The ultimate viral traffic machine.
In case you think that I'm about to pitch the latest software package, marketing system or search engine optimization method, think again! There are many outstanding pieces of software, a lot of effective marketing systems and quite a few SEO tricks and procedures that will increase your traffic, to be sure. But none of those things come even close to this incredible viral traffic machine.
Before I tell you what this powerful mechanism is, let me give you an example of how well it works.
My latest software product, Instant Article Wizard 2.0, was released last month, and has done phenomenally well. In case you haven't seen it yet, I strongly suggest you take a look at it:
http://www.instantarticlewizard.com/
As I expected, the software became a favorite with my affiliates very quickly, and sales are still very strong. However, I noticed something today that really surprised me: a full 50% of my sales were not coming from affiliates at all, but from somewhere else.
Fifty percent! That means that for every dollar I made from my affiliates, I was making two dollars from sales that were not due to affiliate efforts.
I was intrigued, and did some research to find out where all of these sales were coming from. What I found was amazing! People all over the web were discussing the product. In forums, on blogs, social networking sites--everywhere. People were linking to the site by the hundreds (and even thousands) with no affiliate link at all!
That's when it hit me. I had discovered the ULTIMATE viral traffic machine: word of mouth.
If you feel let down by this revelation, don't be. The fact that word of mouth is the ultimate viral traffic machine may not be any great surprise to you, but I can tell you that it is a very underutilized traffic mechanism.
People focus on search engines optimization, pay-per-click, affiliate programs -- all effective marketing methods. But those methods cost money (or require a heavy investment of time). Word of mouth is free!
Now, the real trick is generating word of mouth. How do you do it? This is the most fascinating part, because it's just so easy.
To generate insane amounts of traffic and profit using word of mouth... create a great product!
Yup, that's really all there is to it. If you create a great product, people will talk about it, blog about it, chat about it, and in many other ways begin to drive free traffic to your product site.
Timing is important here. I always do a beta release of my software to a segment of my current customers before doing the full release. That way I can work out the major bugs and get feedback regarding additional functionality that would be of use to my customer base. That way, when it comes time to actually do the full release, the product is destined to generate a lot of positive buzz.
If you fail to do any pre-release, you might generate some negative (or mediocre) publicity up front, which will cost you in the long run. In fact, I'd say that every hour of effort you put into the pre-release of a product will pay you back a hundred fold. It's easy to get excited and want to launch a product NOW, but your patience will be rewarded.
The other side of that coin is that you don't want to wait too long before releasing. Being first to market has a huge advantage, too (think eBay and Amazon.com). Do some beta testing, get some feedback, and make some improvements, but don't try to make a "perfect" product before releasing. In the programming world we call that "feature creep", where the customer demands more and more features until the project budget and time line have been blown.
So, to break it down again: 1) create a great product, 2) pre-release it to a few customers, 3) get feedback and make improvements, 4) launch.
Following those four steps will result in a swarm of word of mouth traffic, in addition to the expected affiliate traffic. Like I said before, 50% of my sales are coming directly to me through word of mouth. Play your cards right and there's no reason you can't have that kind of success as well.
What do you think? Post your comments below.
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