How Can I Use Viral Marketing To Make Money Online?

What the heck is "viral marketing" and how can I use it to make money online?

Whatis.com defines viral marketing as "any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect." In other words, someone tells a few people about a certain subject (usually a product or service) and hopefully they will find it interesting enough to tell other people about it, too. Think of viral marketing as a kind of chain letter, but without the usual threat of doom for not passing it along.

In order to take advantage of viral marketing, first of all you need to have something to sell. There are several options. The most cost effective method is to create your own product or service. Ebooks are ideal. Consider a topic you already know quite a bit about. The subject can be as broad as "Tropical Fish Care," or as specific as "How To Breed Albino Bushy-Nosed Plecos" (targeting a specific audience is called "niche marketing," by the way).

Once you have your product, you will need to sell it. There are many ways to go about doing this. One way is to sell it yourself. Set up your own website and start your viral marketing campaign! You can also find people who will be willing to sell your product for you. They are called affiliates. There's a lot of free info on the web that can give you ideas and tools to help you market your product or find affiliates. Here's a good source.

But what if you can't (or don't want to) write your own ebook? Don't worry- you can get "resale rights" to ebooks other people have written and sell them as your own! It's sometimes called re-branding. Again, there's a lot of info out there on how to do this.

Another way to use viral marketing is to become an affiliate and sell someone else's product. You usually earn a percentage of any sale you bring in. There's a vast range of products you can be an affiliate for. These include "real" products (like books, make-up, vitamins, etc.), services (such as mentoring new business owners or rookie stock traders), and information products (ebooks).

I decided to give viral marketing a try after reading Harvey Segal's free ebook The Ultimate SuperTip.

I'd like to point out that this entire post is my own original writing- a summation of information I've been researching on the web- not a "cut and paste" blurb from an affiliate sales guide.

I read the ebook and chose to sign up after doing A LOT of Google searches to make sure it wasn't a scam. I was really surprised that I never found a single negative comment about Supertips! I invite you to do your own search. All I could find were positive remarks.

Harvey Segal is considered to be a very successful internet marketing guru. He is particularly well known for his work with ClickBank and for his "SuperTips" ebooks. He sells several other ebook titles dealing with different aspects of internet marketing, but this one is FREE.

The Supertip book contains a lot of additional information about the topics I've mentioned in this post, but the most interesting part is the famous "Chapter 5." This is where it's explained that the book itself is a prime example of viral marketing. It also tells you how to join the affiliate program which pays 100%. Pretty cool idea, huh? Just read the free ebook to see how it works!

Once I saw that there were no red flags indicating a scam, I wanted to find out just how much money people are actually making with this. I did more Google searches and the range I found was between $50 and $600 a month. In other words, it probably won't make you stinking rich, but it can bring in some extra cash. It's small amounts, but continuous income of any kind is certainly a good thing!

Even if you're not interested in signing up, it's worth a read for all the internet marketing information. No personal information is required to download the ebook. You're not even asked for your email address so there's no worry about getting put on some annoying spam mailing list. And hey, you can't beat free!

Reading The Ultimate SuperTip is a great way to learn about making money from home using viral marketing!