Mikhail said [21 October 2008 @ 3:11 pm]

Hi Kidino!

I’d like to know most effective viral way to attract sales person to sell my services.

Adriel Yapana said [21 October 2008 @ 3:21 pm]

I’m a fitness trainer and am fairly new to internet marketing. How can someone create and use viral list building into a continuity program like a membership site. What’s the best “no/low cost” approach to do this?

Adriel Yapana

John Melanson said [21 October 2008 @ 6:38 pm]

Kidino,

WOW !! If you’re doing something that will virally grow a list for us, I WANT IN !!

My question is; do you think it’s ok to hit the customer with an upsell as soon as they’re opting into your viral list or should we wait till they’ve double opted before selling them?

Keep up the great work. I always love hearing from you Kidino. I read EVERY ONE of your e-mails, GREAT STUFF !!

~John Melanson
http://www.wp.therisingpath.com

Paul Guzman said [21 October 2008 @ 9:09 pm]

Doesn’t someone need something valuable in order for people to join a viral list?

Kidino said [21 October 2008 @ 10:28 pm]

Alright. I am going to take time to answer these few questions now…

@Mikhail - In my course I have outlined a 5-step process to do viral list building. The first thing we all need to figure out when building a list (viral or not) is the people we’d like to attract. Some people just don’t think that through. In your case, it’s clear that want sales people. And obviously you want sales people that knows your industry well, because in the end you want to get them to sell your products instead.

That’s good. You know what you want.

Now, for something like this, we’ll have to break this down to a 2-step process. 1, the attracting. 2, getting them to sell your services.

Let’s which sales people do we know that knows your industry well? Now, here’s a sneaky idea. How about persuading your competitors’ sales people (I assuming that they are independent and not employed by your competitors) to sell your products instead.

The part where we attracting, you have to think really hard, what do these people want. What can you offer that will help them in their work, career, etc? If you can offer them something that can help them, they’ll be attracted to you. This can be a sales plan, market knowledge, specific sales trick in your industry, market research, etc…

A good resource or tool can go viral easily. And with viral list building, we can force it by rewarding for referrals. Can’t really explain much with limited space here…

But the next step, getting them to sell your services. Normally when you have a product and you want people to sell it for you, the trick is not in showing your product is superior. The trick is in show that your products/services is more PROFITABLE.

If you can show them that selling your services can make them more money with the same amount of effort, there’s no reason not to sell your services. Unless their are being blindly loyal…

Alright Mikhail, I hope I am getting you some where.

@Adriel - alright, this is not really about continuity program. You can check out ContinuityBlueprint.com from Ryan Diess for that. He has a great program (but costly).

But you can still use viral list building as a lead generation before persuading them into your program.

Read back about what I told Mikhail and you’ll start to understand how it works. But to get it viral, maybe you can think of something different that what most people in the crowd are saying… maybe something like EAT AND SLIM DOWN, and put together a diet & workout plan for free. Just an example. I don’t really know about this though.

If you can put something that really pluck out emotions in people, then there’s a good thing that it can go viral. Maybe profiles of people who lost weight and how life changed for them…

Do you get what I mean. To go viral, think different, go against the crowd, be resourceful, relate to current events, piggyback on huge things in the industry, etc… so some, all or one of the things I mentioned.

@Paul - You have to prepare something valuable but it doesn’t have to be expensive. When I say valuable, I mean in the eyes of your target market. Diet plans may not be valuable to me, but valuable to those who wants to lose weight.

Sales tactics may not be valuable to me, but valuable to sales people, especially if you can prove that it works, makes more money for others.

So yes, you need something valuable. Other ways to get your list building viral is to offer something different, controversial, heart-warming, etc…

ustahmads said [21 October 2008 @ 11:00 pm]

I believe there are several type of viral list building. Could you please list out and explain them and give your opinion the effectiveness of each of them. You may suggest the most effective one or you may match with the nature of biz to the one that most effective.

Kidino said [22 October 2008 @ 12:12 am]

Yes, there a few models that you can use for Viral List Building.

- OTO-Commission, maybe the most common in the internet marketing niche

- 100% Commission, aka $7 Offers.

