The story of how Hotmail moved from zero to a couple of million subscribers in a few months is one that is often told in many sites all over the net. However it is a story that many do not quite understand. If they understood it, we would be seeing many more online success stories and fewer online failures. Because the word has also been over-used by hype peddlers, many times people associate the word viral with spamming and other online activities bordering on the illegal.

Viral growth and marketing has always been with us.

They fail to realize that viral growth and marketing is not something new to the human race. In fact it has been there since the beginning of time. The human race began with two people, Adam and Eve. Today the human race has filled virtually every corner of this huge planet. Many religions of the world started with a single person but were quickly virally marketed to reach millions.

Even the now World Wide Web started off as a few computers, mainly used by researchers, linked together. But as they continuously enjoyed their experience and as new software and technology was made available for more people to join this small web of linked computers it suddenly started growing. The growth within a very short time has been explosive and it has all been viral. So let us be clear that viral marketing was not invented or created by the net, the net in fact used it to grow to what it is today.

Viral marketing will only work with something useful.

As many MLM and network marketing people have discovered, viral marketing will not work with products that people do not find useful. Some marketing experts have always turned to viral marketing in the form of MLM or network marketing to push and clear stocks of a product that has totally failed in the market. Where they think they have succeeded, they have only ruined their credibility and that of their businesses as folks have ended up with massive stocks of some useless item stored in their garage because they believed somebody who told them they would make a lot of money. This is the chief reason why Multi-level Marketing (which is pure viral marketing) has such a bad name with many people.

The internet is a natural for viral marketing.

The reason why Hotmail was so successful so quickly is because the net actually multiplies and speeds up the viral effect. In real life you may forget the name of the movie you liked so much when you are telling a friend about it, or the name of the book you read last year.

On the internet, forwarding an interesting article usually involves a few quick clicks and even if you forget the title of the book, a quick visit to your favorite search engine armed with the few keywords or just the name of the author will yield the book for you complete with the current online specially offer price for it.

If you want to succeed online you cant avoid thinking viral.

Anybody who wants explosive growth and success in any online endeavour cannot avoid thinking virally in all their marketing plans. Failing to use this powerful marketing method, that has been successfully used since the beginning of time, will be a very unfortunate thing indeed.