Using File Sharing in Viral Marketing

There are probably ten million people online, looking for downloads at any given time. Of course, a lot of them could be looking for pornography or free software but still, reaching a minimum on a million people on any given day does offer some rather intriguing possibilities.

People like using file services to download music for two simple reasons, they’re free, and there is an incredible selection. The fact is Pandora’s Box has been opened. In Napster’s wake, other quasi-legal services quickly emerged… a lot of them. Even if they are closed, others will succeed them.

Major record companies would like to think otherwise but they are never going to stop file sharing. Net users are file sharers…plain and simple. Long before the Internet came into being, people made cassette tapes of their favorite music for their friends…cd burners are so much easier and faster.

So how can you use this to help your viral marketing campaign along? Think about this. Once someone downloads your MP3 files and those files are available on that listener’s hard drive, viral marketing begins. After two users start sharing your files, suddenly, your music is on the hard drive of a second computer…then a third… and on and on. When users are searching and they find your music on a lot of different computers, they are more likely to download the files. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll find your files showing up in more and more places.

No matter what genre music you play…Rock and Roll, Country, Tejano, Mozart sonatas, Heavy Metal, of Brazilian Jazz, there is an audience for it somewhere.

In this new paradigm, you aren’t hawking a product, you are offering free music via a medium that lets you be directly connected with your audience.

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6 Ideas for Viral Marketing

Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:

1. Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow people to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.

2. If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

3. Do you have a knack for web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.

4. Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.

5. Write articles that pertain to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

6. You can easily find products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide "branding rights". That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.

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"Folksonomies" - a New Viral Marketing Tool

A new consumer phenomenon is called "tagging" or "folksonomies" (short for folks and taxonomy). Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.

Here's how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us - a bookmark sharing site – and Flickr - a photo sharing site - consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.

For instance, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag "iPod." These images are now not only visible under the individual user's iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled "iPod."

Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search. Type the word "blogs" into Google and it can't tell if you are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already getting on to the folksonomy train. They are rolling out tag-like structures to help users more easily locate content that's relevant to them.

Although tags are far from perfect, marketers should, nevertheless, be using them to keep a finger on the pulse of the American public. Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, company or space. These are living focus groups that are available for free, 24/7. Folksonomy sites can be also be carefully used to unleash viral marketing campaigns - with a caveat. Marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting the link/photos and avoid spamming the services.

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Why Do Most People Who Try Affiliate Marketing Fail?

Isn't affiliate marketing great? You get to sleep late, sit around all day, and only occasionally have to pop over to the computer to check how much money you've made in the last hour. A job anyone would kill for.

Except that that's not quite the truth.

Many of you will have a rather different experience of affiliate marketing – one involving lost money, scams, and endless frustration when the profits you were told you would make just never appear. Others will never have got to that stage, but they'll still have the same feeling: that all affiliate marketers are scammers, selling a dream that is impossible for most to achieve.

If you're feeling like that, stop it. Because it's not true. Affiliate marketing is difficult. But it's not impossible, and not all the ‘gurus' are scammers. Some are genuine, and really will help you, if you let them. It is possible to succeed.

So why do most wannabe affiliate marketers fail?

1. They give their money to scammers who then give them useless information.

Many scammers, after they've taken your money, will offer a cheap e-book to download. Sometimes this is stolen from another site, but more often it's something they've written in twenty minutes when they remembered that they needed to offer people something. That means it will be filled with useless information that the scammer probably knows nothing about – and if you try to follow it, you might soon conclude that affiliate marketing is impossible and you were a fool for even trying.

2. They don't have enough patience.

It takes time for the money to start coming in. You need to build up a steady stream of traffic and a mailing list before you can think about earning serious cash. When they only earn a few dollars a day, or fail to receive the thousands they were expecting, many people get disillusioned and decide that they're better off with the day job.

3. They don't follow the instructions properly.

I know. Why would you spend your money on an affiliate marketing course only to ignore what it says? But people do. They think they know better than the pros who have been doing this for years. And they usually end up making a mess of it, losing money on unprofitable advertising techniques that don't work. But, of course, they don't blame themselves and go back to try to work out where they went wrong. They blame the course they bought, and decide it must have been sold by a scammer – a scammer, like everyone else who claims they make a living affiliate marketing!

4. They think they're not clever or skilled enough.

Normally, they're wrong. Affiliate marketing really is very simple. You need intelligence and initiative to become one of the top affiliates, yes – but if you just want to earn some extra money, all you need to do is follow instructions. Buy an affiliate marketing course and do what it says. Too many people sit there and think ‘I can't'.

5. They decide it's too much work.

They get taken in by the promises that they can make money going to the cinema, watching TV, washing their hair. In truth, there's a bit of work to do before you get to that stage – like setting up a website and promoting it, for starters! As soon as they realise that it's not going to be as easy as they thought, they give up. The truth is, there's no such thing as money you don't have to work for (lottery winners excluded!).

Did you notice anything these five reasons have in common?

All of them involve people giving up.

Whatever the reason, if you give up, you're not going to become a successful affiliate marketer. Fact is, nothing worth having is easy. Being an affiliate marketer is worth it – not just the money, but the excitement of seeing your list grow and traffic rise. And it's not easy. Most affiliate marketers had to work hard and experienced plenty of failure along the way. You've got to be ready for that as well.

Most wannabe affiliate marketers fail because most affiliate marketers give up. You make sure you're not one of them.

Anita Buchan is a full-time affiliate marketer who now wants to help others make the same money she does. For reviews of legitimate affilate marketing opportunities and free resources, visit http://www.dont-get-scammed.biz