- CPA Offer (pay per referral)

- Master Resale Rights

- Part1-Part2

- Intangible/Digital Reward

- Lucky Draw Opportunity (best if physical product)

As you can see, you can categorized rewards into three - monetary, intangible and physical. Depending on these rewards, you can choose which is suitable for your business. If your target market is motivated by money, then you can consider models like OTO-commission, 100% Commission, etc. Best for internet marketing niche…

However, if you are targeting the weight loss market or book reader, it doesn’t make sense to use the 100% Commission, does it..??

OK, there are other viral marketing strategies, but most-likely not very effective at list building. So far these are the viral list building strategies I found to be very effective.

Brunilda Davila said [22 October 2008 @ 10:51 am]

Dear Kidino:

My Question for you Is:

What is viral List Building?

Brunilda Davila

Kidino said [22 October 2008 @ 11:11 am]

@Brunilda - Viral list building is applying viral marketing strategies to build your mailing list, mainly from subscribers referrals and also word of mouse (mouth) ;)

Using a viral list building, your aim is to start something that will spread and build your list at the same time. Doing it this way, when you get it right, you can build a mailing list faster, cheaper and with less effort.

Imagine if you created something and you start putting initial efforts for traffic. You start to get subscribers into your mailing list. But after that, your subscribers bring in more subscribers, and new subscribers bring in more subscribers…

You are leveraging on your subscribers contacts, time and efforts. Of course you reward them and make them feel good for doing that.

So in the end, you have yourself a huge mailing list. Some people pay for traffic which makes their cost per subscriber increases. But if you use viral list building, it doesn’t have to be that way.

I hope you get the picture… :)

dgridley said [22 October 2008 @ 11:23 am]

How effective are video squeeze pages in building a list?

Kidino said [22 October 2008 @ 11:27 am]

@John Melanson - Alright, some people don’t do double opt-in. Some people do… here’s a good rule to go by. If you are joining a giveaway event or a firesale event, you don’t have to double opt-in. They already paid for something and you don’t really want to make them jump through hoops to get your product. When you don’t double opt-in, then you can do an upsell immediately after the visitor fills in the opt-in form.

But in most cases, when you are building your own list, with your own squeeze page and especially for something valuable, then you want to use double opt-in. And when you do, my suggestion is to upsell AFTER the subscriber confirmed their email address.

After a subscriber enters their name and email, you should redirect them to a page which tells them to confirm their email address. Because at this point, your objective is to get them into your database. And at this point, they are not in your database yet because they haven’t confirmed their email. So the form should redirect to a page about confirming email address. Tell them to open up their Inbox and look for your email. And tell them to confirm their email address. Remind them about the gift that they will get when they do.

And when they click on that link in the email to confirm their email addresses, you can redirect them to your OTO upsell page.

Most autoresponders will let you redirect that link to any URL you want. So, you redirect them to an upsell. But on the very top of that upsell page, be sure to thank them first. At this point, your subscribers will be looking for their free gift you promised them. So you want to reassure them that their gifts are safe and on the way (your first autoresponder should contain that info)…

That portion should only take about 1/3 or 1/2 of the screen. After that, you can pitch your upsell.

Kidino said [22 October 2008 @ 11:36 am]

@dgridley - Videos are very effective. One of the biggest worries was that videos takes time to load and you think about those with slow internet connections. Most people have broadband now and that shouldn’t be a problem.

Videos allow you to get more personal with your visitors, show them that you are real and bond immediately with them.

You can increase opt-in rates by 100% if done the right way. Tell them your story, tell them your offer, prove yourself and demonstrate your expertise. When you do those, they’ll opt-in.

And just to consider those with slow internet connections, be sure to have a good copy so that they’ll still know what you are offering. It will also make them want to watch your video even more. And you may want to offer a download version for offline viewing. But remind them to come back to your website to opt-in.

Oh yeah, if you foresee getting tons of traffic, you may want to move your video to a better facility like Amazon Storage (aka S3). They can handle the hit.

