Category Archives: Online Business Ideas for Viral Marketing

02 Apr

The Funniest Benefits of Hot Online Business Ideas

The Funniest Benefits of Hot Online Business Ideas

This is an article that spawned from my post here explaining in detail how I actually home up with headlines and content for my site. So I figured why not actually write one of these online business  ideas for articles here?

The following are some really funny things that actually happened. When I created these posts they actually went viral.  Remember writing with a plan is definitely a good thing but sometimes a spontaneous article here or there can go far.

The Steve Jobs “incident” :The first funny thing that ever happened was years ago I wrote a very short post that asked Is Jerry Yang at Yahoo The New Steve Jobs at Apple? The next thing you know the fake Steve Jobs did a short post about me titled This headline made me puke. This was my FIRST big link from another blog. And at the time I was on vacation with my wife in San Antonio. When I checked my stats low and behold I had like 4000 hits in ONE day (laughing). What you don’t see in this article is that they called everything but a child of God. I guess he lost the comment section when he changed servers. Now at first I was insulted of course but after some thought I was like “cooooll” after all how many times does a legendary blog link to you?

The Scratch Your Butt and Sniff  “Incident”: Another thing I did was to make fun of all of the “get paid 1 Million Dollars online business ideas”. So I wrote Get Paid 1 Million Dollars to Scratch Your Butt and Sniff. And before my permalinks changed thus turning my tweetmeme to zero I had like 100 something retweets. I even talk about it in a guest post I wrote here.

I created twitterhug and it went viral: Again don’t judge by dumb old tweetmeme who zeroed out ALL of my retweet records after I changed my permalink structure. But before that I had a lot of retweets plus it still is viral today look on twitter. People I don’t even know (some I don’t want to know LOL) are using that around the world.

The benefits of all three is that of course I received a combined 50,000 in traffic . But another under the radar fact is that these posts led to business via purchases (yes I asked customers what brought them to me).

You never know who is watching.

03 Mar

Online Business Ideas for Viral Commercials

Here are some great online business ideas for viral videos. But first what makes a video go viral? I am asked that all the time and here is the simple answer.

The key to a viral video is anything that is quick, simple, understandable, and makes someone want to share with others. I know some of you are saying “well duh Darren I knew that”. But here is the root cause of a viral video.

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A message, connection, and timeliness. One other hint is that 95% of the viral videos you see are actually less than a minute long. The Orbit gum 30 second video may not last the test of time. But luckily it appeared on You Tube right away and it was uploaded by consumers (might have been engineered by Orbit who knows) and has gone viral with millions of views (see video below). People are even making their own spoofs that go viral themselves.

So lets talk money: yeah that’s great and all they increased their brand and even have positioning in the rankings on Google. In fact wordtracker has them getting over 350 searches a day. And Google Adwords tool has them in the thousands. But what does that mean if they are NOT selling online?

Here are some online business ideas you should follow when your video goes viral. And of course get some conversions in the process.

Setup an online function to SELL a call to action! I know Orbit is probably respecting their wholesalers by NOT selling online but HEY they should grow and setup some shipping or at least a ecommerce through their retailers online. But thats one of the worst online business ideas IN THE WORLD.  Sell on line retailer and wholesaler be damned!

Create a cool hip online community: haven’t checked but they should have a fan page just for the commercial (the orbit chewing lint lickers or the french toast orbit crew LOL) page where they just “talk” to their market to get more ideas for further branding.

Create a SUPER cool Orbit email marketing campaign where you send everyone that signs up a 12 pack of FREE GUM). Would it cost you money? YES and if you did it right you could get some heat behind it.But the branding would be priceless not to mention online sales.

What you can learn from their mistakes. Take any online business opportunities and run wild. It is clear that their viral commercials could be marketed further for a direct sale. Lets say on a smaller scale you get 20,000 views of a video. You need to be tagging that video and creating a social media presence that points to

  1. Sale
  2. Feedback
  3. Further brand recognition far beyond the initial views.

And you need to have  payment solution in place always BEFORE you ever launch any video campaigns.  Heard the one about the guy who had a video that went viral and he didn’t make a cent from it? Yeah I heard that one too. Lets just make sure it isn’t anyone reading this OK? Good!

