I have recently posted on my unbelief in search engine optimization; I also have posted a few times about social websites that along with communities should help you to succeed in the short and long run.

Social websites welcome all sorts of viral marketing products – they are fast to spread around. Social websites are as a rule places where people search for information and fun, not products.

So if you target social websites and online communities with information then it is a good idea to explore viral marketing and its techniques. I think the classical sample of viral marketing of the past decade is free e-mail from Hotmail that was very popular with the Internet audience of that time.

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analagous to the spread of a computer virus. It can often be word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Its characteristics:

1. Free products or services
2. Easy transfer to others
3. Scales easily
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Sex, humor, celebrities are good candidates to become a successful viral marketing product. Standard forms for online viral marketing products: images, jokes, videos, websites, animations, audios.

According to Seth Godin, viral idea:

No one “sends” an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No one “gets” an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

I have posted my ideas on MillionDollarHomePage. It is also a product of viral marketing of the recent time (2005).

Summary: When you read these lines you think that it is an easy task to make a nice viral marketing catch. Once you turn to your website the ideas that come to your mind are commonplace and far from being original – an image or joke or something. How to keep within the viral marketing principles and stay original? The only answer you can get – experiment.

I also recommend you researching the List of Internet phenomena – explore success stories, it should help you with the ideas.

[tags]viral marketing, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, make money online, work from home, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

Thousands of webmasters hunt for expired domains. There are a few online services that post lists of expiring domains, others accept your bids for these domains.

It is no brainer to understand why – with the expired domain you get:

- aged domain
- with some traffic
- and link popularity

It is a great way to give a boost to your working or new projects. There are some fears that Google as a domain registrar might control whois information and devalue those domain names that change their owners (that would make purchase of expired domains useless for link and traffic reasons). But there is no evident proof and it is still believed that Google does not practice it yet.

With these obvious advantages you get from an expired domain, no surprise that there is a high competition in this sector and you should be prepared to spend some time and to pay a good amount for a nice expired domain. And the process of acquiring expired domains is not that simple. There are currently four key market players:

- enom.com
- snapnames.com
- godaddy.com
- pool.com

They all operate in a slightly different manner that confuses beginners on the expired domain market. A good start to learn who is who and how expired domains sell – Beginner’s advice on how to go about backordering expiring domains

If you would like to go deeper – Mike Davidson’s How to Snatch an Expiring Domain is an excellent post describing his experience of acquiring an expired domain – how domains expire, how market leaders differ, how to be prepared to deal with your competitors.

Where can you get the lists of expired domains? Either at the websites of the mentioned domain name resellers or here – you also easily check the domain name characteristics – traffic (Alexa), Page Rank and link structure.

For those who buys expired domains in other ways – for instance directly from their previous owners I recommend this short and useful PDF on The Insider’s Guide to Domain Transfers

Summary: It is hard to predict the results of your expired domain purchase – some report success, others – failure and disappointment. A good idea is to leave the domain name alone with no changes once you get it. Make changes in a few months, gradually.

Sometimes the result is completely unexpected, but predictable.

[eminimall]

[tags]domain names, expired domains, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, make money online, work from home, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

There is quite much buzz about Squidoo. Seth Godin has posted a few times on this topic (no surprise – his name is behind this project) and there are discussions in the webmaster forums and popular blogs

Squidoo is a kind of a social website that is based on user generated content – members create LENSES. What is a lens?

A lens is one person’s view on a topic that matters to her. It’s an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and thousands of products from hundreds of other trusted merchants. You can pick whatever content you want to put in your lens to bring context to your topic. Then, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets him started and sends him off in the right direction. It’s a place to start, not finish.

Who should build a lens? Well according to Squidoo – anyone.

In some ways it reminds me of wikipedia.org Do you agree? Not an imitation, but basically the same idea.

Why should you care about this website? It talks much about sharing profits with the publishers of lenses. But it is a simple trick to attract visitors to post their lenses. There are no reports of people who made any decent amount of money using this service, but there is evidence of this sort – 0.11$ income generated with a lens

I guess it is not the money that will make you rush and join the service.

One reason why you should join and create a lens is the ability to get a link to your website from an authority website and receive some traffic – the website has good search engine rankings for many terms (it can be hard for you to beat them with your own website).

Summary: Squidoo is a service to experiment with the link and traffic aspects in mind. It is a good idea to see how it works for your website (and later to add more websites if you have).

I will make a lens and check if there is any sense to spend more time and efforts with this service.

[eminimall]

[tags]squidoo, seth godin, traffic, links bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, earn your living online[/tags]