Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
70
 www.ideavirus.com
Some people call it network marketing or multi-level marketing. Others think of it as a paid
celebrity endorsement. But it can be as simple as member-get-a-member for your local health
club.
The basic idea is simple: If your recommendation is going to help my business, I’m happy to
pay you to recommend me.
The implementations vary all over the map. When Nike paid the coach of the Duke
University basketball team millions of dollars (for him, not Duke) to coerce his team
members to switch to Nike shoes, they were turning a formerly powerful sneezer into a
promiscuous one. Why? When people see what the Blue Devils wear, they might decide to
wear the same thing.
On the Net, technology makes it easy to take this model and make it much more personal.
Amazon’s affiliate program, in which Amazon pays users a portion of the book revenue they
generate through referrals, is built around this model.
Go to 
www.permission.com
. There, at the bottom of the page, is a link where you can buy a
copy of 
Permission Marketing
. Click on it and it will take you to Barnes & Noble or
Amazon—right to the page on the site that sells 
Permission Marketing.
Both stores give me a
kickback on every sale.
Did I send you to Amazon 
just
because I’m going to get a kickback? Nope. It doesn’t do me
any good to recommend a bookseller where you won’t end up buying the book—I’ll end up
with no kickback and no book sales either. I recommended Amazon because you’re likely to
have one-click shopping already set up, increasing the chances the book will get sold. I also
recommended Barnes & Noble, because their affiliate program is at least as good, and some
of my customers would prefer to shop there. But the kickback still influenced my decision,
and has clearly motivated hundreds of thousands of individuals and businesses to set up links
to their favorite books at Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.

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