27 Feb

Online Business Ideas for Creating Products Through Twitter

Psst come here hey wanna make some money? Take this little blue bird and what ever you say to it write it down for later. Ha ha seriously here are some simple online business ideas for creating your own products to sell through twitter. Little do you know you are walking around with a TON of information you have tweeted. I know because I have shared over 15,000 blog articles with less than 10% of that being my own.

See I believe the more I share great online business ideas and other great web resources I too will prosper by becoming valuable to others. But many times we share so MUCH of ourselves and so little energy towards creating simple products that work. This year I promised myself I would focus more on building a product line on this site as much as I have my other closely guarded niche sites.

See while contemplating I looked back and said WOW I cant believe I am missing out! I have a TON of info I haven’t shared or re-purposed as actual sellable content. I am sure there is someone out there that would like exclusive inside tips and business ideas i provided in the past.

Well I am not alone. Create ebook listings from your tweets to distribute. Health professionals you could create some quick online business ideas from your tweets. Make a listing of 101 hot things to do to get healthier and then GIVE IT AWAY FOR FOR FREE. Crazy right? No I distributed a ebook that was downloaded 20,000 + times last year that reached 90% of the world and was majority of the time without signups. How did I make money? from the affiliate links and links to my products. My only regret was that I didn’t have as many products then as I do now.

First line up a set of tweets for a weekend or a set time in the day. Usually when I launch an online business ideas I start with teasers and then move up to the heavy tweets. And eventually a countdown.

You can do the same thing in your niche. But the quickest way for get me to talk about you is to be a imitator not an innovator. I hate copy cats. Do something that is uniquely you and get your online business ideas via your ebook to 20,000 people around the world!

Believe me when I tell you that your money is waiting for you! Make something happen!

03 Feb

Viral Marketing Suicide Commoncraft Kills Social Bookmarking

Commoncraft is the creator of those “videos explained in plain English”. Their not so brilliant idea is to make a video public then pull it back from Youtube and try to get people to pay for it? Hmmm good luck with that. Talk about Viral Marketing Suicide.

Frankly as I say in the video they should do the following

  • Create interactive products targeting both corporate and individuals.
  • Use the viral videos to build your email list
  • Use the viral videos to conduct live webinars on instructional videos.
  • Make a “In Plain English” series like the Books for Dummies series but less print more ebook.

When you have a HOT brand name and are solving problems across the world the WORST thing you could do is KILL the movement. After all you have kids and people in other languages making their versions of your idea.

You were anything but common yet KILLED your own viral campaign. There is still time. Stop following your current business model and use some of the idea’s I listed. Because creating a viral video on social bookmarking then being unsocial and  removing or limiting the video’s visibility is not a good idea.

10 Aug

Thundercat Video Great Example of Buzz Marketing

Thanks Jas at http://www.bitterbalcony.com for the heads up. This is a very creative video with some great special effects. This is a great example of buzz marketing. The key part here wasn’t so much the way they spliced the film but their choice in films. Each one being a cult movement of its own. A sort of cult mashup if you will.

10 Jul

Starbucks Pimps Facebook...

starbucksfacebookpromotion2

Starbucks is trying a somewhat controversial technique . Its not new to Facebook but it is becoming more of a pain than profit. You get an email from them saying to share with your friends and you get a FREE pint. Why can’t that be an option? Reminds me of how their shops are forcing people to PAY FOR WIFI (thus the reason they have lost business and closed shops).

The issue with Starbucks that every entrepreneur can learn from is that they lose when they consistently refuse to create more value. The answer and cause of a recession comes down to one word VALUE. Want to create more value for your customers? Don’t give them FREE ice cream give them Free ice cream and FREE WIFI. Offer free job listings on your site. Create a newsletter with advice for recession times. Sponsor job fairs at colleges.

This quick Facebook  gimmick is cute but will it get them more customers? I doubt that. Buzz? A little but FREE always does that.

Forced viral marketing is not viral marketing. Remember the element in viral marketing is choice. They are not promoting Starbucks because they like the brand. They are promoting Starbucks because they want FREE ice cream. The promotion becomes a glorified chain letter for social media.

starbucksfacebookpromotion1

Has Starbucks become the pimp and Facebook the whore?

I don’t know but don’t be surprised if they call you “John” (unless thats your name) if you buy into their ice cream campaign. Hmmm I wonder if they will make us retweet for ice cream on twitter?

Entrepreneurs Don’t
Attempt to force people to promote your campaigns.

Entrepreneurs Do
Create choice and let the chips fall where they may.