The Affiliate Business

The Affiliate Business

Your affiliate marketing business is just that ... a business. To be successful, you need to treat your business like a business and focus on growth. Your affiliate links are your business; you are the owner of a marketing company, and it is an asset you can grow into more and more assets. Here are three strategies to build your marketing business.

1. Get your own website and domain name.
It looks cheap and marks you as a "newbie" when you post a long affiliate link in your ads. With domain names as inexpensive as they are now you can purchase your own domain name. You can then either forward your URL to your affiliate link or set yourself up with some free hosting and establish more of a web presence. Your best bet is to write a benefit-full description of your affiliate program and link to your program via an HTML link that is part of your description.

2. Build your own list.
Stop relying on one-shot ads to make you money. Real businesses have repeat customers that they cultivate in order to make more profits. You must do the same. Make a commitment to establish relationships with your customers and especially with visitors to your site. Create an email list to keep in touch. Send out periodic tips or articles and focus on helping your customers. Only promote your affiliate links in unobtrusive ways; don't make your emails one big ad.

One of the best ways to build traffic to your list is to write a short report that describes the benefits of your affiliate program. Make this report available only by email. When someone sends for your report, they are added to your list and you can continue to communicate with them.



 3. Build traffic to your own site and list.
This is where you really make your affiliate links your own business. By having your own site and building your own list you are building your own business and brand, not just marketing someone else's. By doing this, you can market to your own customers over and over again.

Do not overlook this point: When your ad redirects a customer to your affiliate link, you have lost that person as your own customer because you lost the ability to communicate with them on a repeat basis. When you direct customers to your own site and list, they build a relationship with you.

There are many ways to build traffic: write articles, post in forums, market in safelists, advertise offline, etc. My advice is to pick one traffic-building method, work on it for awhile, and master it before moving on to something else. If you focus on offline advertising, write and rewrite your ads until you determine how to get the best response. If you market on safelists, make a list of the top 50, and send your ad to 10 each day. Keep testing to make sure your safelists are responsive.

These three strategies will help you build and grow your affiliate marketing business.

Entrepreneurship & Small Business

As a Budding Entrepreneur, Where Do You Start?

Michael Skok -
LinkedIn Influencer13 Jun 2013

I am often asked by prospective entrepreneurs how I got started and what they might learn from it.
But my answer is: “Don’t follow me.” Follow your own path by finding a problem worth solving that you are uniquely qualified to solve* and can get passionate about. Then have the persistence and patience to pursue it.

Problems

Passion

Persistence

Patience

Problems

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
The key is to look around and get in front of a mega-trend and then look to solve a major problem or issue in order to fully leverage that trend. The good news is we don’t lack for major trends represented by multiple, multi-billion-dollar underlying markets.

Take for example:
Living in a Resource Constrained World:
The world population will grow by nearly 30% in our lifetimes to 9 billion people. Population growth stresses natural resources and it will be compounded by economic development across Asia, India and Africa – areas that are already stressed from a resource standpoint and by consumption per capita that is forecast to grow more rapidly than population, further straining resources.

Using energy as a proxy for other resources – today, the United States consumes twice as much oil as China. But as China’s total energy demand surges 60% in the next 15 years, it will consume 70% more total energy than the US.
Note that India, Indonesia and Brazil (just to name a few) have higher rates of growth in per capita energy consumption than even China.

According to the International Energy Administration, $620 billion a year in oil and gas investments are required just to fill this demand.
Thus, game-changing innovation and entrepreneurship is mandatory in areas like: solar, access to hard-to-get resources and low-cost energy storage systems.
There are problems of equal magnitude in food, water, electronics and healthcare – terrific opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Everything as a Service:
The “out-servicing” era:This is a revolutionary, highly-disruptive approach to technology and business models across multiple industries – all driven by software. Consider the post-PC era of tablets, mobile devices, and the “Internet of Things” – from cars to appliances to industrial equipment – that are connected to the cloud 24 x 7.
It will allow new entrepreneurs to zero in on their core value with laser precision – innovate there and outsource or as I call it “out-service” the rest.

It’s a major reason why the current $15 billion software-as-a-service revenue will leap to 10 times that as we move from discrete systems to continuous cloud services – another huge opportunity.

