Since dawn of Internet, people have been looking for ways to have BOTH lots of time on their hands and lots money in their wallets. It seems like very few of us have broken that secret code that allows us to make a great living without giving up all of our precious spare time.

Like a great magician, a great marketer never reveals real tricks of trade...those methods he or she uses to make a great living without sitting at computer for 16 hours a day. Of course they want to keep their techniques a secret; they'd like to keep all money to themselves, right? Just like magicians like David Copperfield want a monopoly on magic, Internet millionaires want a monopoly on success.

So what about rest of us? What are we supposed to do? Every day we're bombarded with business opportunities that either rip us off or simply don't work. But we continue to work at it, trying to find that one golden key to easy street.

If you’re not yet familiar with term “viral marketing” let me give you a basic definition. Viral marketing is simply a strategy that encourages individuals to “willingly” pass on a marketing message to others. It takes advantage of rapid multiplication to explode your marketing message to thousands or millions of people.

A viral marketing virus acts similar to a biological virus. But, big difference between a viral marketing virus and a cold or flu virus is that people willingly pass marketing message on. Not too many people really want to share their cold with others, but they’ll be more than happy to spread your “digital virus”. And when they spread it, they can spread it much farther than a biological virus. Your message can spread around world in a matter of hours.

To summarize benefits of viral marketing:

1. It’s cheap. You can create your own viral marketing message in form of an e-book or video and then it costs you little or nothing to get message out.

2. You can reach a huge audience. There is no other way your message can spread so quickly to a large audience for so little cost than with viral marketing. And best part is that people are passing your message to their friends and associates so you get an implied endorsement from them.

3. You can build your reputation. If you create good, quality information that’s being passed around, you can quickly be recognized as a expert. And when you have reputation as being an expert in your field, you sell more products. You “build your brand” faster with viral marketing.

4. You can combine it with other marketing methods. This is a method you absolutely should be using with your email marketing and affiliate programs. Email is still most effective way of spreading your virus. You can also use it with off-line advertising such as direct mail, classified advertising, or display advertising to drive people online.

5. You can sell products other than your original target product. You may create a viral message to sell one product but find out that your potential customer is interested in another of your products instead.

6. Viral marketing tools are easy to develop. There are easy ways to create e-books even if can’t write (or think you can’t). There are also easy tools to create viral marketing videos. It doesn’t take a big budget or a lot of talent to create a viral marketing virus.

These are major benefits of viral marketing. When you use it you may find others that are unique to your business.

The concept of viral marketing really isn’t new. Off Internet it is essentially any form of "word-of-mouth" advertising. It also works similar to "network marketing." However, just like all things Internet, it can’t have a normal name. Before Internet who would have imagined naming a company something like Yahoo! or Google? Or how about using words like “spam” other than for an unidentifiable meat product. Regardless of how it sounds, term viral marketing is perfect descriptor of this Internet marketing method.

Just exactly how viral marketing on Internet started could be somewhat of a debate. Where it became most effective moneymaker is probably not so debatable.

Likely first effective use of viral marketing was with free e-mail service Hotmail, which is now owned by Microsoft. Hotmail was started by two guys named Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, who were upset that they couldn’t use their employer’s email system to send email to their friends.

After they started e-mail service, word of e-mail service spread like wildfire and they had over 22 million subscribers within 24 months. Microsoft later bought Hotmail for around $400 million dollars.

Why did news of Hotmail spread so fast? Simply because they gave away free e-mail addresses and services and at bottom of every email sent was a tag that said: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com".

Everyone who opened an email saw it. And when they passed on email to their friends or associates they saw it too. So a single email could multiply and spread just like a virus. It turned into a “Viral Marketing Pyramid.”

When your viral message gets passed to someone, they become a “Host” for your virus. Then they become a “sneezer.” When they “sneeze” (send out your message), they spread virus. For viral marketing sneezing is a good thing. The more people you have spreading your virus better.

Of course we can’t all hope for same success as experienced by Hotmail. But you can still be wildly successful even if your marketing message spreads to only a tiny fraction of number of people Hotmail’s did. To be successful, however, your viral marketing campaign should contain following elements.

Elements of a Successful Viral Marketing Campaign

1. Offer something for free

Hotmail was such a huge success because it gave away something for free. No matter how much exposure people have to word “free,” it still holds tremendous power. Although, you don’t have to use word free in your campaign if it’s well implied.

Take for example a couple of videos that were done by a company called Jib Jab Media (www.jibjab.com). They created a video called “This Land” which was a satirical look into 2004 presidential election race between President George Bush and Democratic presidential contender John Kerry. This video spread like wildfire across Internet and created instant recognition for Jib Jab. It was so popular that Jay Leno of The Tonight Show commissioned Jib Jab to do a second one called “Good To Be In DC.”

In a lot of cases, viral marketing is all about delayed gratification. A successful campaign may not bring you immediate profit, but it sets stage for future profits either through email addresses collected, advertising revenues, or sales of other products.

2. Make it easy for people to spread your message

Do you remember a time when you had a cold or flu and one of your family members caught it? You didn’t have to work too hard to give it to them did you?

It shouldn’t be much harder for people to spread your viral marketing message either. Viral marketing only works if passing along virus is near effortless. In case of Hotmail it was short and concise message at bottom of an email that said, "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com". People didn’t have to do anything they weren’t already going to do to spread this message. For Jib Jab, people just had to send a website address…a little more effort required, but nothing too strenuous.