I admit it. The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror flicks.

But you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus don't even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration:

1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

Put into practice

I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website the article you are now reading -- "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website, it'll provide great content and help your visitors learn important strategies. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)

When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:

"I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!"

"Well, I'm not the King," I demurred. "I wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that's all."

"I've searched all over the Internet about viral marketing," he said, "and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!."

It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for "viral marketing."

To one degree or another, all successful viral marketing strategies use most of the six principles outlined above. In the next article in this series, "Viral Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm), we'll move from theory to practice. But first learn these six foundational principles of viral marketing. Master them and wealth will flow your direction.

"Copyright © 2000, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson, E-Mail Marketing and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place."

How would you like to earn $65 (yes, that is 65 dollars) with just one click?

I'm sure you are wondering if this is some kind of scam, MLM or pyramid system where you send/spend a lot of money and get a lot of BIG BUCKS promises... Well, it's not! It is a 100% real and pure money opportunity for everyone to earn $65 dollars with one click!

So what is it and how can you earn the money? Where do you need to click?

We are talking about the Lunar Pages affiliate program. You most likely heard about Lunar Pages, they are one of the best and well known hosting providers, with literally millions of pages hosted on their servers. These days everyone wants to go global and the best way to do that is create a website. Any website needs a cheap and reliable hosting server, so here is where Lunar Pages comes into the equation: they offer the hosting package, whether a cheap startup one, or even dedicated servers for professional web applications.

OK, so far so good. It's time to earn your $65 dollars. To do that, you just have to Sign up as a Lunar Pages affiliate (which is FREE and takes about 2 minutes), then visit their banner pages, get the one you like and put it on your site! If someone clicks the banner on your site and registers for a hosting package with Lunar Pages, you earn $65 dollars with just ONE CLICK! It's that simple!

But wait, there's more! For each person that buys a hosting package from Lunar Pages you earn $65. 10 persons = $650, 100 persons = $6500!!! You don't have to do anything but keep your site up and running and get more people to see your Lunar Pages banner!

And it goes even further! You can refer other people to the Affiliate program, and for every $65 they make, you make $5!

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* $65 base commission rate
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Below you can find some sample banners and also in the right sidebar of my blog I have already posted my banner. So what are you waiting for? Click here and start making money in no time! Remember, you can make $65 dollars with just ONE CLICK!

Earn Money with Google Adsense

On June 18, 2003, Google Inc. introduced the Adsense program to the world, allowing web publishers to earn money with Google Adsense in their sleep. Publishers, webmasters, and bloggers can sign up for the Google Adsense program and display relevant advertisements to their readers in conjunction with Google Adwords, Google’s pay per click revenue model.

Once your Adsense ads upload the Adsense code to your content pages, you generate earnings based on how many clicks your adverts generate. Earnings per click (aka EPC) range from $0.05 to $40, depending on the nature of your niche and advertising demand.

Before Google released the Adsense Program, webmasters spent time & resources forming partnerships with potential advertisers to generate revenue from their sites. Online publishers would search for advertisers, get their contact information, call them up or e-mail them, then explain why a partnership would provide value to both parties.

As you can see, seeking out potential advertisers for your website is a time-consuming process.

Most people lack the marketing expertise and spare time to actively pursue advertisers for their websites. Google Adsense bridged the gap between advertisers and publishers, providing an easy to access and highly usable network of highly respected advertisers like Nike, eBay, Coca-Cola, etc.

Once provided with a third-party advertisement service, online publishers and webmasters gained the following advantages over non-Google Adsense members:

1. Make Money with 100% Automated Monetization Solutions - Using javascript, Google Adsense provides its publishers with a unique javascript code that serves up ads automatically on all content pages. Adsense’s search engine spiders automatically “read” the content on your pages, and display adverts within the context of your content. This translates to a 24/7, 365 automated cash machine that earns residual income in your sleep.
2. Gain Access to Fortune 500 Companies - No matter how large your website, any publisher may gain access to advertisements from some of the largest corporations in the world. Whether you run a personal blog or a high traffic social media network, you can capitalize on the professionalism of the Google Adsense network in no time flat.
3. Spend less time negotiating, More time writing - The greatest benefit is the absence of constantly updating and searching for new advertisements. Adsense is a “set it and forget it” solution, which is why webmasters become so obsessed over its powerful earnings potential.