The Need To Scale Infrastructure:
In order to enable and support the “out-servicing” era, whether it’s cloud computing, big data or mobile, there’s an insatiable appetite for content and connectivity.
Today, there are about 9 billion mobile devices and that is forecast to grow to 50 billion connected devices in 2017.
In 2012, networks handled more mobile data traffic – than in all preceding years combined and yet it’s forecast to grow at a 66% compounded rate until 2020.
So, the opportunities to develop scalable, software-defined infrastructure, policy engines, data mining systems, content and applications from gaming, to education, medicine or wearable computers is huge going forward.
Know that along the way you will of course run into naysayers, challenges and even failure. To overcome those you will need a healthy dose of passion, persistence and patience.

Passion:
Pursue your passion, find your flow, trust your instincts.
In order to pursue these kinds of big problems, you will need to learn to tap your internal energy.
That energy may initially come from a basic need. For example, if you’re just starting out, it might be the need to pay off your student debt. And those needs are important if not critical.

But in time, I believe our passion is the sustainable source of positive energy.
If you’re not already aware of your passion, start by finding your flow.
Flow is literally that activity where you find yourself free flowing and lose track of time it’s so natural. Composers find it in music. Athletes find it competing.
Programmers find it coding. Where will you find yours? Here’s a paradox: you will only know when you find it because you will lose yourself in it. So it may take careful self-observation.

There’s a wonderful TED talk on this subject here.It can take time to find your true passion. Enjoy the journey, the exploration and the learning about yourself. As you navigate, you will build your compass that will help you find your true north, your true calling in life.
And precisely because you focused on and took time to find that passion, you will build the conviction and instinct to pursue it. And you will need that as many people and things may conspire to divert your flow.
Don’t let them; it will sap your energy. Eschew the cynics; find your own path to positive energy.

And always trust your gut instincts. They will ultimately serve you well, even though it may not be obvious at the time. Sometimes the hardest decisions are the best. And they may include what NOT to do. So often “less is more” in everything from products to life.
And in that vein, if the noise gets too great, keep taking things away until you find silence. Learn to meditate if necessary and in the peace, reconnect with your convictions. It is often in the pause or the gap that the “breakthrough thinking” has room to arise.

Persistence and Patience

Great entrepreneurs have a bias for action that’s admirable.
They get in the flow and focus on doing a few things well and build on success. They ask more questions than they answer, and they listen more than they talk. But even with all that it takes time to build something of impact and importance.
And while you may get lucky, luck is a poor basis to build a life on. By contrast, patience and persistence really do pay off.

On average in our business it takes 5-7 years to build a company of any significance. And typically even longer than that to build a sustainable, independent public company.

So, while I hope you’ll find a breakthrough to prove those averages wrong, be compassionate with yourself if you find it’s taking longer and proving harder than you thought.

In the immortal words of Winston Churchill “if you’re going through hell, keep going!”

Some of our greatest investments took longer and traveled more tortuous and twisted paths than we could ever have imagined but then ended up being bigger successes than we ever thought possible. If you can just get back in the flow and enjoy the ride, you may never want it to end and that’s the basis to build something really enduring.

Wishing you a life of entrepreneurship, passion and the persistence and patience to enjoy the journey!

*If you’re not sure what you are uniquely qualified to do or perhaps you are just starting out in life and have no experience, read this.

This column was originally published in Forbes.

Michael Skok is the creator of Startup Secrets. Held in conjunction with Harvard innovation lab, Startup Secrets is a series of workshops (taught by Michael) designed to create a framework for entrepreneurs to think through some of the key steps that could accelerate their success in starting a business.

Are You Allergic to Your Company?

Summary:

Sometimes you need to step away from your company.... Don't ever overlook the importance of meeting with the leaders in your industry. Your business always benefits from their insight one way or another.

Read on for more...

I remember when a mastermind meeting where something incredibly strange, something that has never happened to me before went down.

I'll explain in a few as it's implications have a direct effect on your business, but first . . .
I want to say simply, that the reason I was to meet and mastermind with other business builders. To be in such an environment is crucial to your success.

Why?

Two reasons . . .
First, you're in a new environment that will afford you the opportunity to think outside of your regular box of business building.
Every time I put myself in such a position I come away with new insights that directly effect my bank account.
Sometimes it's not from exactly what was said, but rather the insights spring from being the environment itself.
I can't tell you how many times the answer that was alluding me for months simply popped up at a meeting like this. If you are serious about reaching the pinnacles of your success - making millions, or simply being on the cutting edge at all times
I highly suggest you do the same.

