I was wondering if you could lay out the basic fundamentals of viral marketing. I really wanna catch/start the next fad, can you predict the future? have any useful tips for me? Thanks in advance.
I actually used a different type of viral marketing, more word of mouth and manipulating existing traffic sources a bit. As far as fads, by the time you notice a "fad" 500000 internet marketers have "invented" it and have their ugly squeeze pages up forcing you to read 505005 MB of hype sentences before you get to the price tag of $97 on their blah ebook. The best thing to do is invent your own catch phrase and make your own fad. Cheers.
I've been thinking long and hard about this, maybe some medicinal marijuana would help (j/k) but seriously, it seems like everything that can be done, has been done, and saturated beyond belief. How can I force myself to start thinking outside the box and come up with something catchy that will spread?
You don't have to invent tennis shoes, you just have to market those tennis shoes better than anyone else. I actually prefer selling something with substance but most ebook sellers etc. go the nike route and put their "I make $25,000 a year from the comfort of home" guru endorsement on it.
I'm sorry, you could go the bottom feeder route and offer the same thing the big marketers are offering but for only $9.99 with complete resell rights!!! You'll get all the noobs and make a mediocre profit until the next fad is "discovered".
While "I make $25,000 a year from the comfort of home" may make a catchy subject line in my safe list mailings, (actually I'm just joking, are safe lists still alive in 2k6?) I really don't think it will motivate anyone to share it, it just doesn't have the "holy cow, I gotta show Bob this" factor. In your opinion, what types of things best spur the "I gotta show this to everyone I know" reaction from surfers?
So basically you're saying, if it's too good to be true, people will email/IM/tell their friends about it? have you seen genpets.com? I know I've pasted this around the block. How can I come up with something similar, just dream up some crazy/funny scheme? I think there are more factors involved in successful viral marketing, perhaps my IQ isn't up to par. btw, I haven't checked out your blog recently, but would you consider the 30k Challenge to be a success even though you didn't reach your goal? and why?
Yes if it's too good to be true a sucker somewhere will take it as fact. Dream away, you never know. Success yes, even though we have a fair number of haters. It ended up making my lazy programmer get off his butt and program a system with more potential than anything we've ever done before. Something will come of it yet, as soon as I figure out V2.0.
I don't mean to interrupt, but I recently released a free report (see sig) about this sort of thing. Just FYI /Plug.