Well… related to my previous post How To Create A Viral Video – I ran into this series called Viral Video Film School. It’s a bit silly and sarcastic at times but he still has a few good points.

Like in this one, he says you should “snap up some animal fights”:

He mentions Battle at Kruger which ranked #6 on my Top 10 Most Viral Videos Of 2007 list and has gotten over 36 million views.

I’ve only watched a couple of videos from the Viral Video Film School series so if you find a video there that you think is cool let me know – I would like to check it out.

And related to my previous post Motivating quotes here is a quote I found interesting:

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

Well, take care – I’ll post more when I get back from my trip.

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Wondering how you can make the Top 10 Most Viral Videos list? Check out this video I found about how to create a popular viral video:

Mine’s doing great, got over a million hits and it just landed me a job at a hot new media firm.

Specific areas include:

• Filming yourself sitting at your desk
• Hurting yourself
• Hurting others
• Using animals to hurt people…

Very funny parody :) So cheesy… ;) But this parody is fairly viral – it has gotten over 47,000 views (although it’s been more than 1,5 years since it was posted on YouTube – it has probably been posted on a few other places where it’s gotten several thousand additional views).

That’s one way to make your video successfully viral – make it funny. Also, if your video is about something related to the internet and internet culture then it’s likely to be passed around…

Here are a couple more videos/ads from the Viral Learning Center:

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(via iJustine)

This is an excellent example of how to create a viral video. It was posted March 20, 2008 and it already has 84,071 views. He also has some more internet marketing related rap videos on his YouTube channel.

If you’re trying to create a viral video you should consider how you can make it entertaining – if you analyze some of the most popular videos you’ll see that many of them have at least some entertainment value. Think about “What would make people watch this?”.

Oh, by the way – did you see the new Gmail feature that Google announced? It could come in handy to be able to make your mail appear to have been sent earlier – even mark it as people had read it ;)

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Happy holidays and a happy new year. At the end of the year people often look back over what happened that year. I think viral videos are fascinating – how a video travels around the world through word-of-mouth or click-of-link from person to person until millions of people have seen it. Sometimes this is just a personal video that the author perhaps just wanted to show to a few friends but had no idea millions of people would enjoy it – and sometimes several people have spent time and money creating a video that they then strategically market online…

Whatever the circumstances are viral videos are always entertaining – or at least interesting – otherwise they wouldn’t get millions and millions of views, right? Well, I picked a few of the popular videos I’ve noticed pop up in 2007 and ranked them against each other. I took the number of views the videos have right now and divided it by the date it was posted (well, actually how many days were left of the year when it was posted). Without further adieu I present to you The Top 10 Most Viral Videos Of 2007:

#10
Daft Hands – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

A fun little video – just one take. Probably just a boy/girl that was having fun and had no idea this cool video would get over 11 million views.

Views: 11,440,476
Added: June 06, 2007
Average (per day): 55,002.29 views

#9
me singing “what goes around“ Justin Timberlake

I’m pretty sure they were hoping this video would become viral. Looks like it worked – if you want to make a video viral just add Justin Timberlake ;) This is Dutch singer Esmée Denters and she was the first artist to be signed on the new Tennman Records label headed by Justin Timberlake.

Views: 13,094,860
Added: May 28, 2007
Average: 60,344.98

#8
CPDRC inmates doing the dance from Thriller

Amazing video – from the description on YouTube: “1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser.”

Views: 10,157,475
Added: July 17, 2007
Average: 60,823.20

#7
PARIS IN JAIL: The Music Video

Clever and funny video – very smart to take advantage of the hype around Paris Hilton going to jail.

