Today I’m doing a review of a new cloud based software called Viral Source.

Now I’m not trying to say that these guys stole my idea or anything. But honestly, I’m pretty sure, about 99% sure in fact, that I had the idea for this software first. Actually I know that they did not steal my idea, because I I never told anyone about it. But still, around late 2014 I had an idea for this kind of software and actually started writing it as a WordPress plugin. But for one reason or another I never got around to finishing it.  I got distracted by other projects and the idea just kind of faded away.

So what exactly is the idea? Its to give people an incentive to share your content for you. I personally got the idea from looking at the social media icons on my blog. I noticed that a lot of people where liking my posts, but honestly anymore likes are not very useful. Your friends on Facebook don’t get a notice of when you like things. So really ‘likes’ are just for your ego, to make you feel good, or just for ‘social proof’ for people who come to your site. What you really want is for people to share your page or post. That is something that other people will see and that is what will help you go viral.

So I came up with the idea to create a WordPress plugin that will give people a free gift when they share your page. But as I said I never finished it. Now fast forward to a few months ago when I met Stefan and Tom in Orlando and we where having a beer together one day and wouldn’t you know it, they start telling me about the new software they where working on that does exactly what my unfinished software would have done if I didn’t get distracted two years ago. Well when they messaged me a week ago and told me it was finished and ready for review I knew I had to check it out.

Setting up a campaign with Viral Source is a three step process.

After entering the campaign name and other basic settings the first step is to create your offer. Offers are presented as a box with text, a call to action button, and optionally a countdown timer. These offer boxes are extremely flexible and fully customizable allowing you to change colors, fonts, design, and branding.

The next step is to take set the action that you want people to take in order to unlock your special content. There are three options:

1. You can have them share your post on a social network. When doing this you can elect to require them to share on any or all of Facebook/ Twitter / LinkedIn / G+ / Pinterest or Tumblr. You can also enter in your custom post title, content and graphic for their share.
2. You can require them to make a post to Facebook and tag friends. This will also require them to ‘log in with Facebook’ which will get you their email address from Facebook.
3.  Finally you can just make them use the Facebook signup to provide you with their email address, no sharing or tagging needed.

After you select what people need to do in order to unlock your content you then need to enter in the content that they will be unlocking. You do this by typing your content in the WYSWYG editor.

This is one place where I think they could have made a big improvement. The editor is great if you just want to deliver some text, like a coupon code or something. But what if you want to deliver something like a plugin or other thing they would download? What you have to do is upload it somewhere else and then enter in a link to where you upload it. That’s kind of a pain. I suggested to the vendors that they allow users to upload a zip file to their system and auto deliver the zip file, thus eliminating the need to add your freebie to some other site and link to it, but this is something that they did not seem interested in implementing unfortunately.

The final step is to get your embed code. You do this by entering the size you want your offer box to be (they are fully responsive and will adjust to any size you enter) and then simply grabbing the code provided.

You can then paste the code into any website, WordPress post, or WordPress page, and when people click your call to action button, they will be told to take the actions you entered, once they do the content you have locked will be displayed to them.

So what do I think of Viral Source over all?

Well as I said I think they could have done a better job by allowing you to upload a zip file that gets delivered as part of your locked content. This would have made giving bonuses such as plugins or files away much more easy. However despite this drawback I really like the idea. In fact I like it so much that I thought of it myself almost two years ago. But hey these guys took action and I didn’t.

I know as a person who runs a popular site that people tend to not share on their own. They will click a like button if you have one, but likes don’t get you more visitors. Shares, tags, and posts do. I also really like that this can collect peoples email addresses from Facebook. This is great because it prevents people from entering in a fake email just to get your freebie (something that I can say from experience that happens quite often). So what you end up here is a great way to get a real email address while at the same time get some social traffic. I have to say sounds good to me. This one is a winner.

Bonus: The vendors have allowed me to give these special bonuses for anyone who buys though my link. They will be in the members area so you can get instant access to them.

Click here to get Viral Source and instant access to all of these bonuses right inside of the members area.

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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