Make Profits from free
e-books
E-books are one of the most beneficial and easiest ways to make
mone on line - if you sell them. But how can you make profits from
free e-books? This closely-guarded secret of the self-styled guru's
has recently become easily achievable by just about anyone with something
to
say, and certainly by everyone who already has a e-book or other information
product to sell.
What is a free e-book?
A free e-book is usually an abridged or shortened version of
a full e-book or information product. However, neither the fact that it is
free or that it is a shortened version of something else means that it can
not have value on its own. In fact, you will quickly find that if it does
not have its own intrinsic value, that it will be very difficult to distribute
- even for free.
For example, our own free
e-book gives away our entire
content on heart disease and cholesterol - something that virtually everyone
needs to know about if they want to maintain their health. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, even if it
isn't costing them money, people always want something for their efforts.
To download something then actually read it takes effort, and that effort
had better be worthwhile! Secondly, the whole point of creating a free
e-book is to showcase the main product i.e. the full book or information
product, in order to generate sales. If the free book is not up to
scratch, then you can be sure that sales of the full product will not benefit
from it.
Why a free e-book, why not just sell it?
Good question. The simple answer is that people love to
get something for nothing - or at least to feel that they are getting something
for nothing. As stated above, in order for this to be the case, they
need to perceive that the "something" has some value to them and the process
needs to be as simple as possible.
This means that far more people will be prepared to read your
book if it is free than if they have to pay even a small amount for it, which
both suggests it has little value and adds time and effort to the process. Conversely,
if people see your e-book is free it not only makes them more likely to download
it, it also adds value to your main product, i.e. your paid-for book, by
letting them know they can only get so much for free.
How will people find my free e-book if I have no website traffic?
This is perhaps the most crucial aspect of giving away anything
from your website, and until recently, a difficult issue to resolve. Building
traffic to your site takes both time and considerable effort - building the
site, getting it hosted, promoting it etc. There are many ways to make
this easier and relatively
automatic, but it still takes some effort
on your part, and, inevitably - time.
The secret of generating both interest in your product and traffic
to your site is to get others to help you do it - in other words, multiplication
of your efforts. Of course the people you will want to sell your product
will already have successful websites (ideally with subject matter relevant
to yours) and will want some reward for selling your product (or even giving
it away), and this is the part that until recently was difficult.
How to get others to give away your free e-book?
The first thing you need to do is to arrange some reliable way
to ensure that those who you want to help you will benefit from sales of
your product. This is easy to arrange by setting up an affiliate program
and there are many different ways of doing so, which vary enormously in cost,
complexity and ease-of-use. Personally, we find Clickbank both
inexpensive and easy to use both to set up your program and for your customers
to make purchases.
The real key, however, to getting others to give away your FREE
e-book is to ensure that THEY will benefit from any sales that it generates. That
means that you need to allow them to add THEIR affiliate links to YOUR e-book,
so that any recipients of the free book that click on the sales links will
generate revenue for both of you.
Either you can make the resultant
free e-book editable by your affiliates (a potentially risky strategy,
just asking for
it to be ripped off) or you can create what has become the new standard
for such products - the brandable e-book. What is a brandable e-book?
A brandable e-book is an e-book that contains specially formatted
links that can be changed with a simple editing program without giving editing
access to the rest of the book. This means that not only can your affiliates
benefit by distributing a copy of your e-book with their links
in it, but people that receive it from them can also reformat the links and
redistribute
it again (you explain HOW in the book itself!).
This creates a "viral" e-book that provides not only the motivation,
but also the means for any web-savvy recipient of your book to make a profit
from it. Of course, if your content is excellent as well, people will
have another good reason to redistribute it to their friends etc and it will
reach even further.
The key to creating a brandable e-book is to use an inexpensive
branding
program to create the special links for you, which will also give
you the relevant re-branding program for your affiliates.
We explain exactly how to do this on our own re-branding
page - feel free to copy our method and wording if you think it would help you.
By following these simple steps, you too can generate a small
army of affiliates to help sell your product for you, for mutual benefit.
Brian Adamson
Natural Health
Information Centre
This article is Copyright 2005 Natural Health Information Centre,
but may be freely distributed in its entirety when properly attributed to
the source
Make
Money with Ads by Google
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Set up your own affiliate program
Make your E-book Rebrandable
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money by GIVING AWAY our FREE E-book
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