Second, because the online world can be very myopic - you against the world.
When things aren't going right it's easy, when it's just you, to think you're the only one. Only when you continually meet with other high level success seekers do you truly see and comprehend that your problems aren't so individual and gain strength in that insight.
Only in such an environment can you calm down, refocus, and realize that "all is well" and charge forward.

But to my strange day . . .
The second day of our little meeting something that has never happened to my before in my life happened.
I walked into the meeting room about 10 minutes early for our 8:30 am start and started sneezing. Nothing new here . . .
But what was strange is the sneezing never stopped. It got so bad that I had to go back to the room and take a nap.
Even then, when I awoke I was still sneezing.I missed more than half the day going through this craziness.
Even in the afternoon when we reconvened I was still sneezing.

I was allergic to something, and it frustrated the heck out of me. I wanted to be in the room learning and growing with the other participants, but my allergies wouldn't let me.

In your business, understand that there is a very real possibility that the same exact thing is happening to you.
Sure, you're not sneezing your head off like I was, but there very well could be something that is keeping you back.
So many people I've consulted with are quite literally allergic to something in their business, and they don't even know it. The result is less than the result they'd like.

For some, it's that they are not in the RIGHT business for them. Meaning they're not putting themselves into a vehicle best suited for their unique talents and abilities.
For others, they're listening to the wrong advice. Just because your upline "says" do something doesn't make it the best possible solution for you to create wealth.

In fact, it could be the very thing holding you back. Let nothing stop you.
When I was sneezing the only way for me to know that it was, in fact, the hotel we stayed in was to leave and see how my body reacted to a different environment.
Maybe the same advice would do you well. Maybe it's not you that's holding you back. Maybe it's your company or your upline, but you won't know unless you take a step back to see.

Pull yourself out . . . Look at the situation analytically. Try a few new things on your own, and just maybe you'll find that you were allergic to something you didn't even know.
That the effort you exerted was right, but where and how was way off.

Well if so, fix this one thing and you're on easy street.There is no greater truth than to understand that JUST because you're in a business doesn't mean it's the right business for you.

Take sometime to really think about this today . . .

Click on the link below for your alternative income :

Http://www.empowernetwork.com/almostasecret.php?id=debagta12

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate'), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors. Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paidsearch engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer.However, both are distinct forms of marketing and the main difference between them is that affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations to drive sales while referral marketing relies on trust and personal relationships to drive sales.[ Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies. Click Here!

Affiliate Marketing History

History Origin The concept of affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J. Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts. Launched on the Prodigy Network in 1989, PC Flowers & Gifts remained on the service until 1996. By 1993, PC Flowers & Gifts generated sales in excess of $6 million per year on the Prodigy service. In 1998, PC Flowers and Gifts developed the business model of paying a commission on sales to The Prodigy network. In 1994, Tobin launched a beta version of PC Flowers & Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, who owned half of Prodigy (Reference-PC Week Article Jan 9, 1995). By 1995 PC Flowers & Gifts had launched a commercial version of the website and had 2,600 affiliate marketing partners on the World Wide Web. Tobin applied for a patent on tracking and affiliate marketing on January 22, 1996 and was issued U.S. Patent number 6,141,666 on Oct 31, 2000. Tobin also received Japanese Patent number 4021941 on Oct 5, 2007 and U.S. Patent number 7,505,913 on Mar 17, 2009 for affiliate marketing and tracking (Reference-Business Wire-Jan, 24, 2000). In July 1998 PC Flowers and Gifts merged with Fingerhut and Federated Department Stores (Reference- Business Wire- March 31, 1999). On March 9, 2009 Tobin assigned his patents to the Tobin Family Education and Health Foundation. The Foundation licenses the patents to many of the largest affiliate marketing companies in the US and Japan. Tobin discusses the P.C Flowers & Gifts service on the Internet as well as the other nine companies he has founded in his book entitled “Confessions Of A Compulsive Entrepreneur And Inventor”. The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994, almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web. Cybererotica was among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost per click program. In November 1994, CDNOW launched its BuyWeb program. CDNOW had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing. These websites could also offer a link that would take visitors directly to CDNOW to purchase the albums. The idea for remote purchasing originally arose from conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994. The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CD's directly from its website, but did not want to implement this capability itself. Geffen asked CDNOW if it could design a program where CDNOW would handle theorder fulfillment. Geffen realized that CDNOW could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNOW home page and going directly to an artist's music page. Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page. When visitors clicked from the associate's website to Amazon and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs. In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent on components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others. Historic development Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005. MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs. In 2006, the most active sectors for affiliate marketing were the adult, gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix. Web 2.0 Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to become closer to their affiliates and improved the communication between them.Web 2.0 platforms have also opened affiliate marketing channels to personal bloggers, writers, and independent website owners. Regardless of web traffic, size, or business age, programs through Google, LinkShare,Clickbank and Amazon allow publishers at all levels of web traffic to place contextual ads in blog posts.Forms of new media have also diversified how companies, brands, and ad networks serve ads to visitors. For instance, YouTube allows video-makers to embed advertisements through Google's affiliate network.

