Viral marketing is encouraging and enabling people to pass along your marketing message voluntarily.Viral marketing works by getting other people to transmit your marketing message to others,who them pass it on to others and so on. If done properly, your marketing message will sread around the Internet like a contagious virus. Thus the term viral. Joe gets it from Sue and passes it to Kate who passes it to Bill and on and on.

People on the internet love to email and chat and share interesting things with their friends. Viral marketing takes advantage of this natural human behavior. How many interesting website have you emailed to everyone you know online? This type of marketing is not exclusive to the online community. The band Nine Inch Nails used a viral marketing campaign in the release of the 2007 concept album Year Zero. Part of the campaign involved the band leaving USB drives at concerts during their 2007 European Tour.

TiVo gave away free TiVo's to web-savvy individuals to create "viral" word of mouth. I don't think I have to tell you how that worked out. Give away something interesting and people will spread the word for you. People love free. People love easy.

As Tivo proved, make it free and easy and it will spread. People also love a promise of something for nothing. "Share this ebook with your friends and make huge commissions. No selling required." No selling, just give this away to as many people as you can and earn money if they choose to buy. A lot of people are skeptical about their salesmanship abilities, but everyone is confident that they can give stuff away.

Also they don't have to buy from you to make money. Just pass your message along. Of course you hope they will buy, but simply passing your viral tool on to others benefits you too. So you gain even if they don't buy. Your viral marketing tool can be an ebook, a download link, a viral ad page, anything that can be circulated online. Important; make it easy to circulate.

Having to build their own webpage for your viral product will put a lot of people off it. Also make sure to offer an inducement to pass it along. Resale rights, as long as your product links remain intact of course, an affiliate program, free website traffic. Something to make passing it along worth the effort. Make the benefit worth more than the effort and your viral marketing program will take off. The secret to viral marketing success is to target people who communicate a lot online.

Webmasters, social network members and yes affiliate marketers. Affiliates will spread your viral ebook or viral list building page far and wide. They cast a wide net as a matter of course. Marketing everything from information products to diet pills. Including your viral product as a free bonus is no extra work for them and will give your viral marketing tool wings. Encourage the free distribution of your viral marketing tool in the text.

Say "Give this away." don't just hope they will. The formula for viralmarketing. Enducement+encoragement+ease=huge exposure.

Greg London is a web entrepreneur busy building a future. He has been marketing online for 2 years. http://www.ebizincomeclub.com/goto/GL8756.htm