Viral Marketing

You are reading a very Viral eBook right now. Wait! Get your mouse away from your virus scan button; there is nothing wrong or involving mischievous software in Viral marketing.

In Internet Marketing terms, any type of content that allows you to pass incentives along is referred to as “Viral.” In this book, there are a few Affiliate links that normally I alone would get some kind of referral fee for if you were to click on them.

However, with the use of some special software that allows PDFs to be “Re-Brandable” (meaning others can make the affiliate links theirs instead of mine) I’m giving anyone who wants the ability to make some money and pass my work along for me.

For the launch of the eBook I won’t have to do very much. I’m going to tell my list, of course. I’m going to place it on my site and maybe send some traffic exchange or safelist traffic to that page. Mainly, however, I’m going to get a few JV partners to re-brand it and send it to their lists. That’s it; all my marketing will be complete.

Video Marketing - (Including YouTube.com)

Thanks to YouTube.com, (#4 in Alexa currently, Still going up!) online Video is “in” right now in a major way.

All you need to do to grab some of this traffic is to make your own simple video on your niche’s topic.

It doesn’t even have to be a music video or a well scripted video… Nor a big budget video or heck, even an interesting video. Like everything else in Marketing, attaching the right Keywords to your video will get it found. And in your video, much like an Article or a Podcast, you simply present a “Call to Action” that gets them to click over to your website.

Even Better… With Camtasia you can simply set the movie to automatically re-direct them to your website when it’s finished!

Videos can also be used on your site as content, which in fact is a great use for them… Video is the highest form of content on the web right now, as proven by YouTube. However, for our purpose here today, you should come to think of making videos as the same thing as writing articles… Plus a little bit of a software learning curve.

Traffic Exchanges – Automatic

There is something to be said for Automatic Exchanges too. Although everyone prefers their traffic to be highly targeted, there are times in which sheer bulk traffic has its advantages.

Do you know how Alexa.com gathers its’ data on how popular websites are? It depends on people who download the Alexa Toolbar, and that program constantly reports back to Alexa which websites they are viewing.

Naturally not everyone uses this tool, especially since McAfee and Norton spyware scanners identify it as a security threat! However, the largest segment of the population that uses those Alexa bars would of course be the people who care about their Alexa ranking the most… Internet Marketers.

ESPECIALLY the ones who use traffic exchanges. You’ll find that a large number of traffic exchange members have the Alexa Toolbar installed and their browsers are set to run the automatic exchages every night.

Traffic Exchanges – Manual

Traffic exchange websites, either manual or automatic, are simply places that shows you a bunch of websites, and for every one you look at, your website is displayed to others on the exchange.

These aren’t Banner Ads or Impressions of some other kind of Ad, this is truly traffic to your site, although it’s not targeted.

Manual Traffic exchanges bring visitors that are more targeted than Automatic exchange visitors, because you know that every one you get is someone who is actually looking at the page.

Automatic exchanges, by comparison, allow you to leave the program running while you go to sleep for the night and wake up with a couple hundred credits in the morning… Not exactly top quality traffic.

Even Manual exchanges suffer in quality a little because you know that the person looking at your page is pressured to move along in 15 or 20 seconds, and also that they don’t fit into any one demographic… Nothing there is binding them to any other niche other than that of a generic Internet Marketer. (Putting this kind of campaign in the IM2IM Niche with Safelists, Trafficbars, and list builders.) 

TrafficBars (Built into your Browser)

Instant Buzz and Free Traffic Bar, are two unique and unusual applications that allow marketers to market to other marketers quite effectively. There may be others but these two have the sector cornered so far.

Their concept is simple enough, you build up free Ad impression credits just by surfing the websites that you already go to. (You never have to go anywhere you wouldn’t already want to… This is nothing like a traffic exchange program in that respect.)

Both traffic bars display Ads to other internet marketers who load these programs into their browsers as well. The ads are cute, sometimes funny, little one-liner text Ads that either change when you reach a new page, or change at a pre-set amount of time.

I give them a higher-than-usual quality rating only because anyone using these methods would already assume that the target market would be only to other Internet marketers. (Inside the IM2IM niche)

If you try to use these to market to a different niche, such as golfers or horse trainers, then the amount of clicks you’ll get will be very low.

Since delivery is instant, and targeted text ads are always high in quality to the people that do click on them, this method is a great way to test your Ad campaign quickly, if not to be used for full-fledged advertising itself.

See: “List Builder Traffic Strategy” at the back of the book for more on them both.

Testimonials - (A Subset of Link Building)

There are endless products sold online that the owner of would be more than happy to publish a testimonial about. Most info-product sellers have a whole page set aside on their website just to display testimonials, and they actively have to go out and drum up the first batch of them before they can properly launch their product!

It doesn’t really matter if you find them before their product launch or years afterwards, you can still get great, targeted links to your website from these short blurbs.

The nature of testimonials is that the more you provide proof that you exist, the more the business owner will be compelled to display your link, closest to the top.

Give it some thought. If you just send in a testimony that says:

“Your product rocks!

-Bob Jones”

Then the site owner might not even publish it because it’s not a ‘credible’ testimonial that proves that you exist and he didn’t make that entry up.

Squidoo Lenses

Any Internet Marketers not Squidooing right now simply haven’t tried it yet! This exciting Web 2.0 application is truly a Business Marketer’s dream come true. You can think of it as MySpace, but for serious professionals. It’s a lot like being given editorship of your own topic at About.com, but with even more functionality!

A lens is a web page on their domain that “brings into focus” your niche topic in a new and dynamic way. It’s a place for you to show off everything you know about your topic, as dynamically as possible.

Started in the Fall of 2005, within one year flat Squidoo had already gotten itself into the top 1000 sites according to Alexa, and it’s been pretty steady ever since, slowly growing. (It’s #601 today, still steadily growing.)

I believe a lot more Internet Marketers would use this service if they only knew about it. I’ve even witnessed many Squidoo pages pop up in the #1 spot at Google for that lensmasters’ keywords!

They’ve now got about 180,000+ lenses, although considerably fewer members… A few people have cranked out many lenses on all of their favorite topics, so there’s no reason you can crank out one for each of your business ventures or marketing ideas.

Solo Ads

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Refers to the sending out full-page Ads to eZine list subscribers other than those on your own list.