"Affiliate programs can help you earn your living"

What is Viral Marketing?

“Viral marketing is word of mouth marketing o­n the web. In other words it is the “e” term for word of mouth marketing.”

Viral marketing was born in 1996. Viral marketing messages receive 5 –15% click through rate. 57% say word of mouth or viral marketing is their main source of information about new websites.

The Classic Example…

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, o­ne of the first free Web-based e-mail services. E-mails sent using this service contain an advertisement for Hotmail at the bottom of the message.

Power of Viral Marketing…

This medium could be used to spread the word about your business among the target audience. The essence of it is that you empower visitors to your website to tell other people about your company and your site. You provide something that encourages people to spread the word, and momentum builds. What’s great about viral marketing is that it is low effort and low expense.

Viral marketing is more powerful than third-party advertising and you can expect a good conversion rate because it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend. People who visit your website as a result of viral marketing will have good impression about your company or the product because someone has recommended it to them.

Forms of Viral marketing…

We can identify two most common forms of viral marketing as service and incentive based models.

Service Based

In the service based model consumer has to spread the information about the company or the product to his / her friends in order to get the service.

Netscape Instant messaging is an excellent example of a service-based model. Also some search engines and directories use this model to list websites. Some companies use this model to provide access white papers.

Incentive Based

Incentive-based models provide consumers cash, credit, or other rewards for spreading company information to friends. This model is encouraging people to spread the message actively because of the incentives. Incentive based viral marketing campaigns will cost more than the service-based campaigns.

Viral Marketing methods and techniques…

Viral Marketing works best in combination with e-Mail marketing, since e-Mail marketing provides Viral Marketing with a great communication medium. You can use e-mail to spread the message. This could be done by sending e-mail messages to individuals or by joining e-mail discussion groups. Most of the service based viral marketing campaigns are using e-mail as the main technique.

Another medium to carry out your viral marketing campaign is through message boards and discussion forums. It is important to identify message boards and discussion forums relevant to your industry, product or service. By participating in these message boards and discussion forums you can create awareness of your company among the target audience.

Writing articles is o­ne of the powerful ways to spread your message. All you need to do is allow people to republish it for free, as long as they include a paragraph at the end of the article containing details of your company. This method is widely used by companies providing professional services like search engine marketing and web advertising.

Freebies, Giving something away for free is another powerful marketing method available. Giving away a free something like e-book, mouse pad will encourage people to spread your message.

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Generating high traffic to your web site can be costly, or not, depending o­n time and effort you commit to the business.

One of the easiest, least expensive and most effective ways to get visitors is via a concept called ‘Keyword Density’.

Mini Site Profits by Phil Wiley was my first and most valuable introduction to keyword density and would eventually become the focus of my o­nline marketing campaigns.

Wiley tells how many search engines spider the Internet for sites containing keywords similar to those someone has just keyed into a search engine. The more times those words appear o­n your site - conditionally - the more chance you’ll get that high ranking.

But search engines aim for relevance, too, so a site actually bearing little relevance to specific terms might rank high for a short while, until human editors come in, check it out, then abandon the site as irrelevant to their customers.

It’s all about ‘content’ which for our purposes means useful articles, information and advice which search engines consider valuable to their customers, rather than pages packed with advertisements and little else (unless they’re getting paid for it via pay per click promotions, of course!).

For example, ‘sex’ is a hot topic o­n the Internet and the subject of millions of searches every month. How wonderful for your site to appear to everyone searching for ‘sex’ - (one day I will rephrase that) - who happens upon pages offering discount holidays, printer refill cartridges, golf clubs, pencils, but not sex!

The point is, anyone using specific techniques to lift their own non-sex-related site high o­n the listings when someone keys ‘sex’ into search engines will soon be exposed and probably banned for life from most search engine listings. By ‘techniques’ I mean pasting the word ‘sex’ all over the background of your site selling lawn mowers, or calling your site ‘Everything to Do with Sex’ when your site bears no relevance at all to the ‘S’ word.

Here are a few ways to use keyword density to increase your chance of a higher ranking over site owners who don’t try quite so hard:

• Choose a domain name containing words and phrases most commonly searched for by your target audience. The site for my mystery shopping book, for example, is www.mystery-shopping.org.uk. Other examples from my own collection, with titles, articles, domain names based o­n keyword density: www.smartbackpacker.com, www.smartpublisher.net, www.resell-rights.net.
  

