I saw this posted on a forum that I frequent. It offers a great viral marketing idea… playing on people’s fears to get some exposure and money. If anyone tests this out, let me know how it goes by posting a comment! Thanks!

Today I got quite a GRIM text message from someone I didn’t even know. The message had a picture of some scary looking old broad who’s name, according to the text, was “Lisa Dalmer”. Lisa apparently was brutally killed, and that this message was originally from the murderer himself, sent from Lisa’s phone. The message played the background music of “Unsolved Mysteries” and told of the grave story. It also threatened that a similar fate would befall me if I did not forward this message to at least 5 others.

Well needless to say I didn’t forward it to anyone, and I’m still here, but it did help me realize a way to make some cash.

Instructions:

  1. Engineer a freaky text message similar to the one described above, or pick your own viral topic, and instruct in the message that they must visit your website in order to avoid bad luck/death/disease etc.
  2. Pick your favorite opt-in affiliate program. Preferably one that pays for e-mail addresses.
  3. Set up a simple site (in this case a black background with the photo of Lisa Dalmer as the header).
  4. On the site, serve up the sign up form for your pay per e-mail affiliate program.
  5. Instruct the visitor to fill out the form, in order to be safe listed from the “terrible fate”.
  6. Instruct the visitor to forward the message they received to a certain number of friends in order to cement their safety
  7. Watch the money roll in.

Of course you could take this to the extreme and store the information your visitor supplies in a database. You could ask for the mobile number the message was received on, the persons name etc. You could even hook into one of those sites that offer free text messaging (website to mobile number) and have that visitor enter a certain number of mobile #’s, and have the message automatically sent via the web.

I could see something like this taking off quickly depending on how dedicated you are to sending the initial text messages…

Text messages for traffic can be very beneficial. 70% of new phones can view digital media(videos), create a viral video, and brand it with your site URL, and spam it to your phone book. You could even create a WAP page containing your e-mail sponsors form, and let people fill it out right from their phone…