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by Richard Grady
If you have spent any time at all studying Internet marketing, then you are
bound to have come across the term 'viral marketing'. In fact, it is one of
the first things that most people learn about when starting their Internet
journey and very often it is a subject that is quickly forgotten or
discarded as being an unrealistic way of generating traffic. However, I did
something this week which made me look at viral marketing in a new light and
proved to me that it is incredibly effective.
For those that don't know, viral marketing is used to generate traffic and
it works by getting other people to spread the word about your website.
Because of the fact that you are using other people, your 'message' can
spread across the Internet very quickly - just like a virus, hence the name.
One of the most common ways of using viral marketing is by writing an eBook
that contains links back to your website and allowing other people to give
the eBook away or resell it to their own customers. If you manage this
process correctly, you can end up with hundreds or even thousands of people
distributing your eBook. Because of the fact that every eBook has a note of
your website link in it, a fair proportion of the ultimate readers can be
expected to click through to your site (and hopefully a few of these will
buy something from you).
Of course, viral marketing doesn't have to be based around an eBook -
another way of using this technique is to create a site that is very unique
or amusing. The sort of site that you look at and 'just have to tell your
friends about'. These sites can generate huge levels of traffic in a very
short space of time as each person emails their friends to pass on the
website URL.
Now, the reason that I say that people often give up on viral marketing as
being unrealistic is because it can seem like an incredible task to write or
design something that is going to have mass appeal AND then get the word out
to enough people and persuade them to start passing your eBook/link/whatever
on to even more people. Also, viral marketing doesn't always happen quickly
- it can take several months or even longer for the traffic to start flowing
at a reasonable level. To be honest, I am pretty much an 'I want it now'
kinda guy and for this reason, I haven't really relied on viral marketing
that much for my own businesses (or so I thought!)
So what happened this week?
Well, nothing super-exciting really - I simply did a search on Google for
the following term: 'UK-Trader's UK Wholesale Guide'. As many of you will
know, this was the first eBook I ever published back in 2001. I also issued
resale rights on the first version of the eBook (again in 2001) but quickly
stopped selling the rights as I was spending too much time policing those
that chose to sell it in breach of the resale rights conditions.
Anyway, my Google search revealed over 2,000 search results for the above
term! Now, whilst some of these results related to my own websites and
those of my affiliates, a massive number were in respect of sites that were
selling the 'resale rights' version of the eBook or that were acting as an
affiliate for someone else that had the resale rights.
Considering that I had only issued resale rights in limited numbers, during
a period of just a few months and over three years ago, I found the number
of search results quite incredible. Just imagine what sort of numbers I
could have generated if I hadn't stopped selling the resale rights and had
allowed my viral marketing to continue.
Even if each of the above references/links generates only one visitor to my
websites each month, that is still over 2000 free visitors every single
month. In addition, not only do these visitors not cost me anything but I
don't have to do anything to get them :-)
I was so surprised at the above results that I am planning on releasing
resale rights to the latest version of my wholesale guide in the near future
and if you have a product to which you can apply a viral marketing
technique, I strongly recommend that you give it a try. What have you got
to lose? More importantly, what have you got to gain?
One other thing to bear in mind is that once the word is out 'virally', it
is quite literally impossible to stop the traffic that your marketing virus
will create. So to sum it up, if you get it right and create the perfect
viral marketing campaign, you will end up with FREE traffic every month that
you don't need to DO ANYTHING to receive and that would be IMPOSSIBLE to
stop, even if you wanted to! Sounds great to me :-)
Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more
about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com
Free wholesale search engines: UK- http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US
http://www.thewholesaletrader.com
Copyright: 2004
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Viral marketing revisited....
by Richard Grady
If you have spent any time at all studying Internet marketing, then you are
bound to have come across the term 'viral marketing'. In fact, it is one of
the first things that most people learn about when starting their Internet
journey and very often it is a subject that is quickly forgotten or
discarded as being an unrealistic way of generating traffic. However, I did
something this week which made me look at viral marketing in a new light and
proved to me that it is incredibly effective.
For those that don't know, viral marketing is used to generate traffic and
it works by getting other people to spread the word about your website.
Because of the fact that you are using other people, your 'message' can
spread across the Internet very quickly - just like a virus, hence the name.
One of the most common ways of using viral marketing is by writing an eBook
that contains links back to your website and allowing other people to give
the eBook away or resell it to their own customers. If you manage this
process correctly, you can end up with hundreds or even thousands of people
distributing your eBook. Because of the fact that every eBook has a note of
your website link in it, a fair proportion of the ultimate readers can be
expected to click through to your site (and hopefully a few of these will
buy something from you).
Of course, viral marketing doesn't have to be based around an eBook -
another way of using this technique is to create a site that is very unique
or amusing. The sort of site that you look at and 'just have to tell your
friends about'. These sites can generate huge levels of traffic in a very
short space of time as each person emails their friends to pass on the
website URL.
Now, the reason that I say that people often give up on viral marketing as
being unrealistic is because it can seem like an incredible task to write or
design something that is going to have mass appeal AND then get the word out
to enough people and persuade them to start passing your eBook/link/whatever
on to even more people. Also, viral marketing doesn't always happen quickly
- it can take several months or even longer for the traffic to start flowing
at a reasonable level. To be honest, I am pretty much an 'I want it now'
kinda guy and for this reason, I haven't really relied on viral marketing
that much for my own businesses (or so I thought!)
So what happened this week?
Well, nothing super-exciting really - I simply did a search on Google for
the following term: 'UK-Trader's UK Wholesale Guide'. As many of you will
know, this was the first eBook I ever published back in 2001. I also issued
resale rights on the first version of the eBook (again in 2001) but quickly
stopped selling the rights as I was spending too much time policing those
that chose to sell it in breach of the resale rights conditions.
Anyway, my Google search revealed over 2,000 search results for the above
term! Now, whilst some of these results related to my own websites and
those of my affiliates, a massive number were in respect of sites that were
selling the 'resale rights' version of the eBook or that were acting as an
affiliate for someone else that had the resale rights.
Considering that I had only issued resale rights in limited numbers, during
a period of just a few months and over three years ago, I found the number
of search results quite incredible. Just imagine what sort of numbers I
could have generated if I hadn't stopped selling the resale rights and had
allowed my viral marketing to continue.
Even if each of the above references/links generates only one visitor to my
websites each month, that is still over 2000 free visitors every single
month. In addition, not only do these visitors not cost me anything but I
don't have to do anything to get them :-)
I was so surprised at the above results that I am planning on releasing
resale rights to the latest version of my wholesale guide in the near future
and if you have a product to which you can apply a viral marketing
technique, I strongly recommend that you give it a try. What have you got
to lose? More importantly, what have you got to gain?
One other thing to bear in mind is that once the word is out 'virally', it
is quite literally impossible to stop the traffic that your marketing virus
will create. So to sum it up, if you get it right and create the perfect
viral marketing campaign, you will end up with FREE traffic every month that
you don't need to DO ANYTHING to receive and that would be IMPOSSIBLE to
stop, even if you wanted to! Sounds great to me :-)
Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more
about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com
Free wholesale search engines: UK- http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US
http://www.thewholesaletrader.com
Copyright: 2004
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