Views: 12,928,112
Added: June 06, 2007
Average: 62,154.38

#6
Battle at Kruger

Amazing video – a bit longer than most viral videos (08:23) but definitely worth watching… this is nature at its best – Never give up. This authors of this video definitely got noticed – a clip from the description on YouTube: “NEWS: National Geographic has sent us back to Africa to develop a special giving the behind-the-scenes story on how we got this amazing footage. Potential airdate: Spring 2008″

Views: 22,696,930
Added: May 03, 2007
Average: 93,788.97

#5
Paul sings Nessun Dorma

This is a very interesting video with a plot twist ;) I didn’t see that coming… Very inspiring video – don’t judge a book by its cover, right? This is Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma on the UK talent show “Britain’s got Talent” – it’s no surprise that he won.

Views: 19,690,787
Added: June 10, 2007
Average: 96,523.47

#4
How to Charge an iPod using electrolytes and an onion

Cool video – might come in handy if you don’t have access to electricity ;)

Views: 5,510,023
Added: November 10, 2007
Average: 108,039.67

#3
Chris Crocker – LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!

This is the weirdest video on the list… not exactly entertaining but, uh… interesting. Well, it got a lot of views, some media exposure and I think I heard this Chris Crocker got a TV deal out of this. It probably helped that he was kind of taking advantage of the hype around Britney Spears.

Views: 14,803,559
Added: September 10, 2007
Average: 132,174.63

#2
The Landlord

Very funny video. Will Ferrel, Adam McKay & Co. used this video to launch their video site FunnyOrDie.com and it looks like it worked, big time.

Views: 51,292,692
Added: 8 months ago
Average: 196.523,72

…
and, drum roll please
…

The #1 most viral video of 2007 is:

Jeff Dunham – Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Funny video, pretty long (10:47) – looks like it’s ripped from Jeff Dunham’s DVD. But I think it’s cool that Jeff Dunham has allowed this to stay on YouTube (with over 21 million views he probably has heard of it being there) – he definitely understands that this will only help with sales of his DVDs, other merchandise and tickets to his show. I wish more companies/artists/entertainers would realize how much they can gain by letting a few minutes of their videos stay on YouTube.

Views: 21,601,141
Added: September 29, 2007
Average: 232.270,33

What do you think? Had you seen all of these videos? If you liked this list I would really appreciate it if you would Digg it :)

People might say that the Jeff Dunham video and “Paul sings Nessun Dorma” shouldn’t belong here since they weren’t posted by the copyright holder – but they are still on YouTube and they have gotten quite a lot of views…

If you take a look at this list you might notice that quite a few of them have celebrities in them or are referencing celebrities – so, if you want to make a really viral video you should think about that.

Honorable mention

A Special Christmas Box (aka “D*ck in a Box”). Although it was first posted at the end of 2006 it become quite popular in 2007 and even received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. According to Wikipedia it got over 28 million views on YouTube – but NBC removed it from YouTube in October 2007.

If the embedded video above should disappear/not work you might be able to see the uncensored version (if you live in USA) here on NBC.com.

Another video that I want to mention that almost made the cut is Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday:

It has gotten over 12 million views in about 8 months and is quite an internet hit – they even referenced “chocolate rain” on the show 30 Rock :) It has also brought Tay Zonday some success – Dr Pepper got him to star in an advertisement for Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper.

Did I forget any popular viral videos? Let me know in the comments – I might add them to the post…

UPDATE
I totally forgot about Miss Teen USA 2007 – South Carolina answers a question

With 20,650,575 views and being posted August 24, 2007 it got an average of 161.332,62 views per day – and it would have been #3 on the list (pushing out “Daft Hands – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”).

I realize that my method of calculating the “viralness” of the videos might not be the best way – but it’s one way of seeing how popular they became. Most viral videos have a peak – a few days/weeks where they get the majority of the views. So the most recently posted videos might have a slight advantage on this list. I just thought that total views wasn’t accurate since those that have been online for a longer time have an advantage. Maybe it would be better to just take how many views the video got the first week/month… but sometimes videos don’t become viral until months after they are put online – often when a popular blog links to it.

