Encouraging Others To Promote Your Site

No matter what you think about network marketing, you must admit that the thought of exponential growth is appealing. What most online marketers don't realize is that this concept of exponential growth, or viral marketing, can be strategically applied to web site promotion -- even if your business has nothing to do with network marketing.

In a nutshell it's all about making your traffic work for you -- rather than the other way around. Sure you can participate in public discussion forums, you can submit to free ad sites and links pages, and you can submit articles for publication -- but these are just temporary solutions. They are a great way to generate initial traffic to a new web site, but these types of strategies produce results which are directly proportional to time and energy invested -- and they shouldn't be the core of your overall strategy.

If you are marketing your own products or services, you may want to skip this article for now and look into reseller programs (available on our private site - www.profitjump.com/imc). Depending on you and your business, starting a reseller program could be the answer to all of your prayers -- it's the epitome of viral marketing and you literally may not need anything else.

If you don't have your own products or services, aren't ready to, or just don't want to start your own reseller program, that's fine too. There are many viral marketing strategies that absolutely anyone can use -- your imagination is really the only limit.

Consider the following ideas, and see how you can use them in your business. They will all help you to grow your business by encouraging others to do some of your marketing for you.

It All Starts With Providing Free Content

Nothing is more important than great content. Those who have it do much better, on average, than the Internet marketer who just tries to sell, sell, sell. Providing quality free content will help to automatically increase your exposure in many ways.

Word of mouth advertising just can't be beat, and by providing quality content at your web site -- and in your newsletter or ezine -- you'll be encouraging people to tell their friends and associates about you. You would not believe how many emails we get that start off something like, "Joe told me about you folks, he said you've written a good article on how to start my own email newsletter. Where can I get a copy of that?"

With good content, you'll also find that people will start linking to your web site out of the blue -- people that you don't even know. Take it from us, these add up over time and can send significant traffic to your site. Here's an example of the type of emails you'll start getting from strangers -- this one just came in a minute ago:

"I've been receiving The Internet Marketing Chronicles since last year, and I've enjoyed the content of IMC so much that I've decided to add it to our Recommended Digests and Newsletters page."

Take it one step further by posting informative articles on your site and in your ezine -- and let everyone know that they can reprint your articles as long as they include your "resource box" at the end of the article.

Every single day we receive at least one email from someone who wants to reprint our articles on their site or in their ezine and our content has been re-posted, re-published, linked to, and passed around all over the Internet. There's no reason you can't do the same -- and before long you'll have lots of people promoting your business and your web site for free.

Make it easy for people to tell others about you, your site, and your business. Simple CGI scripts will allow your visitors to recommend your site to their friends directly from your web site, and another script could be implemented which allows visitors to email your articles to associates just by entering an email address and clicking a button.

And remember -- content doesn't have to mean written text. Just look at Link-O-Matic's Free For All links CGI script as an example. It's downloaded by at least 20 people per day, and while a few remove it, most do not alter the link it contains back to the main Link-O-Matic site. As more and more people add a Link-O-Matic links page to their web site, Link-O-Matic's traffic grows exponentially and automatically.

Here's another idea. If you sell software, why not convince other sites to offer free trial versions of your products for you? Give them free copies of your products for their own personal use and many will be more than happy to take you up on your offer. An email that takes you 2 minutes to compose can easily result in thousands of dollars worth of exposure -- and literally thousands of visitors to your web site over time.

Give Them A Reason And It Gets Even Better

Some people will recommend your site to their friends and associates, or link to it, on their own -- but if you give them a reason you can really speed up the process. Aside from just providing great content, see if any of the following apply to you.

Flattery works great. If your web site reviews various products or services, features guest authors, or includes articles about other companies, ask the objects of flattery to link back to your web site -- they'll probably want to let their visitors know about the nice things that you've said about them. A good example of this is Edwin Hayward's site at http://emailaddresses.com -- he reviews hundreds of free email related services and many of them are happy to link back to his web site in return.

Or maybe you can give your visitors something -- with the condition that they link back to your site. Jim Wilson's Helpware Directory at http://www.helpwaresites.com is a directory like Yahoo that anyone can submit to, but in order to be listed you have to link back to his site.

Do you run a contest? Don't just let your visitors enter themselves into your contest, allow them to enter a friend as well. Just say that if they are a winner both people will get a prize, and allow them to enter their friend's name and email address as well as their own. Some will take advantage of the opportunity, and it's trivial to configure your CGI script to automatically send their friend a short note that says "Guess what? Joe Blow entered you into our contest to win ..." That's more free exposure for you.

Speaking of contests, here's another killer idea that anyone can use to get tons of free exposure -- sponsor contests on other people's sites or in their ezines. Just donate the prizes in exchange for links to your site -- and email addresses of entrants if at all possible. This works extremely well, especially if your costs are low.

Consider our private web site for example -- because it doesn't cost us anything to give someone access we can give away free memberships in the form of prizes all day long. You can probably do the same with your products or services don't you think?

The bottom line is that if you offer someone something that they want -- or something that they will benefit from -- chances are that you can get some free exposure out of it in one way or another. And there are literally countless ways to go about doing it. Why not reward your web site visitors for referring people to your site? We'll be talking about reseller programs and paying monetary commissions, but that's not the only way.

It doesn't have to be money -- you can simply reward people with your products and services. The possibilities are endless, and no matter what you're selling this is just one more way that you can encourage others to promote your web site. Give your visitors a "point" or some type of credit for each visitor they refer, and once they've reached a certain level reward them by giving them your product or service for free.

If you'd like something a little simpler, why not just start a "Link To Us And Win!" contest? In a nutshell, the idea is to give your visitors the opportunity to win your products or services for free -- or another prize -- in return for linking to your site.

A Little Creativity Is All It Takes

Hotmail is probably the best example of viral marketing on the entire Internet -- and their overwhelming success is based on the one simple fact that a tiny Hotmail ad is added to the bottom of every email that their users send using the Hotmail system. So simple, yet this one idea made the creators a fortune.

The possibilities are endless -- try to think of at least one type of free content that you can give away in one form or another. Whether it's articles you've written, free graphics you've created, CGI scripts that you give away, a free service, or anything else for that matter, there are probably thousands of people who will -- both directly and indirectly -- promote your web site and your business in order to get their hands on it.

And as more and more people are exposed to your viral marketing strategies, your traffic will grow automatically and exponentially. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, your marketing machine will pick up speed and gain momentum all by itself.