Viral Marketing Tips: 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
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Over at <em>The Record</em>, NPR arts editor Tom Cole has an interesting thought about the new self-empowered music economy and jazz artists. Not that creating an online profile is a good or bad thing, he writes -- just that it takes a minute to do right.
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. This
website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet
profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
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