Viral Marketing: 25 ideas for the Financially Challenged

By Wild Bill Montgomery
Posted Sunday, October 10, 2004

There has been a lot of articles written about Viral Marketing, but I just had to offer my 3 cents (that's all I can afford) on this subject. For those of you who aren't yet familiar with the term, Viral Marketing is the technique of enticing others to promote your business by distributing something of value with your message attached. Rather than get theoretical or editorialize you to death, I'll just list a few ideas to get your business and web site out there in the public eye. There are many more and if you can find something original you are always better off.

1. Distributing your own Free Software
2. Writing and Offering Free eBooks
3. Signing visitors up for Free email accounts via a site like .
4. Creating up an Award Site.
5. Creating a Top 100 Site.
6. Creating a Recommend-It Site.
7. Offering access to content from your site, while customizing it to fit each user.
8. Offer Free E-Cards.
9. Writing articles for reprint in newsletters and on web sites.
10. Set up a discussion board and open it for other to use for their web sites.
11. Offering Free Graphics, Banners or Web Site Templates.
12. Free Consulting Services.
13. Free Domain Name Estimating.
14. Free Web Site Reviews.
15. Setting Up A Search Engine Site.
16. Free Banner Rotation or Link Exchange Site.
17. Specialized Databases or Directories.
18. Of course you must have a Free Newsletter.
19. Free Page Redirect Service.
20. Free Screensavers.
21. Free Autoresponder Service.
22. Free Web Space.
23. Use The "Pass This On" technique. Where you create something like a humorous picture attach your web site url and encourage others to pass it on.
24. Free Document Templates.
25. Offer Free Email Courses or Workshops.

I myself have written a few widget programs like Free Meta Tags, Free Image Rollover Scripts and Free Doorway Pages. Now, you're thinking, everyone and their brother have these things. Well, what I did to promote this uphill battle was to set them up so that you could not only get them from my site, but you can also offer them from your site as well, by using a few lines of script. Why would you want to do this? In the script, you can also add your own advertising message that gets sent out to your visitors using the service, which by the way I host completely at my site. This makes an easy marketing add-on for newbie sites who want to offer free content. We also sell these little programs to others who want to offer the same Viral Marketing Freebie to their visitors. If you would like to see what I mean, stop by and visit us at

Good luck to you in your Marketing Ad-ventures

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