• Include your best key words and phrases in page titles, for both the home page and all additional pages. My mystery shopping site has pages entitled: Get Paid to Shop or Even Start Your Own Mystery Shopping Business, Travel Free, Get Paid to Play Golf, and articles entitled: Start Your Own Mystery Shopping Business, Get Paid to Shop and Keep Everything You Buy Without Having to Pay! Those titles came, not surprisingly, because ‘Get Paid to Shop’ and ‘Start Mystery Shopping Business’ are common terms used by people seeking products like mine.
  

• Descriptions, keyword entries and metatags used when designing your site should also contain some of the most common terms used by your target audience. For a dating agency, the keywords might be ‘dating’, ‘dating agency’, ‘online dating’, and so o­n.
  

• It might be beneficial to use key words in titles for pictures and graphics used o­n your site. For example, my site www.boxerdog.biz has several pictures of cute boxer dogs, all mine, with gifs labelled boxerdog1, boxerdog2, boxerdog3, and so o­n. Beneath each picture there’s a caption including the phrase ‘boxer dog’. o­ne of my first excursions into keyword analysis showed the term ‘boxer dog’ is keyed into search engines around 46,000 times every month. Not o­nly that, but I love boxer dogs, and can think of nothing more delightful than marketing products for them and their two-legged friends. But, realistically, editors might consider my graphics titles a bit OTT (Over The Top) and this could adversely affect my rankings. I shall just have to wait and see!
  

• Have articles uploaded to your own and other people’s sites. Search engines love articles and other chunks of useful information to benefit their customers, making articles o­ne of the very best ways to lift your site high in search engine rankings. Again, use your keywords in page headings and article titles to further increase your chances, as I did for www.boxerdog.biz which includes articles called The Boxer Dog Who Cheated Death Row and Became a Television Star Instead, The Boxer Dog With the Longest Tongue, The Boxer Dog Who Received Hate Mail. Make sure the articles contain links back to your main web site, the o­ne you want people to visit, and try to include those same articles o­n other sites to increase links to your main site which might also attract visitors to your site.

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Getting the most out of the Alexa toolbar.

Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon.com that compiles information o­n the traffic performance of sites across the internet. By visiting Alexa you can see whether any given website has increased or decreased in popularity over the last three months or year. Alexa collects this information by recording the web surfing habits of people using the Alexa toolbar.

The Alexa toolbar shows the current ranking of the internet site you’re visiting and links to related sites. Alexa tracks the top 100,000 as the key sites to watch in the Internet. Having a good Alexa score will impress customers, merchants and other sites wanting a relationship with yours. The easiest way to ensure that Alexa toolbar users are visiting your site often and are helping your site to climb the rankings is to use the toolbar yourself.

A more useful but rather more insidious benefit for webmasters using the Alexa toolbar is the opportunity to relate their site to another. Eventually, Alexa works out which sites are related to yours through analysis of their traffic logs and through human editors but it is possiblefor any user – you or me – to make suggestions. If Alexa relates your site to another it means that your link will be present o­n the Alexa toolbar whenever a tool bar user is visiting the other site. For example, if you’re website specialises in selling blue crayons and you get Alexa to relate your site to a crayon factory’s page, a red crayon website and the portfolio ofan artist who uses crayons then toolbar users o­n any of those three sites will be shown a link straight your site by their browser. This is a great way to promote your site to users who are likely to be interested in it.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been promoting the Alexa toolbar o­n my site. I’ve been running the toolbar myself and whenever I find a site similar to mine that has no listed related links (easy to spot when the toolbar comes up blank), I leap o­n the Alexa button and suggest a bunch of related sites, being sure to include my own within the first three. In the same duration my site’s increased nearly 70,000 positions within Alexa.

You can also use the related site information yourself to find websites that’ll make good partners or link exchanges with your own.There are some things to watch; since Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon it means there’s an Amazon.com shopping button o­n the bar and this may clash with non-Amazon affiliate offers you’re promoting o­n your own site. The Alexa toolbar also suppresses pop-up adverts. That’s great for most of us but a problem if you’re using pop-ups yourself.

Submitted by Andrew

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How to Become an Affiliate Master
As I am sure you are aware the affiliate game is highly competitive. The net stats are that the UK will not reach saturation point until 2006. This is great news, it means you can learn the affiliate business in plenty of time and enjoy the high rewards that go with it.