Most Innovarive Small Busines of 2013

10 of the Most Innovative Small Businesses of 2013 Daniel Bukszpan - CNBC8 Jun 2013 No matter how far the marketplace advances, there will always be problems that plague consumers and that no company can seem to solve. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it creates a niche for the right company to fill. For example, motorists experience considerable straining when cleaning their windshields from the inside. So the makers of the Windshield Wonder saw an opportunity to address an unaddressed problem, a successful product was born, and the rest is history. Small businesses can experience great success and expand their operations when they find innovative solutions to common problems. Often, it can mean cultivating a loyal and much-needed customer base, which any small business needs in order to sustain itself and grow. What follows is a list of 10 innovative small businesses that are making their mark this year with inventive products. Read ahead to see what they are. Yardarm Technologies image credit: Yardarm Technologies Gun legislation has always been a front-and-center topic in the U.S., but it reached a fever pitch in the months following the tragic events in Aurora, Colo. and Newtown, Conn. But while politicians have been trying without success to find a solution, Yardarm Technologies has come up with a high-tech idea--a wireless controller that allows gun owners to disable a weapon remotely. If a gun is moved, an alarm is triggered on the owner's phone, and he or she can then disable the weapon remotely. An Associated Press report said that the technology would cost gun owners an extra $50 per weapon, while the service itself would carry a $12 annual fee. Systems and Materials Research Consultancy image credit: SMRC 3-D printing is a technology that fabricates objects based on a digital model. It made headlines in 2012 when a company called Defense Distributed created the world's first 3-D-printed gun, but Systems and Materials Research Consultancy is currently researching ways to use it to fabricate food. NASA awarded the Austin, Texas-based company a Small Business Innovation Research grant of $125,000to develop food to be printed for space missions. Senior mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor said that the technology could someday be used to address world hunger.