Well, best of luck in the new year. I’ll see you again in 2008 :)

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When you want to grow in your business there is only so much you can do on your own. That’s why you might want to reach out to others and see if they can help you – or better yet, if you can help each other. You could consider outsourcing, hiring staff or doing joint ventures with other people. If you want to do JVs you could try co-registration (if you have a mailing list), mailing list “swap” (where you send your mailing list a promo for their product and they do the same for you), or join forces with one or more partners on a project (big or small) – even a simple link exchange can be considered a JV.

You might not even have to reach out to other people – sometimes you just have to keep your eyes open. I was checking out Douglas Karr’s blog a couple of weeks ago and noticed that he was looking for contributors to a contest he was holding. Doug was looking for 10 partners where each partner contributed $100. That’s why you can now…

Win $1,000 Cash!

..plus, other cool prizes. Contests are always fun so I decided to contribute to the contest. I also thought this was a great opportunity to get some extra exposure. Doug has over 1000 RSS subscribers – which is a pretty big audience. I have 100+ RSS subscribers and in the first contest on this blog I gave away $25 (or a featured link) and a website review (which took a lot of time). So, spending $100 to reach a 10 times bigger audience looks like a pretty smart move ;) Not to mention, I don’t have to worry about managing the contest and all the extra things that take time.

Just for fun I decided to on top of the $100 to throw in some extra prizes:

• A copy of the A Pound A Day Diet eBook
• A copy of the eBook Confidential Internet Intelligence Manuscript Volume II: Your Business Battle Plan and Your Life on Fire
• 3 Month Membership to Affiliate Booby Traps

Those extra prizes are valued at $103,85 on their own.

How to enter

Oh, you want to know how you can win the $1,000? Well, all the details are over at Doug’s blog but basically you have to write a blog post with a reference to each sponsor and a couple sentences about their site, product or service. You can combine all sponsors in one post – or do a post for each sponsor, giving you 10 entries into the contest (10 times better chance of winning!). The deadline is November 25th, 2007 – so you have about 6 days. You better hurry… just head on to the contest post for the details, write your post(s) and submit your entry through the form. On last count there were 32 entries in the contest – which means that if you write a post for each sponsor you’ll have about 1/4 chance of winning $1,000 cash!

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So, time is of the essence and if you want to check it out you can click here for “Same List More Profit”. I just bought it and look forward to receiving it – it’s actually a physical DVD, not “just” a digital product – although they’re nice too ;) A few months ago they also had this kind of a “nickel sale” and I bought that package too – the video was pretty cool and I learned a few things so I’m sure I won’t be disappointed.

You might be wondering what the DVD is all about… Well, like the name suggests they will take you through how you can make profit with the same mailing list – or, if you don’t have a mailing list – how you can build a new and profitable mailing list the right way. Gary and Keith both have huge mailing lists and know how to make the most of their lists – they’ve been around for quite some time and tested a lot of different things. I know from my own experience that having a responsive mailing list can bring you some nice extra money by just sending out an e-mail with your affiliate link in it. However, I must admit that I’ve been neglecting my lists a little bit over the past few months because of lack of time. But that will all soon change when I get my hands on that DVD ;)

Right now the price is $4.40 so you can get a physical DVD sent to your door that can help you grow your business for just a few bucks (+ shipping). Click here to lock into that price before it goes any higher.

Just to let you know – there is an upsell, but you might want to check it out if you’re interested in starting a serious business that can bring you a serious income.

By the way, Paul Kleinmeulman is using the same trick with his Profit Funnel Secrets package. I also have that – excellent product that teaches you one of the vital parts of having a profitable business. It’s a digital product (video + eBooks) so you’ll get access immediately.

Keywords: Gary Ambrose, Keith Wellman, Nickel Mania, DVD, urgency, fear of loss, upsell, Paul Kleinmeulman, profit funnel

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I was in the original “my name is my domain” list so it’s only logical that I make a post to keep the “list train” moving – hopefully this will create a second (or third or fourth…) wave that’ll bring in some additional links for everybody involved.