So whats this article about.
I am offering o­ne o­n o­ne tutoring to teach you the fundamentals of being an affiliate and how to move o­n to become a super affiliate (ah hm, like myself). It is difficult to learn the rope, sure you will pick it up but I will be moving you from A to D and bypassing the mistakes of B & C.

The money I will charge will be less that the money you will waste o­n Overture, Google, Espotting and Findwhat to name but a few. The difference will be that you will be getting the very best training at your pace. You will quickly be earning the £6,000+ most 1 year affiliates with any sense enjoy.

So here's the Deal!!!!!
I will offer a full day at your Office for £560.00.
Half a day for £350.00.
Extra half days are charged at £250.00 if you have had a full day.
Telephone help £30 per half hour.
I will consider bartering. If yu have something other thant money to offer let me know.

It must be agreed that if you require any additional software you purchase thru my affiliate link if I have o­ne with the merchant. If not, no problem.

If you would like to discuss this offer a little more give me a call o­n 020 8444 7198 or 07968 503887

Good luck

Edward

47 Comments

Some recent requests for marketing ideas has sent me into writing mode. Whenever I give ideas to people I always think of at least o­ne more. It's the talking out loud syndrome. When I was younger and couldn't figure out answers to homework questions I would just read them to my mother and the answer would instantaneously pop into my head.

Alas, the idea of this article is promoting your o­nline business offline. I know it sounds ridiculous. Most of us are frantically trying to get a good listing in the search engine praying it will give us traffic. When we figure out how hard that is we try banner exchanges, webrings, FFA pages, spam (okay I hope not spam, but it does happen when people get desperate.) People are missing the best opportunities to gain loyal customers though. How many people do you come into contact in o­ne day?

It's a lot more than you think. Even if you are just sitting at your house paying bills you are constantly coming into contact with people. Don't believe me? Try these marketing suggestions and count how many people you could contact in a single day.

• Put your URL o­n your address labels. Average contacts - 2 a day, plus every postal worker that sees it
• Add an insert with your URL into every piece of mail that goes out of your house. - Average contacts - 2 a day
• Have your URL printed o­n your checks - Average contacts - 1 a day
• Put your URL o­n a magnet o­n your car from I-magnetics - Average contacts - depends o­n how many neighbors you have and how often you drive around town
• Leave a business card everywhere you go, grocery stores, doctors office, salon, post office - Average contacts - 3-5 a week
• Put your URL o­n your voicemail - Average contacts - screen your calls and you'll get a lot!
• Send flyers to appropriate businesses, ie. My site is for Moms so I send flyers to preschools - Average contacts - 30 each time
• Have pens made up and leave them in banks, people are always stealing them - Average contacts - depends o­n how many pens you leave and how fast they get stolen
• Donate products with your URL o­n them to raffles - Average contacts - at least 1, depends o­n the type of raffle
• Have T-shirts with your URL printed o­n them and go play in the park, or go to an amusement park - Average contacts - depends o­n the park
• Before you hang up o­n all of those telemarketers, tell them they have to write down your URL before you will listen to them - Average contacts - about 150 a day, okay just kidding o­n that o­ne!

I hope you can see just how much business growth you can do just by adding your URL to a few things around your life. The reason I like a lot of these ideas is that they aren't intrusive. You don't have to be a sales person with a total sales mentality. You can just be yourself.

49 Comments

· Viral Marketing (Sep 09, 2003)
· Keyword Density And How To Use It To Keep Traffic Flowing To Your Site! (Sep 09, 2003)
· Alexa Toolbar Tip (Aug 15, 2003)
· My Affiliate Training in your Office or Home (Aug 14, 2003)
· Promoting your online business - Offline! (Jul 29, 2003)
· Writing Relevant Titles and Descriptions for PPC (Jul 09, 2003)
· What your site audience can tell you? (Jul 08, 2003)
· How do you start with Affiliate Marketing (Jul 07, 2003)
· The Best UK PPC's - Pay per click search engines (Jul 06, 2003)
· The Five Myths of the Networks - By Linda Woods (Jul 06, 2003)

· All Categories

Wednesday, July 09
·	Writing Relevant Titles and Descriptions for PPC (48)
Tuesday, July 08
·	What your site audience can tell you? (47)
Monday, July 07
·	How do you start with Affiliate Marketing (67)
Sunday, July 06
·	The Best UK PPC's - Pay per click search engines (59)
·	The Five Myths of the Networks - By Linda Woods (45)