Empower Network

Almost a Secret

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks and other technologies to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses (cf. Internet memes and memetics). It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of theInternet and mobile networks. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages. The most common utilized transmission vehicles for viral messages include: pass-along based, incentive based, trendy based, and undercover based. However, the creative nature of viral marketing enables an "endless amount of potential forms and vehicles the messages can utilize for transmission", including mobile devices. The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time. The term "VRL marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the unscrupulous use of astroturfing online combined with undermarket advertising[clarification needed] in shopping centers to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm. History The emergence of "viral marketing," as an approach to sales, has been tied to the popularization of the notion that ideas spread like viruses. The field that developed around this notion, memetics, peaked in popularity in the 1990s. As this then began to influence marketing gurus, it took on a life of its own in that new context.There is debate on the origination and the popularization of the specific term viral marketing, though some of the earliest uses of the current term are attributed to the Harvard Business School graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport. The term was later popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Companyarticle "The Virus of Marketing,"and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users. Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Doug Rushkoff. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them," in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each infected user shares the idea with more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one—the standard inepidemiology for qualifying something as an epidemic), the number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve. Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is sustained by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising.[citation needed]Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential." Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phonenetworks, due to their personal nature.[citation needed]In early 2013 the first ever Viral Summit was held in Las Vegas. It attempted to identify similar trends in viral marketing methods for various media. Methods and metrics This section's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.  (January 2013)According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the transformation of an ordinary message into a viral one: market mavens, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are individuals who are continuously ‘on the pulse’ of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an exceptionally large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distribution. Market mavens may not be particularly convincing in transmitting the information.Message: Only messages that are both memorable and sufficiently interesting to be passed on to others have the potential to spur a viral marketing phenomenon. Making a message more memorable and interesting or simply more infectious, is often not a matter of major changes but minor adjustments.Environment: The environment is crucial in the rise of successful viral marketing – small changes in the environment lead to huge results, and people are much more sensitive to environment. The timing and context of the campaign launch must be right.Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies’ landmark viral marketing study in 2001, carves a different role for marketers which pushes the ‘art’ of viral marketing much closer to 'science.'Feldman points out that when marketers take a disciplined approach to viral marketing by targeting, measuring and continually optimizing their campaigns based on campaign metrics, viral marketing transforms the customer into a new sales channel, a new lead generation channel and a new awareness generating channel. Feldman's innovative reconceptualization of viral marketers went a long way towards making "viral marketing" a strategy that sales and marketing directors at Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies could legitimately invest in. This disciplined approach to viral marketing that Feldman first carved out, pointed the way towards measuring the ROI of every viral marketing campaign and thus making a real business case for investing in viral marketing. The customer-as-a-sales-channel approach to viral marketing went on to become the foundation for an explosion of technology enabled viral marketing services offered online, offline and in blended hybrid approaches. Methods Viral marketing often involves and utilizes:Customer participation and polling servicesIndustry-specific organization contributionsInternet search engines and blogsMobile smartphone integrationMultiple forms of print and direct marketingTarget marketing web servicesSearch engine optimization (SEO)Social media optimization (SMO)Television and radioViral target marketing is based on three important principles: Social profile gatheringProximity market analysisReal-time key word density analysisBy applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost effective advantage.The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast; it can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight. However, the Internet and social media technologies themselves do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to share content to other people faster. Therefore, it is generally agreed that a campaign must typically follow a certain set of guidelines in order to potentially be successful: It must be appealing to most of the audience.It must be worth sharing with friends and family.A large platform, e.g. YouTube or Facebook must be used. An initial boost to gain attention is used, e.g. seeding, buying views, or sharing to Facebook fans.The content is of good quality. Social networking The growth of social networking has significantly contributed to the effectiveness of viral marketing. As of 2009, two thirds of the world's Internet population visits a social network or blog site at least every week.Facebook alone has over 1 billion active users. In 2009, time spent visiting social media sites began to exceed time spent emailing. A 2010 study found that 52% of people who view news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts. Notable examples The Ponzi scheme and related investment pyramid schemes are early examples of viral marketing. In each round, investors are paid interest from the principal deposits of later investors. Early investors enthusiastically recruit their friends, generating exponential growth until the pool of available investors is tapped out and the scheme collapses. Early in its existence, the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 had limited distribution. The producers encouraged viewers to make copies of the show on video tapes and give them to friends in order to expand viewership and increase demand for the fledgling Comedy Central network. During this period the closing credits included the words "Keep circulating the tapes!" Between 1996/1997, Hotmail was one of the first internet business’s to become extremely successful utilizing viral marketing techniques by inserting the tagline “Get your free e-mail at Hotmail” at the bottom of every e-mail sent out by its users. Hotmail was able to sign up 12 million users in 18 months. At the time, this was historically the fastest growth of any user based media company. By the time Hotmail reached “66 million users”, the company was establishing “270,000 new accounts each day”. In 2000, Slate.com described TiVo's unpublicized gambit of giving free systems to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt. Burger King has used several marketing campaigns. Its The Subservient Chicken campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.The Blendtec viral video series Will It Blend? debuted in 2006. In the show, Tom Dickson, Blendtec founder and CEO, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender. Will it Blend? has been nominated for the 2007 YouTube award for Best Series, winner of .Net Magazine's 2007 Viral Video campaign of the year and winner of the Bronze level Clio Award for Viral Video in 2008. In 2010, Blendtec claimed the top spot on the AdAge list of "Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time." The Will It Blend page on YouTube currently shows nearly 200 million video views. In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment promoted the return of Chris Jericho with a viral marketing campaign using 15-second cryptic binary code videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho, although speculation existed throughout WWE fans over whom the campaign targeted. The text "Save Us" and "2nd Coming" were most prominent in the videos. The campaign spread throughout the internet with numerous websites, though no longer operational, featuring hidden messages and biblical links to further hint at Jericho's return. In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting Portugal integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. The Big Word Project, launched in 2008, aimed to redefine the Oxford English Dictionary by allowing people to submit their website as the definition of their chosen word. The project, created to fund two Masters students' educations, attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide, and was featured on Daring Fireball and Wired Magazine. Between December 2009 and March 2010 a series of seven videos were posted to YouTube under the name "iamamiwhoami" leading to speculation that they were a marketing campaign for a musician. In March 2010, an anonymous package was sent to an MTV journalist claiming to contain a code which if cracked would give the identity of the artist.  The seventh video, entitled 'y', appears to feature the Swedish singer Jonna Lee. On July 14, 2010, Old Spice launched the fastest growing online viral video campaign ever, garnering 6.7 million views after 24 hours, ballooning over 23 million views after 36 hours. Old Spice's agency created a bathroom set in Portland, OR and had their TV commercial star, Isaiah Mustafa, reply to 186 online comments and questions from websites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, YouTube and others. The campaign ran for 3 days. http://www.empowernetwork.com/almostasecret.php?id=debagta12