There is a small learning curve for Google Adsense, and potential publishers should become familiar with the following terms before joining the Adsense program:

• EPC - stands for Earning Per Click, probably the most important acronym in the Adsense language. EPC gauges how much money your advertisements generate per click-through to the respective advertiser’s landing page.
• eCPM - stands for earnings per cost per mile, helps to understand how much money you make per 1,000 page views. Lucrative niches like finance, mortgage loans, and Healthcare generate more revenue than less popular niches like blogging & sports. Competition for high dollar products is stiff; Advertisers will duel it out on Adwords to make sure consumers get their eyeballs on the products & services they have to offer
• CTR - stands for Click Through Rate, just Google’s way of tracking how often web surfers click on your advertisement. If you receive 30 clicks for every 1,000 ad views, your CTR is 3%. It’s important to track your CTR closely, and figure ways to increase Adsense CTR without turning off your visitors/audience.

I won’t explain every single element of the Adsense language because some parts are trivial. If you fully comprehend the 3 acronyms above, you will be ahead of 80% of your competition. So please focus on the basics because truth is always simple.

I know the background info & learning curve stuff seems tedious, but it’s very necessary to maximize your earnings. Now let’s discuss to how generate traffic, then monetize this traffic to make some cold hard cash.

Traffic is the liveblood of Adsense

Daily, consistent web traffic is the only way to make big money with Google Adsense. Without web traffic, you have no visitors, and without visitors, who will click your advertisements?

Don’t encourage friends or family to click your Adsense adverts. It’s illegal, and you’ll get in trouble. So your only other option is to legally attract targeted visitors to your website who find your advertisements as helpful, instead of abusive.

One way to generate traffic is to write high quality content that incorporates high dollar keywords within the content body. Your visitors benefit from your highly informative, well-written articles, plus you benefit from the Adsense earnings received from those articles. It’s a win-win situation, and in my opinion yields the best results.

Please stay away from automated websites or scraped content with Adsense ads embedded within the stolen articles. You don’t want to travel down that road. So stick to the basics, pump out high quality content, target high paying keywords, and learn about Adsense unit optimization.

Along with high quality content comes Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO, because search engines drive more traffic than paid or referral-based models. Always place your most important keyword in the title of your web page, and sprinkle other important keywords within your content body. SEO is a skill that takes time to grasp.

If you want to pick up SEO basics fast, I recommend purchasing Aaron Wall’s SEObook.

Find High Paying Adsense Keywords

Researching your niche to discover the most lucrative keywords is a surefire way to increase your Adsense earnings quickly. I recommend using Adwords Keyword Tool to find out how much each keyword is worth to an Adwords advertiser. Simply fire up the Google Keyword tool, enter a broad keyword for your niche, then select Cost estimates (CPC) from the drop-down box, and hit enter.

Adwords will display a long list of available for bidding keywords, along with cost estimates listed beside them. Pay attention to which keywords have the highest CPC because these same keywords will make you the most money.

Of course, Google will take their cut, so remember to stay away from low-paying keywords, e.g., 10 cents and below, because they will earn you peanuts.

Doing preliminary niche keyword research will help you avoid low-paying niches as well. It makes no sense to enter a non-lucrative niche and try to make money with Google Adsense. Think high dollar niches like money, retirement, healthcare, consumer products, insurance, etc. Everyone has knowledge in at least 1 high dollar niches because we all consumer products 7 services. Write down a list of niches that you wish to enter, then use the Adwords Keyword tool to identify the most lucrative one, and go from there.

4 Adsense Unit Optimization Tips

Developing content, researching keywords, and driving targeted traffic is only half the battle. Successful Adsense publishers spend time optimizing the actual Adsense unit to generate the highest earnings potential. This is critical if you wish to earn money with Google Adsense online.

While you can browse Adsense resources to pick up tips from other publishers, I will share 4 quick and easy Adsense optimization tips:

1. Use the 336 x 280 Large Adsense rectangle - It’s the highest performing Adsense unit, and is recommended by most high earning publishers. If you decide to place ads on your sidebar, use the 160 x 600 wide skyscraper instead.
2. Blend Your Ads within your content - Web searchers desire content, not obtrusive ads that scream “click me!” Blend your adverts within your content by making your ad link colors the same as your normal web links. Also, try to embed the Adsense unit within content so your ads appear like helpful third-party recommendations. No one will castigate you because you show advertisements on your website. You deserve to earn money for all your hard work, but also respect your visitors and make your Adsense units look as helpful and friendly as possible
3. Utilize Hot Spots & Above the Fold Space - Hot spots are sections where visitor’s eyes spend great amounts of time. General hot spots are: the top left corner of your webpage, right above your content, and directly below your content before comments. Placing your ad units near hot spots should increase your earnings substantially. And when in doubt about ad units, place your ads at the top of your webpages (aka above the fold). Many of your visitors never scroll down the page, so you’re missing out on potential revenue if your advertisements are way at the bottom of your website
4. Test, Test, and Test Some More - Your website and niche is very unique, so test out placements and track results using Adsense channels. What works for Myspace may differ from what works for your website. Once you identify a lucrative space & Ad unit size, play with the colors and layout to further increase your earnings.

