Viral Marketing With Ebooks
A great way to
promote your site is to produce an electronic book. This viral
marketing technique is actually very clever. You produce the book,
then allow others to distribute it without charging them anything
from their own sites and ezines.
So how does
this work? Well, you gather together between 10 and 20 articles. Less
than 10 articles is not really enough of an ebook to attract much
attention, and more than 20 makes for a large download. Remember to
include enough material to make an interesting book, but not so much
that those people with modems cannot download it in a few minutes.
Before you can
actually create your ebook, you must decide upon the format that you
want to use. Personally, I prefer Adobe Acrobat for the following reasons:
- The reader
is free of charge
- It is
installed on a vast number of systems
- The reader
is available for Windows and MacIntosh systems alike
- It is an
accepted format among the user community
However, the
Acrobat writer product is a bit expensive (around $200) so you may
not want to purchase a copy just to create an ebook. Fortunately, the
PDF file format is open standard, so other products exist which will
create documents which can be read by the Adobe Acrobat reader. One
of the better products is called Easy PDF, which is available for
around thirty bucks.
Adobe
Acrobat - http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/adobeacrobat.htm
Easy
PDF - http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/easypdf.htm
Something to
remember - you don't need to write all of the articles yourself. You
can find suitable articles available for reprint all over the web. In
fact, there are many articles available on this web site which you
can use if you want. Just remember, if you use someone else's
articles, follow their request for a return link (or links) and a
couple of lines about their site (this is called a resource box).
Free
Articles For your Web Site - http://www.internet-tips.net/Sticky/freearticles.htm
There are also
many great places to look for ideas for your articles. Just remember
that there is content all over the place - use it to your advantage.
Also, remember to stay ethical and honor copyrights at all times.
Writing
For The Web
http://www.internet-tips.net/Sticky/writingforweb1.htm
More
Places to get Ideas
http://www.internet-tips.net/Sticky/writingforweb2.htm
Okay so you've
decided on your format and you've got some articles. So put together
a nicely formatted ebook with a table of contents. Be sure and
include hyperlinks to your web site all over - at least one per page.
Also, you can include brief advertisements, links to join your
newsletter and all kinds of other things. It's your ebook - do what
you want.
However,
remember what you are doing is creating something that you want
people to put up on their web sites, send to their friends and
recommend to everyone. Thus, while you want to promote your stuff, be
sure it's valuable enough that people really want it. People don't
recommend advertisements - they recommend content.
Now what?
Advertise the heck out of your new ebook. Post it on your web site,
promote it in your ezine and add a link to your email signature. You
can sell it if you want - or you can just give it away.
Be sure and
give everyone permission to post it, send it, copy it and sell it as
much as they want. In fact, you would be wise to make the first page
totally explain what you are up to. Tell people what they can do with
the ebook, don't make it a secret.
Give it some
time (assuming you've created a worthy ebook) and you may find it
spread all over the internet. And each and every copy will have your
links, your ads and your site mentioned. That can add up to a lot of
traffic - for free.
About the Author:
Richard Lowe
Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.ht