So, by posting this list on your own blog you can get a lot of new links to your blog if other bloggers pick up the list from there. Another reason why you should post this list on your blog is that you most likely will get the blog owners that you are linking to coming to your blog to check you out. Because a lot of blog owners check their Technorati stats to see what new blogs are linking to them. Especially those that use WordPress because they can see the latest links on the WP dashboard when they log in.

The Rules

As Gary said: the real name of the author must be included in the domain name. It doesn’t have to be your full name – but it can’t be in a subdomain of another domain. So…

Instructions

***Start Copying Here***

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the ENTIRE List below and add it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take “My Adds” and move them into the “My Originals” list.

4) Add 3 Brand New Narcissistic Bloggers that you know of

My Adds
Gobala Krishnan
Jonathan Leger
I don’t remember any more bloggers with their name in the domain that haven’t already been added to this list by someone else – so I’m only adding 2.

My Originals

Gary Lee
Ed Lau
John Chow
Nate Whitehill
Stephen Fung
Freelance writing
Jeff Kee
Stuart Hannig
Make Money Online
Nomar
Jimi Morrison
Nathan Drach
Saman Sadeghi
***Stop Copying Here***

I think it’s also important to write about the rules of this list if you decide to participate and post this on your own blog – because I’ve noticed a few people posting this list on their blog but their name isn’t in the domain – but I won’t complain, a link is a link ;) — Also, it’s of course very important that you keep all the links in the list active and make sure the code isn’t broken or anything – I’ve seen a few blogs that mess up the list.

As you might have noticed I’ve changed the anchor text for my blog to “Make Money Online” – that just makes sense from an SEO point of view. If you’re on the original list and you want me to edit your listing let me know.

Hey, if you’re on this list and you’re visiting because you noticed a new link to your blog please say hi in the comments ;)

If you’re interested in viral marketing you might want to check out this Mark Joyner eBook. Mark is a legend in the internet marketing field and one of the pioneers of online viral marketing.

Keywords: viral, viral marketing, viral traffic, list, mark joyner, domain, name

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ReviewMe Bloggers,

We wanted to inform you about a special ReviewMe promotion we are running that may be of interest to your readers. We have found that advertisers who have used RM have been impressed and keep coming back for more reviews. So our biggest challenge is getting an advertiser to try it once. To encourage new advertisers we are offering a special coupon code that will give advertisers 50% off any review they purchase this month. The cool part is 100% of the sale price will go to the blogger so there is no discount in payout to you.

For advertisers to use the 50% off coupon they simply have to enter: trial

into the coupon code at checkout. This special promotion will be good for the rest of the month. Thanks again and we hope to have some reviews ready for you soon!

They also posted about it on their blog.

I think this very cool – I’ve been considering buying a review for some of my sites and with this 50% discount… well, it’s just an offer you can’t refuse :) I also think this is a good move by ReviewMe – they’ll most likely get quite a few loyal customers out of this promotion. I think it’s great that they are taking the discount on themselves and giving 100% to the blogger.

Unfortunately Hannes Johnson dot Com doesn’t qualify for ReviewMe because it’s so new – but my other blog The Home Biz Blog did qualify and is listed on ReviewMe. The front page of The Home Biz Blog has PageRank 4 – any website would benefit from a link from a PR4 web page and who doesn’t want to increase their search engine rankings?

So, now you can get a review on The Home Biz Blog for only $30 instead of the normal $60 price. As a bonus I’ll also post the review here on Hannes Johnson dot Com – I expect this blog to have at least a PageRank 3 in the next Google update. Order the review here – just remember to use the coupon code: trial

Remember that this offer is only valid the month of February – so you have about 2 weeks to jump on this.