Google Adsense is an amazing revenue program, and it has literally changed how people around the world live their lives. There are countless stories of individuals quitting their day jobs to focus on writing because Adsense pays their bills now.

I’m sure Google will roll out more revenue vehicles in the future, but right now Adsense is by far the easiest method to make money online. You don’t need to sell; you don’t need to learn programming; All you need is a bit of knowledge on Adsense optimization and the desire to write great content that people want to read.

I’ve said enough now. If you have any comments or questions, or want to share an Adsense resource with everyone, please leave them below.

Good luck with your Adsense success!

Ready to Make Money with Google Adsense?

If you're new to Internet marketing, as I am, you surely are troubled by the title of this post. So let's take it on step at a time and see what this is all about.

You heard of Google, no doubt about that. From search engine to even this blog I am using to write on, Google's offer of free and useful features is no longer a secret for anybody.

What is AdSense? Well, AdSense is a free service from Google that allows webmasters to post relevant ads on their web sites and earn a little buck or two. You can check their page to get more info about AdSense and maybe sign up for the service. As for the Google search engine, there is a Google AdSense bot that crawls your website for key words. Based on those key works, AdSense decides what ads to post on your site. As I said, this service is supposed to show only relevant ads on your page (if somebody is surfing a classic painting site, they will not care and click on any ads related to c++ programming; they might click, but it highly improbable). So, the more keywords you have on your site, the more chances of earning more money from AdSense you have.

The next component of this whole system is another service from Google called AdWords. This is the service where people pay (sometimes a lot of money) so that when somebody searches for a specific word or phrase in the Google search engine, their site will come up as the best result (higher or even first in the list). This works like a bid for a word (or keyword phrase): whomever pays more gets their site higher in the list. When the highest budget is consumed, lower bids will also get a chance to appear on the first page of results.

The same approach is used for displaying the ads using AdSense. The higher the bid for a keyword, the more chances you have that your ad will be displayed on a page showing AdSense ads.

Now, what is Mesothelioma and what does "Mesothelioma lawyers" has to do with AdSense?

Patience, my dear Watson, patience...

Before we get to that part, we need to clear one more thing. There are unlimited versions of keywords and unlimited versions of different keyword combinations. Well, virtually unlimited. But some words are more expensive than other words. If you search for "asdfghjkl" you will get (surprisingly) about 329,000 search results. But try searching for "insurance" and you will get 402,000,000 results!!! So you can imagine that the bidding for "insurance" has totally different values than "asdfghjkl" (that is, advertisers will pay more for people who want to "buy a car" than for those who want "asdfghjkl").

We're getting closer to the "Mesothelioma" part...

This is not the only criteria (number of relevant pages) that translates in cost per impression or click from Google, but the most important is: their search word statistics. The words that are searched by most people give companies the most chances that they will get sale leads.

Now that we are getting somewhere, you might start to get an idea how is Mesothelioma lawyers related to AdSense. But this is the point where I tell you how I found out about "Mesothelioma lawyers". Google offers a free service for anybody who wants to find out what are the approximated costs for biding for a given word in their search engine (AdWords). You can point your browser to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=0 and start putting words and get the cost per click for each of them. This is how I got the amount people pay to get their sites higher on the search result page. For example, for keywords like "c++" you get max amounts of $6.88:



So, if you find a word that costs a lot and add some site content relevant to those words on a page that also has AdSense ads on it, you might get some clicks on those ads and earn more money. If somebody would click on an ad related to "c++ vector", you would earn $6.88 for one click!!!

Of course, now you are thinking as I was when I found out about this: Where can I get a list of the top paying keywords? The answer is, elementary my dear Watson, you search the Internet :P

There are people so kind that they will sell you this type of information. For a fair price, of course... Or you can keep searching until you find some words to get you started. This is how I found about "Mesothelioma lawyers", which has a cost per click of up to $87.22 (for one click)! There may be higher paying keywords, I will try to post them here (after I use them to earn millions, haha).



Ok, so what is Mesothelioma? According to Wikipedia.org,

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos.In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking.

I know, it's not a cool word, and it's sad when you have to have a site with content about that. But it's a starting point and you get the idea. Just find a word that is worth well and is close to what you are trying to sell, place your AdSense ads on the page with the relevant content and you might strike gold! Good luck and happy key wording!

PS: You can get a list of high ranked keywords here: http://www.cwire.org/highest-paying-search-terms