OK, you've got your website idea, written it, built it, FTPd it.... and the 14 hits you've got have been from your mum showing her friends. You need publicity, mate. Luckily Matthew Smith from The Viral Factory and Punchbaby.com has just walked in.

Profit from publicity
The Viral Factory is a new company — formed in September 2001— that exists solely to create viral content. It creates short, punchy, humorous clips, partly for fun but also for profit.

The company is best known for three campaigns:
'Headrush'
'Gift' (for MTV)
'War' (for CDV Software)

Pass it on
'Viral marketing' is essentially word-of-mouth advertising brought on to the Internet. E-mail is an extraordinarily fluid communication channel with amazing reach. The best way to tap into this channel is to get people to pass on your message for you.

It's called viral marketing because the media behaves like a virus. The strong survive and prosper, the weak die off. A carrier (viewer) can 'infect' one or more people with the virus, by e-mailing it to them. A viral chooses its own audience because people who send a clip to their friends won't send that same clip to their gran.

A viral is not the same as a computer virus, however. And it won't wipe your hard drive.

Home-made punch
In theory, anyone with a good idea, a video camera and a couple of mates can create a viral. I used to think that, and I tried quite a few times, without any success. I run punchbaby.com and I get sent hundreds of home-made virals. They're all rubbish.

Look for a motive
Think about the sender's experience. Crucial to viral success is the fact that people send your clip on. Creating something funny isn't necessarily enough - it might be great to receive and watch but not contain the motivation to make people send it on.

Don't rely on language or sound. Many computer users, especially in corporate environments, can't play sound. Virals go global, so if your gag is an English wordplay, your audience is narrowed down to English speakers.

Keep file sizes small. Big files piss people off. Also, there are millions of Hotmail users who can't receive files over 1Mb. Don't exclude them. To get good results, go to a professional. TVF use Automatic TV. The money you save compressing and encoding a file yourself will compromise the quality of the clip and could stop it going viral.

Think about where your piece is going to end up: in little windows on computer screens. Your idea must work at 320 by 240 pixels. Subtlety is generally a bad idea.

Most people who watch virals are at work and they're bored. They want a little light relief and they don't want their brains taxed. This isn't high art.