David said [22 October 2008 @ 12:58 pm]

Kidino,

Any tools that you recommend that can allow me to maximise the viral effect ?

Also, how to encourage people to share or spread the words ?

Regards,
David

Mikhail said [22 October 2008 @ 1:38 pm]

Dear Kidino,

Thanks a lot for your quick and full answer!

Your answer helps me to do some things right now, as I just start up new project between on-line and off-line. It is a new service for low budget advertising and marketing in retail.

So your Viral List Building video course will be very usefull. Especially in crsis time when all business will need cheapest way for advertising and marketing!

Best Regards,
Mikhail Trishin,
Russia
http://www.napyc.com

udin said [22 October 2008 @ 4:20 pm]

Sdr Kidino,

Saya amat tertarik dengan Viral List Building, tetapi saya masih kabur (tak berapa faham). Boleh Sdr jelaskan dengan lebih lanjut (dalam BM).

Jo said [23 October 2008 @ 3:33 am]

To make my plea into a question, it would be: “When you write your course, would you please, please keep the newbie in mind?” By this, I mean that many times when people write a course, they are so “informed” that they forget that newbies may have just heard the word “viral marketing” or “viral list building” for the first time. Please don’t take anything for granted, but start in baby steps. If we know it, we’ll skip ahead. Many times I have gotten confused by not knowing the pre-steps. Could you write it like a recipe? Give me the ingredients and then tell me ingredient by ingredient what to do with it, as if it were my first time in the kitchen. Many of us are looking for an understandable way to figure out the complicated. Only then will the complicated seem easy to us. I know you usually do this, but just don’t forget those of us who are really clueless. Thank you so much. I adore everything do. I “am” making steps forward. Thank you!

Jo

Henry said [23 October 2008 @ 7:02 pm]

Greetings Kidino,
I just stumbled upon your email and have a question.
In order to get subscribers to our moosletter we’d like to offer one of our cow shaped products to a randomly chosen subscriber. This would be an incentive to subscribe and it worked well with off-line mail-orders in the past. What would you consider to be the best way to promote such a deal online?
Thank-you,
Henry

Kidino said [23 October 2008 @ 10:51 pm]

@Jo - good point. I will keep that in mind. Write with the beginners in mind. Thanks.

@Henry - Yes it would. In my answer for ustahmads, I listed seven viral list building models. One of them is Lucy Draw Opportunity. I didn’t elaborate this but it’s best when done with physical products. In the online world when almost everything comes in digital version, offering something in physical will boost your reputation and your viral offer.

The only thing that I see with your plan is this — can you clearly define who’d be interested in this? Normally we think of the target market first before the product. Let say I want to attract marketers, I can do a lucky offering to win a home study course. And there’s home study course for everything now days. But since you are already in this, then we’d have to do it backwards.

I went to your website and the question that went through my head is this — is there enough people interested in cow furniture to make profitable?

Now, that’s just me. If you already have a yes for that question, you can go ahead with that.

So here’s what you do. You can create a squeeze page saying, “Win a Wooden Cow Stool”, with a photo of a previous winner or yourself holding the prize. And when you got them into your mailing list, you can send them to a tell-a-friend page saying, “Increase Your Chance Of Winning. Refer a Few Friends To TheCowFactory.com”

Every month, year, etc, you can announce a winner. I hope that helps…

John Reece said [24 October 2008 @ 6:39 pm]

Hi Kidino,

I have tried viral marketing in the form of writing Free ebooks with resell rights. This worked very well with many spreading around the internet but with one slight problem - they did not produce many sales.

I think this method use to be a lot better a few years ago but not now. People just don’t seem to click through on your links and buy the recommended products any more.

The ebooks were pretty well written and I had a selection of my own products as well as affiliate products in the links.

This might be of interest you. I now get a much better response by using small classified ads in specialised OFFLINE magazines where I direct people to my webpages to download my free ebook and also try to sell them a product off the same page.

Hope this is of interest to you.

Steve said [24 October 2008 @ 7:55 pm]

Hi Kidino,

What subscription site software would you recommend to go with XSitepro?

Steve.

