Yes it works. You can get lots of free backlinks & instant traffic to your blog if you done them correctly.
You first say "Not Really". If you don't know anything about it, why bother commenting about it in the first place Anyway - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing should help you
viral marketing is when your site spreads by word of mouth, usually in a good way. Its the best way of marketing. If your site goes viral its a good thing, thousands of visitors (direct traffic) from outa no where ! Take for example, plentyoffish, facebook, myspace ect...to but a few.
I totally agree that viral marketing is, in general sense, a word-of-mouth publicity....in fact i would say that "viral marketing is an outcome rather than a strategy". In fact I came across this organization called WOMMA - Word Of Mouth Marketing Association, a body dedicated to the concept of Viral Marketing. I am sure till the time man can talk, viral marketing will prevail. You just need to have an appealing site with quality content and leave the rest for your audience....
In order to do viral marketing work, you need offer something to your visitors want to invite their friends. Community-based games use it. I work developing games too and it's really efficient, but I don't get to find a good viral marketing way to my websites... My niches are: * General information (focusing business, finances and education); * Nutrition; * Games (reviews, previews, for download and flash games). I could develop some community-based game, but it takes so much time and, unfortunately, I can't dedicate such time to my websites and blogs. Do you have any suggestion?
Great! We are getting new viewpoints here. I read some time ago that "true gold mine" for adsense is traffic from search engines, because those people are looking for some similar information. And about viral marketing, I don't know conversion rate. Nextgen66, can you comment about your CTR before, during and later to use viral marketing? And about free ebooks... Well, I found some of ebooks, but they aren't free and talk about whole marketing, not only viral marketing. But, I promise that if I write an article about it, I'll translate it to English and notify you, ok? Actually, viral marketing isn't so difficult to understand: a) Viral marketing uses your own readers and consumers to spread information about your businesses; b) You need your readers and consumers like to spread it - they are very very satisfied about information/service or they get rewards for spreading; c) You need keep new visitors and incentivate them to spread about your website. Community-based games offer some bonus if player gets other people starts to play too. News website with great news can get your readers spread to friends and relatives. You need find out how you can incentivate reader or consumer to spread - it's the central point.