Viral List Building Series: Your Viral Offer…
When starting a viral list building project, just like any viral related project, the most important thing about it is the message. A good viral message (or offer) goes a long way.
Just take a look at any of those YouTube videos that went viral – it really is entertaining, some controversial.
I can recall videos called Chocolate Rain, Daft Hands and The Evolution Of Dance. These videos have millions of views. Why? Well, because they are fun to watch.
Now, some other created a more controversial message. Remember Britney Spears kissing Madonna? Or Paris Hilton sex tape? Yeah, that was some viral message being spread everywhere. I wonder if Paris did it on purpose to boost her TV career…
Anyway, I am sure that you get what I mean…
And something that I did a while back was release my Micro Niche Marketing Calculator. It was not too long after Ed Dale and Frank Kern released the Underachiever’s System (a method to finding niches, creating ebooks and selling them). At some point, they call it the Micro-Niche System. So I create the Micro Niche Calculator so people could project their profit, loss and breakeven point before selling the ebook.
And later I found out that Frank Kern and Ed Dale was using the calculator in their seminars. And more people used it. I also get tons of links and traffic for that.
Oh yeah, but that wasn’t a viral list building project – just a viral tool.
Here’s a trick at creating your own viral offer. Look around and see what’s the IN thing right. What you can do is position yourself to ride on that trend, just how I rode the trend of Underachiever’s System.
Let’s take a look at more examples in Internet Marketing niche.
One time ago, everybody has an ebook on how to make money with Adsense. I think in some way, Adsense is also responsible for the many black hat SEO’ers out there, trying to make quick cash with Adsense by generating thousands rubbish niche sites.
And you also see people showing off their Adsense checks. Remember Joel Comm, PlentyOfFish.com and ShoeMoney.com?
With all that frenzy, suddenly came a man out of no where saying, “Adsense is Dead!”
It was a great campaign by going against the crowd. You make yourself noticed. And you are taking advantage of the trend as well. The Adsense community all flocked to see what he was talking about.
As if the message was not viral enough, Scott also offered a bounty of $1 for every new subscribers you refer. I think he spent no less than $30,000 paying out affiliates for that campaign. He made a list of over 30,000 people in a very short time.
Alright, how about one of my own.
Recently I released OptinDesign.com, where I offer two, rather different, squeeze page templates for free. I notice that recently there has been a lot of squeeze page templates being released on the Internet. The truth is, I don’t like any of them. But somehow, people still buy them…
Of course at one point, I did think, “Hmm… I can do better squeeze pages than those. Maybe I should sell squeeze page templates.”
But then I try to think of a better message. I thought of a Web2.0-style design. You know, applying huge letters, gradient colors, diagonal stripes and being minimalist at the same time.
Alright, I know I could incorporate the Web2.0-style in the design but I wasn’t satisfied with the actual viral message.
Then I thought of something. I know that I don’t like the other squeeze page templates that I see. My thought kept thinking about how “cheesy” they are. And I never think that those squeeze pages really work well. The word cheesy sticks to my mind. And that it – I am going to tease all of the other squeeze page templates as being “cheesy”.
That’s how I thought of my viral message. It’s like me saying something like, “Your squeeze page sucks! They are ‘cheesy”. Mine’s better!”
I was fortunate that a friend of mine was looking to better the results with his squeeze page. I offered him my squeeze page templates, and what do you know – he got better visitor-to-subscriber conversion, which in the end made him more money.
That’s a good story to tell. So I incorporated that story/case study with my website.
And because that I wanted to build a list from this, I decided to use the OTO-style list building method (I will tell you about six other viral list building models in future installments). This is where they can get the two squeeze page templates for free, but I will offer them more in a One-Time-Offer during the sign-up. The other 118 squeeze page templates are offered to them for just $37. And to get it more viral, I offer new members 50% for every sale that they refer.
Of course, this is not a campaign that attracted the whole Internet Marketing niche. I just had a handful of friends help out with my launch. But I was fortunate to have built a list of 2,197 subscribers
You may think that putting together a project like OptinDesign.com is rather difficult. Nah… it’s easy when you have the right tool for it. Oh yeah, not too long ago I bought a viral list building software with resale rights, but the codes turn out to be a mess. And the software came with no support what so ever. It was a nightmare. And I ditched the software all together. If you want your viral list building to work, choosing the right viral list building software is crucial.
I will tell you more about it in future installments.
