Viral Marketing is a phrase which was first used in 1997 to describe the extraordinary growth of Hotmail which, by December of that year, when it was only 18 months old, had generated over 8 million members. It was quickly snapped up by Microsoft for $400 Million. In the time since then it has been attempted countless times. Some have succeeded (Skype, Google, YouTube – for example) but many have failed.

The term “Viral Marketing” was first used to explain the remarkable rate of growth experienced by Hotmail. It was coined by the financiers handling the deal for Microsoft.

Viral Marketing is what we used to call word-of-mouth marketing. Basically put, it is the means of spreading your customer base by using your customer base as your mouthpiece.

The wonder of good viral marketing is its simple and inexpensive. Sometimes even free. Hotmail’s deployment of viral marketing was done simply by placing a clickable line of text at the bottom of every email it sent for its customers:

“Sent from my free Hotmail account. Get your own free web-based email account Here!”

Every time someone used Hotmail’s email service to send an email, they were advertising the service at the same time. Looking back, when Hotmail was the only web-based email service, it was a no-brainer for people to sign up and get a free hotmail account. The advantages and convenience of it by far outweighed the process of obtaining an email address by normal means.

The most important characteristic of Hotmail’s success with viral marketing is the seamless ease with which its message was passed on. In their case, it was so compulsive that the service couldn’t be used without doing so. The question we should ask now is, how transferable is it to my own product or service?

There are numerous ways which have been used since to invigorate viral growth on the Internet. One of the most effective recently has been to use rebrandable (sometimes called ‘viral’) ebooks. A rebrandable ebook does more than a single pdf file can do.

Ebooks with a rebrandable feature in them give your readers the ability to place their own affiliate link for your product on every page of the ebook. When they do this, they will earn commission on any sales which are made by passing it on to someone else. Whatever emotional motivation they may have for your product is given financial motivation as well, therefore, to highten their encouragement to rebrand and pass-on.

This method of viral growth has been developed and systemised with MyViralSpiral (MVS). This is a membership site script which automates the whole process of growing a list with rebrandable ebooks. As a member of timsviralspiral.com, for example, one of the script creator’s own MVS sites, you can grow a list – and integrate it with Aweber, Get Response, 1ShoppingCart or Email Aces – while passing on rebrandable ebooks using the squeeze pages provided by the site.

MVS has a unique combination of viral factors built into it which together enable anyone to build a list from scratch without needing costly traffic and hosting fees. It also adopts a 3-dimensional rebranding feature which means that every new member immediately has two ways to make money from each new member they generate.

Some people think MVS is an affiliate marketing script, like Butterfly Marketing, or Launch Formula Marketing. But they are mistaken. There is nothing else like MVS. Its purpose is to automated the traffic-gathering front-end of any website. It is a script which generates and accumulates more traffic by using the activity of its members. Basically, it multiplies whatever traffic it is fed to increase signups and sales.

Yet, clever as it sounds, people have had mixed results with MVS. Some appear to have had a disappointing level of activity from their members, while others have seen their lists grow very quickly because of such member activity.

The record – apparently – is 1,200 new members in five days.

It seems likely that a key component to success with this viral system comes from putting in place a constant flow of traffic. The best way of creating that is with a blog on the front end, which is regularly updated. That way it will continuously, and increasingly, draw targeted traffic from the search engines.

With MVS’s sidebar widget installed on the blog, visitors can then join the MVS site while obtaining their first ebook. Later, when they can rebrand it and use their in-built squeeze page to generate their own list, they get their own signups and build their own list.

Following a review of methods used for engineering exponential growth, MVS has impressed me the most with its productive mix of viral motivators, viral slip, viral seeds and viral triggers. When an MVS site is used well, all of these functions work closely to power viral list growth and automatic sales.

Is it really possible to generate exponential list growth online? It has been attempted many times with varied success. Perhaps the very first membership site to grow exponentially (like compound interest, at double rate) was Hotmail which, following launch in 1996 grew to 8 Million users within 15 months. Then it was bought by Microsoft for $400 Million.

So what was the method Hotmail used to grow so fast? Well the financiers, who struck the deal with Microsoft, called it Viral Marketing. It was the first time the term had been coined.

Viral Marketing is what we used to call word-of-mouth marketing. Basically put, it is the means of spreading your customer base by using your customer base as your mouthpiece.

Hotmail’s use of viral marketing was simple. It had a clickable link appearing at the bottom of every email it sent for its customers:

“Sent from my free Hotmail account. Get your own free web-based email account Here!”

In order to use hotmail’s email service you have to agree to advertise it to everyone you send an email too. No exceptions. So it is a free service. But in 1997, it was also new, and at the time, having an email address was considered quite hip and modern. It was fast becoming a craze in the same way text messaging did a few years later.

So what can we learn from the way Hotmail leveraged the Internet to invigorate viral growth this way? Well, the first thing to note is that if your product’s message is to spread fast and wide, then the method people use to spread it must be easily tapped into. With Hotmail that was easy. They couldn’t use the product without spreading it virally at the same time. And, I believe, with varying success, it is transferable to other industries and products aswell.

There are numerous ways which have been used since to invigorate viral growth on the Internet. One of the most effective recently has been to use rebrandable (sometimes called ‘viral’) ebooks. A rebrandable ebook does more than a single pdf file can do.

Ebooks with a rebrandable feature in them give your readers the ability to place their own affiliate link for your product on every page of the ebook. When they do this, they will earn commission on any sales which are made by passing it on to someone else. Whatever emotional motivation they may have for your product is given financial motivation as well, therefore, to highten their encouragement to rebrand and pass-on.

