What does the flu have to do with building your list?

Well a lot!

A flu, just like any other virus is able to spread itself to anyone it comes in contact with.

And when we are building are email lists, we want this same type of viral effect to take place. This viral effect is known as viral marketing.

Viral Marketing is allowing people to giveaway and use your free product or service in order to spread your message quickly over the internet. I also call this form of marketing wild fire marketing because as soon as it starts, it will spread your marketing all over the internet like a wild forest fire. When this happens, it will be difficult to stop it.

The idea behind viral marketing is that you include your ad with a freebie people giveaway or use. The ad will be an advertisement of your ezine or newsletter. Below are ten high impact viral marketing strategies:

1. Allow people to use any of your freebies as free bonuses for products or services they sell. Include your ad on all your freebies. A lot of product owners are willing to do this.

2. Allow people to reprint your articles on their web site, in their e-zine, newsletter, magazine or ebooks. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

3. Allow people to add their link to your free web site directory. Just require that they return a link back to your web site, advertising your directory.

4. Allow people to sign up for a free web site on your server. Since you are giving away the space, require them to include your banner ad at the top of the site.

5. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own web site. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

6. Allow people to provide your free online service to their web site, visitors, or e-zine subscribers. They could be free e-mail, e-mail consulting, search engine submissions, etc. This is how hotmail grew 12 million subscribers in 1.5 years.

7. Allow people to give away your free software. Just include your business advertisement inside the software program.

8. Allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site.

9. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free ebook if, in exchange, they give away the ebook to their web visitors or e-zine subscribers.

10. Allow people to give away your free ebook to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the internet.

If you combine some of these viral marketing tactics with your list building efforts, you will explode your list in no time.

Maybe you could become the next hotmail?!

Well even if you don