Contrary to what most people believed, promoting free smileys on the internet is tough job; in fact, it's Herculean task. These cute animated free smileys may be popular, but from the point of view of an internet marketer, this popularity is in itself the core of the marketing challenge. Try searching the more popular search engine for "free smileys" and your eyes would pop on 635,000 search engine results. To scale the summit of a search engine's top page, getting passed this huge number of competitors, one has to find a strategy that is "attention-friendly"; something that appeals not just to his niche, but impacts other online users, as well.

The movies!

Not to be outclassed or outlived by the media's frenzy over the multi-million gross receipts of "Dark Knight", a company that creates free smileys published online its free smileys versions of Batman and the Joker, making sure that its online users will have something to capture the movie with; a special free smiley icon that they can send in their emails or decorate the pages of their MySpace and Friendster accounts, or have something to remember by the brilliant performance of its fallen star, Heath Ledger, for months or even years after the movie has retired on DVD. A smart idea. What do you think?

And it seems it's not enough, recently, another smiley came up online; an unlikely hero, but has definitely captured moviegoers' hearts when it was first shown in theaters worldwide. Proof was its million-dollar receipts that catapulted it to one of Hollywood's top grosser's list in 2004: Hellboy.

"Hellboy" caught Hollywood by surprise; and if all surprises could mean millions of revenues, producers would not mind coming up with a sequel, and that's exactly what happened.

Hellboy 2 (The Golden Army) debuted in theaters last week with $35.9 million in gross receipts. Owing to the public's show of keen enthusiasm towards Hollywood's latest movie release, smiley illustrators were quick to go back to the drawing board and came up with their latest edition of this Hollywood- inspired red-skinned hero from the abyss. That's literally and figuratively-speaking "striking the iron while it's hot" (as hell).

Why do free smileys take this marketing route?

James Schmidt explains that his company strives to empower personal communication via emails and social networking sites, such as MySpace and Friendster, by creating innovative and trendy free smileys that motivate, inspire and entertain. Everything redounds on giving online users what they want to share, and seemingly blockbuster movies and TV programs appeal to most of them.

In Good Company with Oprah

As more and more new trends of free smileys are recently added on the internet, there is this brand of free smiley that is cuter, more vibrant and a total runaway winner: Oprah Free Smiley. Search for it.

Oprah Smiley became an instant hit as who would not recognize her, or remember her couch? It was not too long ago when a very famous celebrity pranced on her show's couch while professing his love to his new wife now, before Oprah's stunned audience, and equally surprised TV viewers. That show of affection was one for a Danielle Steele's paperback, while Oprah made it to free smileys' featured hits.

Now the "battle" rages on: which one would be internet's top grossing downloadable Hollywood free smiley or emoticon? Oprah, Hellboy or "Dark Knight"?

When dust settles back on the ground, one thing remains certain: hitching a marketing strategy on events, such as Hollywood's blockbusters' showdown, can be a big hit for website traffic. Don't miss it!