Coming up with a truely viral app will significantly reduce the amount of time and money you have to put into promoting it. The big challenge is coming up with something thats really viral.

It never ceases to amaze me just what works and what doesn’t and the fact that there’s no guarantees. Quite often what works is very surprising indeed.

Just a few days ago we launched a slot machines application.  I use the term “launched” very loosely because what I actually did was stick up a working demo, do a few wall posts and mentioned in in four or five groups (just wall posts in groups – the groups did not belong to me).  I then left it because I wanted to get the new free application written, tested and launched.

So how do you think the slot machine app is performing considering its had virtually no promotion at all?

Take a look at this screen shot of the stats from facebook taken this evening…

Viral growth of a facebook application.

Just a few days growth!

Now that might not look a lot of users but remember this all spawned from me testing the feeds on my own facebook wall (and I have less than a 100 friends on my personal fb account).

I didn’t ask anyone directly to go play I just posted the standard ‘I am playing Super Prize Slots’ feed that’s built into the game and I only did that twice.  I then invited 3 people to play and just picked the 3 most likely to actually take me up on the invite.  I could not ask more because the app is new and they limit invites on a new app.

I then went to three or four groups, I just searched for ‘gaming’, ’slot machines’, ‘casino’, etc.  All I did was a standard group wall post that said “new slots game, play for free and win real prizes” and posted a link.

So in a nutshell LESS than 15 minutes effort.

I then left it alone and went to work on the free app builder that launched this week.

5 days later I get time to check the stats and the app is already growing fast and gaining active users and I’ve done nothing.  I check with Offerpal and find I’ve already made some good money too.

So what makes this so viral?

Firstly this app gives the players a real incentive to invite their friends because just for inviting a friend to play they get some free spins.  If the people they invite actually come and play they get even more free spins.

Secondly because we all know that invites are limited (even an established app only lets a user invite 20 people at a time) we have provided users with a referral link that they can post in groups, emails, on their wall, etc.  This link will give them further free spins everytime someone clicks it and comes to play.

Thirdly, it panders to a common desire in people – they want something for nothing.  People will jump through hoops to get the free spins and the ‘chance’ to win a real prize.  It is no big deal for someone to spend some of their time running around groups and posting their referral link in exchange for free spins.  Those free spins cost you nothing so you have really given them nothing for something – but that is not their perception!

Fourthly, people like to brag.  So when they hit a big win they will post to their wall and those feeds really push the ‘play for free and win real’ message of the game.  They also secretly like that they can tell their friends they discovered this cool game with real prizes.

Add this to the fact that the app keeps people coming back.  If they run out of spins and don’t want to invite people or do surveys at the time they will come back each day to get their free spins.

In short this app seems to really push all the right buttons.  I am going to leave it alone to self promote a little longer as an experiment since I have a load of work at the moment anyway.  But just think how insane this is going to go when I throw my usual promotion methods at it!

Here are a few other things to note:

10% of users have become fans.  This is actually quite a high percentage.  Even the big players like Zynga who put out games like Farmville and Poker have to give incentives to players to become fans.  Here we have simply made sure the become a fan button is on the main game page.  We make it EASY for people to click.

And people WANT to become fans so they don’t forget to come get their free spins, etc.

Viral power is great if you can make something as viral as this because it really does mean that what effort you put in, whether its a lot or next to nothing – is way more powerful because for every new player you find they find you two more!