The story of how Hotmail moved from zero to a couple of
million subscribers in a few months is one that is often told in
many sites all over the net. However it is a story that many do
not quite understand. If they understood it, we would be seeing
many more online success stories and fewer online failures.
Because the word has also been over-used by hype peddlers, many
times people associate the word viral with spamming and other
online activities bordering on the illegal.

Viral growth and marketing has always been with
us

They fail to realize that viral growth and
marketing is not something new to the human race. In fact it has
been there since the beginning of time. The human race began
with two people, Adam and Eve. Today the human race has filled
virtually every corner of this huge planet. Many religions of
the world started with a single person but were quickly
“virally marketed” to reach millions.

Even
the now World Wide Web started off as a few computers, mainly
used by researchers, linked together. But as they continuously
enjoyed their experience and as new software and technology was
made available for more people to join this small “web of
linked computers” it suddenly started growing. The growth
within a very short time has been explosive and it has all been
viral. So let us be clear that viral marketing was not invented
or created by the net, the net in fact used it to grow to what
it is today.

Viral marketing will only work
with something useful

As many MLM and network
marketing people have discovered, viral marketing will not work
with products that people do not find useful. Some marketing
experts have always turned to viral marketing in the form of MLM
or network marketing to push and clear stocks of a product that
has totally failed in the market. Where they think they have
succeeded, they have only ruined their credibility and that of
their businesses as folks have ended up with massive stocks of
some useless item stored in their garage because they believed
somebody who told them they would make a lot of money. This is
the chief reason why Multi-level Marketing (which is pure viral
marketing) has such a bad name with many people.

The internet is a natural for viral
marketing

The reason why Hotmail was so
successful so quickly is because the net actually multiplies and
speeds up the viral effect. In real life you may forget the name
of the movie you liked so much when you are telling a friend
about it, or the name of the book you read last year.

On
the internet, forwarding an interesting article usually involves
a few quick clicks and even if you forget the title of the book,
a quick visit to your favorite search engine armed with the few
keywords or just the name of the author will yield the book for
you complete with the current online specially offer price for
it.

If you want to succeed online you
can’t avoid thinking viral

Anybody who
wants explosive growth and success in any online endeavour
cannot avoid thinking “virally” in all their
marketing plans. Failing to use this powerful marketing method,
that has been successfully used since the beginning of time,
will be a very unfortunate thing indeed.