Affiliate Sales and Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is simply marketing that has gained momentum by people talking about the product or service. Viral marketing can be through word of mouth advertising from one reader to another, or, it can simply be people discussing the product or service on discussion boards, social networking platforms, forums, blogs and so on. On the negative side, viral marketing can also happen by people complaining or conveying negative experiences on these same platforms and causing just as much of a viral affect as the positive spin.

In affiliate marketing, viral steps can be taken to ensure that the business’ product or service is effectively conveyed to the reader and entice them to want to buy. The first step to take is to ensure that you have chosen an excellent product to promote and one, which is sold by a very reputable company. This is very important because you want to create repeat customers in your efforts and instill good will in the process. If you try to promote an affiliate product that has connected with a bad reputation, the result can be unfortunate and very negative, instantly. Check out the affiliate before linking, promoting or marketing it in any manner.


Viral marketing done the right way is very difficult to start. It can be quite challenging whether you are an affiliate or a merchant but has the power to gain high momentum once it has started. There are many ways to help kick start any affiliate marketing program:

Create something funny. You can post something humorous on a blog, in a forum, social networking site or on a discussion board. You can also give away a report or an eBook that contains humorous content. If it is funny enough, visitors will come back for more, which is the stream of traffic that you want to ideally create. In the marketing strategy of a report or an eBook, people will usually link to it and pass it around to their friends and associates. In addition, you can garner some visitors and sales in the process.

Humor can be used in email too. As long as the sent emails are not unsolicited email or spam, it is acceptable. Sending a funny piece to a group of friends or colleagues via email is usually appropriate. If your email signature has a small ad for the affiliate product you are promoting, then all interested parties stand to fare better.

Create something useful. Creating something that is useful can take longer to go viral but also has the propensity to go viral much quicker. By creating an extremely useful and powerful product such as a help document, a tutorial or a report, you can harness a large amount of traffic and links to your site or blog. If the information is extremely useful and reliable, many websites will link to it and people will start recommending it to others. Placing your affiliate link within the report or the post and traffic will begin building and momentum will start towards making the product or service a hit.