Patent ID: 7774229

Claim:
A method of marketing a marketable entity selected from a group consisting of goods and services, the method comprising the steps of: a. offering a potential reward from a Provider to a first party in exchange for promotional assistance of the first party, the promotional assistance comprising assistance in a forwarding of a first e-mail message to a second party, the first e-mail message comprising a personalized referral for the marketable entity, a first set of data comprising a first serial number and a first URL link; b. creating a first Web site corresponding to the first URL link, the first Web site providing information on the referenced marketable entity and an offer to transact for the referenced marketable entity; c. correlating the first set of data in the first e-mail message to a first set of database data within a digital database controlled by the Provider, including data within the database relating to the potential reward offered to the first party in exchange for promotional assistance; d. forwarding the first e-mail message from the Provider to the first party; and e. configuring the first e-mail message to be forwarded from the first party directly to the second party, wherein the first party does not give any identifying information about the second party to the Provider.