10 of the Most Innovative Small Businesses of 2013

10 of the Most Innovative Small Businesses of 2013 Daniel Bukszpan - CNBC8 Jun 2013 No matter how far the marketplace advances, there will always be problems that plague consumers and that no company can seem to solve. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it creates a niche for the right company to fill. For example, motorists experience considerable straining when cleaning their windshields from the inside. So the makers of the Windshield Wonder saw an opportunity to address an unaddressed problem, a successful product was born, and the rest is history. Small businesses can experience great success and expand their operations when they find innovative solutions to common problems. Often, it can mean cultivating a loyal and much-needed customer base, which any small business needs in order to sustain itself and grow. What follows is a list of 10 innovative small businesses that are making their mark this year with inventive products. Read ahead to see what they are. Yardarm Technologies image credit: Yardarm Technologies Gun legislation has always been a front-and-center topic in the U.S., but it reached a fever pitch in the months following the tragic events in Aurora, Colo. and Newtown, Conn. But while politicians have been trying without success to find a solution, Yardarm Technologies has come up with a high-tech idea--a wireless controller that allows gun owners to disable a weapon remotely. If a gun is moved, an alarm is triggered on the owner's phone, and he or she can then disable the weapon remotely. An Associated Press report said that the technology would cost gun owners an extra $50 per weapon, while the service itself would carry a $12 annual fee. Systems and Materials Research Consultancy image credit: SMRC 3-D printing is a technology that fabricates objects based on a digital model. It made headlines in 2012 when a company called Defense Distributed created the world's first 3-D-printed gun, but Systems and Materials Research Consultancy is currently researching ways to use it to fabricate food. NASA awarded the Austin, Texas-based company a Small Business Innovation Research grant of $125,000to develop food to be printed for space missions. Senior mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor said that the technology could someday be used to address world hunger. AMP Americas image credit: David Reede | All Canada Photos | Getty Images AMP Americas is a Chicago-based company that makes compressed natural gas. While the alternative fuel market already has plenty of businesses that call themselves "innovative," this one truly is: Its fuel is converted from cow manure. The company's efforts were highlighted in March in The New York Times, which said the fuel was being used by a dairy farm to power it 42 tractor-trailers that deliver its milk to different states. The article also cited Energy Department officials, who called the technology a "pacesetter." Able Planet image credit: Able Planet People who don't need a conventional hearing aid but want to enhance sounds can use a personal amplifier. Able Planet is a noise-cancelling headphone manufacturer whose personal amplifier was singled out for praise by The Wall Street Journal in September, and in Popular Science in December. The technology uses noise-cancelling technology and is smaller than a dime. In a February CNET review, writer Elizabeth Armstrong Moore said: "I can certainly imagine putting these on regularly when I go to bars, rock shows, and soccer matches where I sometimes struggle conversing with the person right in front of me." SnuggWugg image credit: SnuggWugg | YouTube Changing a diaper is one of life's less pleasant tasks, even when baby is lying perfectly still. Much of the time, however, baby doesn't lie perfectly still, and thrashes and squirms. This created a ripe opportunity for a resourceful entrepreneur to revolutionize the process, and Lisa Cash Hanson was that entrepreneur. Hanson invented the SnuggWugg, which she described in an e-mail as "an interactive diaper changing pillow that helps parents so their babies don't twist and turn on the changing table." The business will launch later in 2013, but it already has the advantage of having won the 2012 Huggies Mom Inspired Grant of $15,000. See the next article. http://www.empowernetwork.com/almostasecret.php?id=debagta12