Mark Joyner has deservedly enjoyed a reputation as one of the online world’s most creative and successful marketers, going back many years.

He and I have become Internet friends after he bought a copy of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First over my website and I responded with a personal note.

Now Mark is trying another viral experiment with his new blogging course: giving it to anyone who posts the following text on his or her blog.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

That’s Mark’s language. i don’t write like that. I’d just say that anything Mark is giving away is certainly worth exploring. I own three of his books (one of them, The Great Formula, even has half a chapter by me. I’m going to get my copy.

But anything Mark does is also worth studying. As a marketer, this is what I see:

A clear attempt to go viral with the power of free

Canned text that will show up on hundreds or thousands of websites, and in most cases without any added commentary

My own need to add commentary, in part because I don’t like to pass off other people’s words as my own, and in part because I want to differentiate this page for the gazillion identical pages this will generate

If I were Mark, I’d have actually encouraged people to do their own text, and use his link. But that wasn’t my call to make.