Viral growth with rebrandable ebooks is the method of automated growth that has been systemised with My Viral Spiral (MVS). This is a membership site script with inbuilt functionality for uploading and rebranding unlimited numbers of ebooks. When you use this software to create a membership site alongside your other web properties or affiliate programs, you are granting your members the ability to grow independent lists of their own using your in-built autoresponder, whilst at the same time, they are growing yours.

The combination of viral factors contained in MVS provides a good way for anyone to grow a list from scratch without the need for costly fees for traffic and hosting. Its inherent 3-dimensional rebranding functionality means there are two methods by which members can make money from each signup they get.

Some people think MVS is an affiliate marketing script, like Butterfly Marketing, or Launch Formula Marketing. But they are mistaken. There is nothing else like MVS. Its purpose is to automated the traffic-gathering front-end of any website. It is a script which generates and accumulates more traffic by using the activity of its members. Basically, it multiplies whatever traffic it is fed to increase signups and sales.

Yet, clever as it sounds, people have had mixed results with MVS. Some appear to have had a disappointing level of activity from their members, while others have seen their lists grow very quickly because of such member activity.

The most success reported by MVS site owners is 1,200 new members in five days.

Perhaps the most likely key to success with this system is to run it alongside a blog – preferably Wordpress. Then, using regularly updated keyword-rich articles and posts, the site can expect to draw every-increasing levels of targeted visitors from the search engines.

By using the signup box widget from the MVS site, whatever page the search engine visitors are taken to, a good percentage will sign up to the MVS site to obtain their first free ebook. Thereafter, they can collect more, rebrand them and build their own list by directing traffic to the squeeze pages the MVS site gives them to use.

After reviewing many methods which might be deployed for engineering exponential growth, MVS has stood out as the favourite. It contains an energetic mix of viral motivators, viral triggers, viral slip and viral seeds. Working in combination, these factors work startlingly well to invigorate viral list growth and sales on auto-pilot.

Of all the most successful online businesses which have taken off exponentially thanks to viral marketing, Hotmail was the first, in 1997. In the time since, many companies have tried and failed with viral marketing but the facts are clear: When it works, it is spectacular: Google, Youtube, Skype, for example. And when it doesn’t, it isn’t a risky, or expensive, exercise to undertake.

When the financial inspectors saw how Hotmail had grown so fast, they came up with a new term to describe it: “Viral Marketing”.

Viral marketing is best described as the modern form of word-of-mouth marketing. It delivers exponential growth to online businesses by generating its signups and sales through its own existing customer base. As the base grows bigger the message spreads faster and exponential growth, at sometimes more than double-rate, is seen.

The wonder of good viral marketing is its simple and inexpensive. Sometimes even free. Hotmail’s deployment of viral marketing was done simply by placing a clickable line of text at the bottom of every email it sent for its customers:

“Sent from my free Hotmail account. Get your own free web-based email account Here!”

Its difficult to imagine how Hotmail might have grown so big so quickly without this simple viral trigger at the bottom of every email sent. To obtain the same exposure with conventional advertising would have cost millions. Yet this cost them nothing.

So what can we learn from the way Hotmail leveraged the Internet to invigorate viral growth this way? Well, the first thing to note is that if your product’s message is to spread fast and wide, then the method people use to spread it must be easily tapped into. With Hotmail that was easy. They couldn’t use the product without spreading it virally at the same time. And, I believe, with varying success, it is transferable to other industries and products aswell.

A common, and highly effective way of spreading a message virally on the Internet, is with rebrandable ebooks (sometimes called viral ebooks). These devices are so called because they perform a valuable extra function than a normal downloadable PDF can do.

With a rebrandable ebook, you can have your readers literally “rebrand” the links inside it so that when they pass it on to someone else, it carries their affiliate link for your product. Therein lies their motivation to pass it on.

This method of viral growth has been developed and systemised with MyViralSpiral (MVS). This is a membership site script which automates the whole process of growing a list with rebrandable ebooks. As a member of timsviralspiral.com, for example, one of the script creator’s own MVS sites, you can grow a list – and integrate it with Aweber, Get Response, 1ShoppingCart or Email Aces – while passing on rebrandable ebooks using the squeeze pages provided by the site.

The combination of viral factors contained in MVS provides a good way for anyone to grow a list from scratch without the need for costly fees for traffic and hosting. Its inherent 3-dimensional rebranding functionality means there are two methods by which members can make money from each signup they get.

Some people think MVS is an affiliate marketing script, like Butterfly Marketing, or Launch Formula Marketing. But they are mistaken. There is nothing else like MVS. Its purpose is to automated the traffic-gathering front-end of any website. It is a script which generates and accumulates more traffic by using the activity of its members. Basically, it multiplies whatever traffic it is fed to increase signups and sales.

Yet, clever as it sounds, people have had mixed results with MVS. Some appear to have had a disappointing level of activity from their members, while others have seen their lists grow very quickly because of such member activity.

One member even claims to have got 1,200 signups in the first five days he had the program running.

Key to success with MVS, it seems, is getting a constant flow of traffic and for that, the best method is to have a blog on the front end which carries regular fresh content to keep a flow of visitors coming from the search engines.

With MVS’s sidebar widget installed on the blog, visitors can then join the MVS site while obtaining their first ebook. Later, when they can rebrand it and use their in-built squeeze page to generate their own list, they get their own signups and build their own list.

Of all the methods deployed on the Internet for engineering exponential growth, MVS seems to include the most productive viral mix. It has viral motivators, viral slip, viral seeds and viral triggers. When it is used well, all of them work together closely to power growth in the list and make sales automatically on the back end.