Viral Marketing With Free eBooks

Writing eBooks and giving them away is a relatively simple way put your promotions on 'Autopilot'

EBooks are one of the most popular and pervasive electronic products available. They are easy to create and easy to distribute... and, aside from the time it takes to write and compile them, they are very inexpensive - or even free - to make.

Anyone who has been online for more than a week has seen websites that use viral marketing tactics... free software, articles & reports, short videos - and ebooks. Most don't do that from the goodness of their hearts - they are doing it to increase their sales.

And it works very well.

Part of the popularity of viral marketing, and ebooks in particular, is due to the 'Instant Gratification' aspect of their distribution... people just click a link and in a minute or two they are reading. Simple as that.

'Viral' refers to a virus, but not the bad kind. For marketing, viral refers to the way it spreads from one user to another, just like a virus.

Why Bother Writing Free Viral eBooks?

As you know, to be successful you have to continuously promote your website.

Millions of people participate in viral marketing every day without even realizing it. In their minds, they are only sharing interesting or amusing things they find with their friends, family and co-workers.

EBooks are the perfect tool for spreading a marketing virus, and a handful of free ebooks, spreading around the internet and going from friend to friend truly can put your marketing on autopilot... and they can do that for very little cost or effort on your part.

The secret to using ebooks as a viral marketing tool is not just to provide enough information so that people will want to read them, but to have enough good information that they will want to pass them along to their friends and/or give them away from their own websites.

Encourage your readers to pass the ebooks along

While a simple encouragement will create some sharing between friends, it works better if you give other webmasters a good reason to share your ebook with their visitors.

You can point out that if they give the ebook away with a subscription to their newsletter, they will get more new subscribers.

You can remind them that giving away freebies of any kind from their websites will increase the number of visitors that they will get.

Even better - with some ebook compilers, you can write an ebook that other webmasters can customize with their own names, urls and affiliate links. This can dramatically increase the number of people who are willing to distribute your ebook, since there is something in it for them.

There are also websites that list all the free ebooks that they can find. Just google for 'free ebook distribution' or something like that.

Where To Find eBook Content

Of course, you can write every word yourself. But you don't need to. Especially considering the sheer volume of free content that thousands of people are begging you to use.

Lets say that you wanted to create a viral ebook about .... umm... Dog Grooming. Okay, there are hundreds of free-to-reprint articles that you can use to add useful content. Pick ten good ones, make a page for each, and you'll have a solid core for a viral ebook.

Note: You can contact the authors, tell them you used their articles, and ask them to promote the your ebook too.

To flesh it out, just add five or ten pages of your own content... an introduction page and a "Top Ten Grooming Tips" page... a page for useful links and another that has a printable checklist or a grooming schedule... use your imagination. The more helpful information and resources the better your results will be.

Once the content is all organized, just compile it into an ebook.

Not too difficult, right? Of course every page should have your website name & URL, plus space for your affiliate links to a merchant selling dog grooming supplies.

Just remember that the content is the main thing! If you make it too heavy on the advertising very few people will want to pass it around.

To get the greatest benefit, you may want to write a series of short ebooks (10 - 20 pages) that provide helpful information for your readers. Ideally, each ebook will give them enough information to establish your reputation as an expert, but not so much that they don't have any reason to visit your website or buy your product.

Plus, if you want other webmasters to promote it with enthusiasm you should use a compiler that creates blank places in the ebook where they can put in their own website info and a few of their own affiliate links.

Which Ebook Software Should You Use?

There are many HTML and WYSIWYG compilers available, priced from free to over $200. Free compilers are ok, if you want to just get your feet wet with the whole viral ebook concept, but they don't have the features that will make it work big-time for you. Like full personal branding and user customizing, just to name two big ones.

Two programs that I feel are worth way more than the purchase price are eBook Starter and Activ E-book Compiler:

eBook Starter is a WYSIWYG compiler that uses variables, little codes that can be used within an eBook for customization purposes. These variables give you the ability to create customizable fields within your ebooks that can be filled with links and branding by your readers. Download your free demo right now and check it out.

My personal favorite (mainly because I just don't like WYSIWYG editors) is Activ E-Book Compiler - This is really easy to use and it's simply packed with powerful features, including rebranding, which allows you to set up parts of your eBook for easy customization. Check out the free evaluation and see how versatile & easy it is to use.

Either of those are worth a poodle's weight in gold, especially considering the ability to let a webmaster customize your ebook and re-distribute them for their own ends.

Creating customizable ebooks is a great way to encourage other webmasters to distribute your ebooks:
• They can make money by including their own affiliate links
• They can increase traffic to their site by putting their own URLs in the ebook
• They can include their company name and increase brand awareness

That's a win-win proposition that will increase your ebook's distribution considerably.

If you don't have the budget buy a compiler right now, but want to get started anyway, you can use a free compiler like SBookBuilder or WebSiteZip Packer, either of them will let you create an ebook that you can use. You may also want to take a look at yGen, a free web site builder and text compiler that can generate a website or ebook from your own templates.

Once you are giving away ebooks, and people start passing them around, you will start to see an increase in traffic and in sales....

Lets say in the first month you give out ten ebooks,
those ten people pass your ebook to five people each,
- that's sixty readers the first month.
..In the second month you give away ten more,
..those ten people pass it along to five more each,
..plus, the first month's sixty have passed it to five each,
...For a two-month total of over four hundred new readers!
...In the third month...
.......well, I'm sure you can see where that's going.

That should give you an idea of how powerful a free viral ebook can be. One of the biggest benefits is that, even a year from now, your ebook will still be working for you!

Final thought: If you are selling your own products, you can also create a catalog section in your ebooks with small product images and descriptions. Add in a "Buy Now" link for each item and you have a great stand-alone promotion tool.

To Your Success!
Tim

By Tim Brown © 2006. About the author: Tim is the webmaster at http://BLT-Web.com, where webmasters can find free tools, advice, tips and other useful resources designed to help them build a successful website.

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