?
Multiple tier affiliate programs, where you get a cut of the income from
people you get to sign up, are other examples of viral marketing.
You don’t have to do anything quite as dramatic, but I think it would be
a smart idea to come up with some viral marketing elements for your own
web site. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Write articles and get them posted on free article sites. Make the
content compelling and the title provocative and interesting. Make sure
at least one link appears in the article.
2. Install a ‘email this page to a friend’ script or plugin. There are
plenty of them out there on the Internet.
3. Come up with a free product, utility or service that will promote your
business, and encourage people to distribute it. Even if you have to pay
for one to be made, it will be worth it.
4. Write for free on a well-known site in your area of expertise,
especially one with a newsletter or free article distribution. This is a
terrific way to perpetuate your site virally.
5. Put together an affiliate program that gets your banner on websites.
If you have a unique utility, service or information source, you can get
webmasters to put up a small box, banner or chicklet that has a link to
your site.
Viral marketing can make you rich…I’ve seen the examples. The reason is
simple…you are giving people something for free that they perceive as
valuable, and they are telling other people how smart they are for
getting something for free. In order to tell other people they have to
mention you. It’s brilliant.