“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody” – Mark Twain

In Part I, we discussed the rosier side of viral marketing. The “get out there, make a lot of good content, and people will find you” side. This side is taking that side’s lunch money.

Over here, we are working under the assumption that your goal is to make money, and if you have to manipulate the system a bit, that is ok. In order to rise above the masses, we have to make our viral video a bit less “viral”. You have 48 hours: Go.

Optimize your video’s title. If your video title isn’t interesting, people aren’t going to click it. Also, make sure your thumbnail is something interesting.

Pay to play. Bloggers are like most of us – they enjoy making money. Many bloggers with a lot of (targeted) traffic will post your video for a few bucks.

Hit the forums. Have several accounts on many forums (a good list to start from and find focused forums). Post legitimate information for a few months to build up your post count and credibility. Now when you see something “funny” or “interesting” (your viral video) you can post it these forums. If necessary, you can even start a conversation between your different accounts to drum up some conversation.

Hijack the social networks. Twitter about the video; post it in other users’ MySpace comments; send it out to all of your Facebook friends. Ask them to push it forward.

Talk to yourself. Register multiple accounts on YouTube. Create a controversy or at least a heated discussion in the comments section of your video. If someone comes in and says something that is derailing your message, delete it.

Release everything at once. If you have multiple videos, don’t make people wait to see them. The more videos a user watches, the more likely they will click through to your website. Once the first 48 hours are over (and you’re ready to push the next video) delete the #2 video, upload it again, and then begin pushing it. Rinse, repeat for all videos you push up.

This isn’t cheating in the sense of doing something wrong; it is more just a manipulation of a system. You are creating the illusion of grassroots popularity.