Viral marketing starts out as a direct action you take and can continue to grow with or without any effort on your part.
Viral marketing is a large number of people promoting one web site so they can all receive the traffic generated by each other.
For example, you decide to create a free ebook that you will give away to your web site visitors. You ask a large number of e-zine owners to give away the ebook in exchange for their ad in the ebook. You can just ask them to link directly to your web site when they promote the ebook. You, of course, will have one of your own ads on that web page.
Let's say you get 8 out of 20 e-zine owners that agree to giveaway the ebook. The 8 e-zines total subscriber base is 75,000.
Now, you can ask more e-zine owners if they would like to promote the ebook in exchange for an ad inside the ebook. This time you can say, you already have 8 e-zines already promoting the ebook with a subscriber base of 75,000.
The next group of e-zine owners you ask will be more tempted to promote your ebook because there is a greater chance they will receive a lot of traffic from the deal. It's win/win situation!
That's the power of viral marketing. You could have 20 or 30 e-zines promoting your web site at no-cost, very quickly! You could create a new, free ebook every month and repeat the process.
This isn't the only way to use viral. You don't just have to contact e-zine publishers you could do the same with web site owners. You could use a total monthly visitor total as motivation.
Affiliate programs that offer you the option of branding an ebook are also a good and easy way of spreading your viral. Normally you'll get a free ebook to promote. If the book comes with branding software than you can put your name, website address and affiliate links within the book. Any links clicked will usually be your affiliate code for any or all products the company that furnished the ebook offers. Since everything has been done, all you have to do is give the book away .
It doesn't have to be just an ebook either. It could be a contest you're holding on your web site. You could place the other web site's ads on the contest page in exchange for them promoting the contest.
These are only a few ways to use viral marketing. That only means one thing. Use your imagination and create more ways to go viral. What do you have to gain by trying to be different? Just more sales.
