First let’s begin with a definition of precisely what “viral marketing” means.

According to the Wikipedia, “Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, images, or even text messages.”

By having a hotmail, yahoo or G-mail account, indicates you’ve participated in a viral marketing campaign every time you sent an email to someone. This is because the company inserted a small ad at the bottom of all of your outgoing emails – inviting the people you were communicating with to receive their own free email account.

The question now becomes how to put a viral marketing campaign together for your own business – and more importantly, do you even want to?

In answering the second question first, you would definitely want to take the time to brainstorm your own viral marketing campaign – even if you don’t someday want to be as big as hotmail, yahoo or Gmail.

Because according to a recent survey done by Forrester Research, people are almost 65% more likely to trust a review posted by a peer or even a complete stranger than they are to trust the marketing or sales information put out by the company.

You can verify this by checking out Amazon.com and I-tunes.  Why is this so?   Because as consumers we tend to think that the average person has less of a personal agenda when posting his review about the latest album “whatever” and so we give it more credence.

This is, by the way a normal reaction – it’s one that’s kind of deeply entrenched into all of us.  People have always shared the things they like – or hate – with their friends and family members.  .

An interesting thing though, is that with the popularity of the Internet, our trust - and believe in “social proof” – has become even stronger.

In generating your own viral marketing campaign, you’ll be doing more than just getting the word out about your new affiliate product.  You’ll be gathering social proof – and that will help your sales to sky-rocket.

It is essential that you go back to the basics in setting up your own viral marketing campaign.

Here’s the real “secret” to making a lot of money with affiliate products. Have the right product, with the right message to the right people in the right time.

So start with your affiliate product. Make sure that there’s a hungry audience for whatever you’re selling.

Then make sure that you’re sending out the right message – an in the right way.  If you’re marketing a product to teens, you’ll want to make sure that it’s something they want – and you’ll have to reach them where they’re hanging out.  That might be on MySpace, twitter or even Friendster.

What’s the right message? Maybe it’s a special report. But it could just as easily be a video.  Or an audio mp3 file. Match your message to your audience.  And finally, make sure that you’re getting your message out at the right time – when your audience is ready to buy it.

Construct your viral marketing campaign allowing it to stand out from the crowd. That’s how it’s going to get passed around and become viral. A basic but sound knowledge of who your audience is what and how they want it will induce you to create something that your audience loves or hates or finds interesting enough to propagate to their friends.  And because your product comes with an implied endorsement i.e., social proof, those people will pass it around to others thus causing a viral increase that can only lead to more money in your bank account.

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Have you ever wondered? “Which one is more important – the mailing list or the product?” any sensible marketer would answer; “The mailing list”.

Any wise business person would put the importance of ravenous demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand of your business if you would like to call it so.

If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round….so to speak. This is because owners of the mailing list have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.

And if you own a mailing list, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or devise a Joint Venture with product owners in return for commissions, recurring or not. In marketing , these are concepts that you must understand and grasp fully in order to be successful.

Most of the web’s biggest businesses today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine example is Friendster.com.

Friendster.com, in a nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential friends from around the world through a free membership access.

While Friendster.com does not make money from the number of members who join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and partnering with other prominent merchants and businesses, owing to the established number of members Friendster.com has recruited.

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A list can be built simply by writing articles, whether you have thought of it or not.

You just write and submit your articles on your area of expertise or business to popular article directories where eZine publishers and readers seek the information you provide.

Leveraging your viral marketing endeavors on article writing can pay off big time, if done correctly. You are actually proving your worth and demonstrating your expertise about your business through the articles you write.

You may ask nevertheless: How can this method in effect build your mailing list?

The answer: the resource box you attach to your articles. In your resource box (also known as bio box), you include a brief detail about yourself and your business site together with its URL.

It is strongly suggested that your resource box URL links to your mailing list’s landing page where you can get your visitor’s name and email address, which will in turn help you build your mailing list at no cost.

If your articles are found worth sharing, eZine publishers will republish your articles together with your resource box for their readers and subscribers. The wonderful result: viral marketing without effort on your part!

So begin by writing and submitting your articles to reputable article submitter sites such as http://www.articlemarketer.com/ and begin your article marketing journey today.

Aside from pre-selling your products and affiliated offers, the other purpose of your free viral report should be to build your mailing list.

This is because if you are unable to pre-sell, let alone sell, the products and services featured in your free report, the last ditch effort should be to collect leads. In short, if you cannot convert the reader into a ready buyer, you should then attempt to convert him or her into your subscriber.

In that manner, you can still follow up with your reader on future offers and have a chance at converting him or her into your customer, preferably lifetime.

You can do so by offering a lifetime update to your report or a unique notification list your reader will be interested in subscribing to, which leads to having him or her subscribed to your mailing list.

One of the few success factors in viral marketing of your free report is quality. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part – simply because others are willing to do so for you!

This article is written for the aspiring newbie who is just about to or has been trying for a long time to take the plunge into the Internet Marketing Business. The good news is that Internet Marketing is really simple. The not so good news is that it involves a process that requires a lot of work. Yes, lots of work. 

There may be some turnkey businesses that will provide you with a few bucks here and there, but long-term success is dependant upon you having a carefully thought out strategy involving a system. 

The other day, I participated in a free webinar where Michael Cheney spoke about the simple process involved in making money and being successful online. First, he underscored the need to change the mindset of constantly buying products to the activity of selling products and services online.

Newbies usually buy a lot more than they sell. This can go on for a long time, so there are many old newbies out there. Are you one of them? Well I was until I discovered that one needs to implement certain vital steps in order to succeed. And don’t believe the saying that 95-98% of Internet marketers fail. This is just a scare tactic to move you the newbie into taking action for fear out of joining that infamous multitude. Can you imagine 100,000’s of sales-letters stating this, while at the same time going out and selling you a product or service that does indeed make you a member of that unfortunate group?

Neither I nor the gurus have the statistics but it is my contention that those succeeding are much higher; probably about 15-20%. I can go on using some logic to prove my point but let’s get on with the simple process of making money online. It involves having and working on these areas which are all interrelated: Website è  Traffic è  Content è  Product è  List ù Money. 

It’s important to note that we are talking here about a decent website with useful, quality content that will create traffic and in turn have visitors opt-in to your list. You would also want to offer free reports, software, services, trials, etc. to add value to your visitor’s business. Now you the newbie should try at the onset to obtain all information and products pertaining to these areas for free. There are also a lot of $1 Trial offers and free services. (Not the risk free type) Some of these risk-free offers are oftentimes ris-ky. When it’s time to get a refund, the help-desk becomes less helpful while the billing department seems to be always efficient.

Do you get the picture? By working with the free stuff, you weed out the useless products and systems that are out there lurking to devour the little resources you possess.

Now listen to this!

“Systems work: People fail.” This can be true; it can also be false. Allow me to explain. A firm invested 100,000’s of dollars to develop a machine along with a comprehensive plan in order to produce a lean tummy and the system turns out to be a success. You decide to buy one only to find out later that the system was useless to you since what you really wanted was to build a strong protein sucking muscular lower back. In fact, you were misled by a copy-lying (sorry I meant Copy-writing) sales-letter written to hard sell the system to the masses.

This is what happens to many new as well as old newbies in Internet Marketing and it’s very sad. The number of failures in this Online business could be drastically reduced if most experienced marketers were just plain honest.  

So as mentioned earlier, try to acquire as much free information and products as possible thereby enabling you to separate the useful from the useless. When it’s time to purchase or upgrade to a product or service for the betterment or profitability of your business, you will have made the right decision.