subject: How To Make Your Affiliate Program Go Viral [print this page] Most of the time when some one hears the word "virus" they immediately think that either they got sick or their computer did. In the context of affiliate marketing, however, a virus takes on a whole new meaning.
You see, although most people view a virus as a bad thing, in affiliate marketing it can be the most powerful tool at your disposal. You have to love the way a virus works; a virus will live undetected moving from location to location, replicating itself, until there are so many of them that the virus wins by the sheer weight of numbers. Even better is the fact that a virus replicates in a mathematically geometric progression. You start with one and that one infects one, then you have two infected, those two infect two now you have four and the process repeats looking something like this;
Pretty soon the number of people infected is so large that it becomes almost unstoppable. The amount of new people being infected is mathematically superior to the number of people who drop out practically guaranteeing the virus's survival.
You are probably asking yourself what in the world does this have to do with marketing my affiliate program. In essence Viral Marketing describes the countless strategies that encourage individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the opportunity and potential for exponential growth.
Your objective is to spread your "marketing message" like a virus.
I guess at this point we should give you an example so that you can comprehend what we are talking about.
Have you ever had a hotmail or Gmail or yahoo mail account? These are classic examples of how viral marketing works.
Each of these providers gives away free email accounts. You sign up for a free account and start sending emails to your friends and family. At the bottom of every email you send is a small simple tag that offers then an opportunity to get their own "Free Private email." Then they sign up and get their own account and start using the free email to send mail to their friends and family. The virus just replicated. Now those friends and family do the same, the virus just replicated again. At the time that hotmail was sold to Microsoft there were over nine million registered users. The creator of Hotmail did it all with viral marketing. As you can see the numbers can be staggering when viral marketing is done correctly.
Now I doubt we are ever again going to see something as simple and as effective as the Hotmail example, but it does not mean that the viral marketing system does not work. What you need to keep in mind is that there are six critical elements to any effective Viral Marketing Strategy.
1. "Free." This word is still the most powerful word in advertising. As such you need to make sure that in your strategy you give away a product or a service. This is why you have the free e-book to give away.
2. Your system has to allow for the easy and simple means of transferring the "virus" to others. In other words allow others to easily and simply give away the e-book.
3. Your system must be able to be scalable. In other words no matter how small or large the virus gets your system should be able to scale to match.
4. Your system must use motivations, behaviors, and information to your advantage.
5. Your system should use existing communications and not create new ones. That is why you use Blogs, forum posts, article posting and email distribution lists.
6. Your system has to take advantage of another's resources. For example, when you post in a forum you are taking advantage of their existing traffic, when you send out email, you want others to forward that email to take advantage of their existing resources of friends and family.
Here is how you implement your own "viral marketing."
As previously discussed in our preceding newsletters, you are going to be using existing social medias to "promote" your blog and the downloading of the free e-book "How to get all the money you need to buy property."
With this e-book you want to make sure that you do two very important things. The first of which is that you follow the directions, which are included with your download, and make sure that you "brand" the e-book to you and that you ensure that the hyperlinks have your affiliate id number to get proper credit. Next, you want to make sure that you stress every where that you can that people are encouraged to give the book away. When you are blogging or posting in forums ask for them to share the e-book and ask for their opinion. Get people interested in wanting to share your information! This is critical. The more people that read the e-book the more likely you are to have people click on the hyperlinks and buy a product.
The fact of the matter is that the more that you can give the e-book away the more likely you are to see record sales and profits. The key here is to remember that you are "leveraging information" to your benefit. By leveraging this e-book and getting it into the hands of as many people as possible, you will practically guarantee that you will have the success you deserve.
Best wishes for your success
E. Alan Cowgill
P.S. Again, we can not stress to you how important it is that you have a great Blog that encourages people to click on your affiliate link and/or to download your properly branded e-book.
