Call it viral marketing, social networking, or perhaps social marketing, but there is no doubt it's profitable. Business 2.0 has written a great article about Threadless, an internet success story if I've ever heard one. This online business started by two Chicago teens now has 26 employees and had sales of $16 million last year. The idea is to get people to contribute to your product line by submitting t-shirt designs, host a contest so that your customers can vote on their favourite design, offer a prize so that the designers are driven to get their friends to visit the site to vote, then produce the products that received the most votes. It's ingenious and takes full advantage of the viral nature of the internet, I only wish I had thought of it!
