I'm just about to mail the "closing soon" notice for my $8 "28th Birthday Firesale". I'll likely raise the $8 package to a more fair $28, leave it there for a week or two and then close this permanently. Which means a couple of more weeks of stats for the viral script, but it's not looking good at all.

Raw Visitors : Invitations Sent : New Traffic

159 : 34 : 1

Every 159 raw visitors gives me one free visitor.

Though it would be unfair to base my conclusions on just this one campaign... I've used standard TAFs before and the ratios weren't any better.

And while the examples can be drawn that social networks use this to explode virally... that's a far cry from having someone refer friends to an ebook or other similar offer.

If your offer lends itself nicely to mass consumer markets (ie: free movies passes, $100 worth of free gas, etc) ... then I'd assume your ratios would be A LOT better.

If your site is indeed a social network where new users WANT their friends/family to also join, then of course, your ratios will be even that much better.

But at 159 : 1, risking being blacklisted (let's face it, hundreds of emails going out with your domain in it and the unwelcomed email gets clicked as Spam means that domain of yours could be blacklisted fast), risking server bandwidth (add too many rewards computations and tie all this into a launch with massive traffic and you have a new level of bandwidth concerns), etc , etc... I'm just not seeing the point.

Anyways, current ratios sit at:

159 : 34 : 1

Check out the form on the page for yourself to see how the TAF is setup.
http://www.dearemployeebirthdaysale.com ... while you're there, I certainly invite you to click the "Affiliates MAKE MONEY" link at the bottom (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

Okay... I'll be back with another update and then likely just the final totals.

(If you have viral TAF stats, feel free to chime in).