Kidino said [24 October 2008 @ 9:17 pm]

@John Reece - I think you are referring to sprinkling affiliate links in your ebooks, right? Well, you are right. I am experiencing the same thing. You don’t get sales from affiliate links in the ebooks anymore. So when I do master resale rights, I just don’t bother embedding affiliate links anymore.

But you do get sales from sending emails…

So when I do master resale rights, I do it to BUILD A LIST. That’s the main objective. When they are on my list, the selling is much, much more effective.

Let me tell you the trick to building a list with master resale rights. What you need to do is create an unadvertised bonus and announced that in the second page of your ebook, after the cover that is. You can offer additional resources related to the ebook. In my Adsense SEO ebook, I offered Adsense web templates.

The readers would have to click on a link in that ebook and will arrive on a squeeze page. And there, you will be building a list.

So now, no matter who sells your ebook, you will get to build a list of buyers. Promoting or selling to this list is much more effective than putting affiliate links in ebook.

This is similar to the $7 Offer. But with something like this, you give the sense of ownership to your resellers. They are more likely to work harder selling your MRR product.

Kidino said [24 October 2008 @ 9:43 pm]

@Steve - Alright, I assume you are talking about membership sites and not ezine subscription. This is not what we are talking about, but here’s a quick answer.

When using XSitePro as a content management system (CMS), you want to use a membership site system that sit on top of the website. The easiest solution is the use one of those system that uses .htaccess. There are few system that I know.

If you want a system based on .htaccess, you can try either Instant Member Creator, http://www.membershipease.com ($27) or EZ-IPN MS, http://www.toddhost.com.

You can use other software like DLGuard or aMember for the membership site. But you need to do some settings in your XSitePro software. You need to do some Website Settings, defining extension as .php, and doing some Global Scripts, putting some codes on before the tag.

All the best…

Meena said [26 October 2008 @ 11:04 am]

Hello Kidino,

I am new to the online marketing business and have been purchasing tons of products from other Internet marketers, most of it is PLR Articles and software’s to help understand the online business.

Frankly till this date I have not been able to establish any sales. I have a web domain name and hosting provider to get started with building a site. Tried to even upload one of the affiliate link sites to my web page. Using Mike filsaime’s Powerlink generator system to create a professional affiliate link that can be attached to my web domain file. I was successful in uploading that file and its ready for promoting too.

Kidino, I am stuck how to begin promoting. Although I have quiet a few list which I collected from attending trade shows, charity organization, and socializing events. I did not get the chance to put it in good use. I am concerned how to start approaching them about a in demand products and how to find out if they would be interested.

I have a feeling that these list will not have interest in these kind of products because they are highly professional people like engineers, doctors, and so on.

Does this means that I don’t have a list?

After I read your email that you are launching a Viral List Building Video Course. I became curious and hoping that after I get hands on this video course. It will help me build my list.

Now the Question is: When will you be ready with Viral List Building Video Course?

Am looking forward to that. Thanks kidino!

Meena Bhandari

Kidino said [27 October 2008 @ 12:18 pm]

Hello Meena,

Thanks for sending in your comment. Though I have to say that it doesn’t count for the contest. It’s past due. But I’ll try to help you out anyway…

I am assuming that you are talking about name cards you collected from events you attended. I don’t think marketing to your prospects from the events you attended is a good idea. You are right, they might not be interested in your PLR, etc…

You can send them promotional emails but in most cases they don’t even remember who you are and what you do. And when that’s the case, it’s almost as good as spamming. And we don’t want that.

When I talk about viral list building, I am talking about starting from scratch. You start with an offer, giving away something, and then you work on getting your initial traffic (pssst… there’s a trick to all this which makes it more effective).

When the initial traffic starts rolling in, pretty soon you will start to see the viral part take action, which is subscribers referring more subscribers.

Of course, all your subscribers will be opt-in subscribers, which means, they consciously know that they are subscribing to your future emails.

And in this future emails, you can send them good quality content, along with some promotions that will make you money.

So roughly, that’s how my viral list building works. In some of my answers above, I listed a few viral list building models I use. You can read them to understand better…

About when this is going to be out … pretty soon…

:)