If you’re interested you can help me get into ReviewMe by linking to the blog (adding me to your blogroll) and/or subscribing to my feed ;)

Keywords: ReviewMe, advertising, blogs, hannes johnson, reviews, PageRank, discount, SEO, search engine rankings, search engine optimization, coupon, coupon code

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If you don’t know Mark Joyner he’s often referred to as the godfather of internet marketing. He’s the innovator of many online marketing techniques and the founder of Simpleology.

I’m pretty sure I got this holiday card because I’m an affiliate for Simpleology. Last year I also got a holiday card:

That one said:

Dear Hannes, Many thanks for your support of Simpleology! …

It was a pleasant surprise – I never thought I would get a personal holiday card from Mark Joyner. That card was handwritten whereas the card I received this month was printed (but personalized). I guess last year (well, 2005) Mark only had a handful of affiliates (Simpleology had just started) but now he probably has hundreds (even thousands) of affiliates promoting Simpleology.

I think it was a very nice gesture of Mark and I definitely want to do something like this for my own affiliates. Like Mark teaches in Simpleology 102 over-delivering is a great way to create buzz and word of mouth.

By the way, Mark just released Simpleology 103 which is a course on how to get healthy and have more energy. You might want to check it out… I’m half-way through 102 (which focuses on money) and I’m definitely going to start on 103 immediately after I finish 102.

Keywords: markjoyner, mark joyner, affiliates, hannes johnson, Simpleology, affiliate program, holiday cards, greeting cards

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I just read this great article over at ProBlogger – it’s by guest blogger Tony Hung and he lists a lot of good tips on how to market your blog in 2007.

Tony split the tips into a few categories. Here are some that I liked and/or found interesting – with my comments:

Get Your Own House In Order

• #3 Design is more important than you think – like I said before, standing out is usually good. Although I didn’t get a custom made theme for my blog I don’t think thousands are using this theme right now. But I will definitely modify it later on to make it unique – or start from scratch with my very own.
• #6 Do interviews with other bloggers – yeah, that sounds like a good idea and might be something I’ll be doing in the near future…
• #8 Have a contest – ok, cool idea. That sounds like fun, it could definitely build some buzz and get my readers excited. I’ll have to come up with a good contest :)
• #14 Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way) – hmm… ok, I guess since Yahoo! thought MyBlogLog was worth paying $10 million for it must be valuable. I’ll have to take a look at that and start building my posse ;)

Getting the Word Out

• #1 Join a blog carnival – ok, I hadn’t heard about a “blog carnival” before. This is one of the things I have to take a better look at.
• #5 Join Blogburst – another service I hadn’t heard about. I guess it wouldn’t so bad if one my blog articles would get syndicated on Reuters :)
• #10 Get interviewed – sounds good… maybe when I’ve blogged some more people would be interested in interviewing me.
• #12 Create free stuff for yourself and give it away – yup, a classic strategy. Later this year I might collect the top 20 posts and offer them as a PDF download.

Connect, Connect, Connect

• #2 Guest blog – Tony Hung is probably getting a lot of traffic because he got a guest blogger spot at ProBlogger. I would be happy to guest blog on some nice blog ;)

Make Social Media Work For You

• #4 Create a Squidoo Page Lens – yeah, I’ve been meaning to set up a lens for some time now. I read Seth’s blog a lot and I think Squidoo is a cool idea. You can probably get a lot of traffic if you build a nice lens related to your niche.
• #5 Use MySpace Marketing – I haven’t yet joined MySpace. A lot of people recommend MySpace as a marketing tool so I guess it’s working for them. But I think it’s silly to go spam MySpace to get as many friends as possible…

Well, that’s just a few things you can do to promote your blog. Tony actually lists 41 things… But you should start with something simple like “Participate on larger blogs in comments” and as you get comfortable you can move into more advanced tactics.

Technorati tags: tips, blog tips, blog promotion, hannes johnson, website promotion, blog marketing, blogs

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