How To Build Your List And Your Income By Giving Away Free Reports

Your Gold Mine Blueprint

Chapter 1: What Is A Mini E-Book?

Chapter 2: Why Give Mini E-Books Away for Free?

Chapter 3: Getting Started With Your Own Mini E-Book

Chapter 4: Creating Your Own Mini E-Book Under 24 Hours

Chapter: Putting The Finishing Touches To Your Mini E-Book

Chapter 6: Marketing Your Mini E-Book

Chapter 7: Closing

Chapter 1: What Is A Mini E-Book?

People often ask, “what is a mini E-Book” and why is it important in the scheme of my business? To answer the question of “what is a mini E-Book?”: a mini E- Book is a 5-25 page executable file or PDF document that discusses a very specific topic. While the mini E-Book has become wildly popular as an Internet marketing tool, it is also used in non-IM niches.

A mini E-Book can be used for a number of different purposes. In general, however, a mini-E-Book is usually used to convey a very specific – and little known – secret about a niche topic, whether it be car waxing or pet care.

What is a mini E-Book and how is it different from a regular E-Book? A mini E- Book is smaller than a regular E-Book because it doesn’t aim to be comprehensive. Instead, it concentrates on providing highly-specific, crucial information about a specific technique or idea. Successful publishers will often going beyond a pre-set scope in their mini E-Book.

While smaller than a normal E-Book, it can still be sold through the same avenues. For instance, publishers who start by asking, “what is a mini E-Book?” often end up asking “where can I sell such a product”? It’s simple: they can open a vendor account at http://www.clickbank.com, pay the $50 initial product fee, and then begin selling any amount of mini E-Books.

Additionally, a mini E-Book publisher can also give his or her product away completely free of charge in order to generate traffic. This is often employed by skilled Internet marketers, who will coordinate a massive free give away – and then include some back-end component to return readers to their sites.

So what is a mini E-Book and why is it important? It’s a short book or report on a specific topic that either generates revenue or facilitates traffic generation.

What Makes a Mini E-Book a Mini E-Book?

What makes a mini E-Book a mini E-Book?

A normal E-Book generally spans from between 30 and 75 pages in length; however, there are a number of E-Books that are considerably longer.

Ken Evoy’s “Make Your Site Sell” (MYSS) — once dubbed the Bible of Internet marketing – contains well over 700 pages of marketing advice, rife with powerful illustrations and examples. This could hardly be considered a mini E- Book.

Rather, large tomes like Ken Evoy’s and even smaller E-Books, such as ones that span from 30 to 75 pages are usually considered full E-Books because they cover a range of topics in considerable depth. They are comprehensive and complete.

In stark contrast to the large, comprehensive E-Book is the mini E-Book. So what makes a mini E-Book a mini E-Book? Obviously, the size is important: a mini-E-Book generally spans around 5 to 25 pages.

Another important distinction when considering what makes a mini E-Book a mini E-Book is that it is not comprehensive – and this is crucial. Unlike a full E- Book, a mini E-Book should give a piece of an incomplete idea, prompting the reader to take action – whether it be to purchase the complete version or to opt-in to a newsletter.

Another part of what makes a mini E-Book a mini E-Book is that it is generally free. Rather than capturing revenue, as most large product launches must do, it seeks to penetrate a specific niche crowd and to pull them in as leads. Additionally, it seeks to give list subscribers a specific incentive to circulate the report, which again will bring in additional revenue.

In summary, what makes a mini E-Book a mini E-Book? It must be short, targeted, incomplete, and yet still effective at persuading list subscribers to circulate it; but most importantly, it should be free.

The Role of Mini E-Books in Internet Marketing

What is the role of mini E-Books in Internet marketing? In Internet marketing, mini E-Books serve almost exclusively as a viral tool that generates traffic and opt-in list subscriber growth.

In many cases, the role of mini E-Books in Internet marketing is to generate viral and explosive growth through word of mouth promotion. But before you attempt to integrate mini E-Books into your marketing campaigns, there are a number of important things you should first consider.

The first and most important thing to keep in mind is that your product must have a target market. If you have no list to promote to and no idea whether or not anyone is actively looking for the solution you present in your mini E-Book, do not write it.

Start with market research and determine what people really want to know about your specific niche. You can do this by searching forums for hot topics that have received a significant amount of replies. Take one of these topics and generate a quick report about it, using a controversial angle – something that will grab someone’s attention and compel them to buy.

Next, determine how you will market your mini E-Book. You can start by looking for joint venture partners. Find webmasters who have lists related to your topic. And then approach them quietly with your offer. But make sure it is compelling. Webmasters with big sites get offers like yours every single day. Yours must stand apart and provide a compelling incentive, such as a large affiliate commission.

Again, the role of mini E-Books in Internet marketing is to generate viral traffic. If you don’t have people promoting your E-Book through word of mouth, then you might as well not write it.

So start with the market research. Find out if anyone will actually buy your product. Once you do that and develop a good product, start contacting your potential JV partners with a good, compelling offer.

The Purpose of a Mini E-Book to YOU

What is the purpose of a mini E-Book to you and your business? Is it simply another means through which to generate revenue? In many cases, yes, it is. Often, if you have a list, you can use a bunch of mini E-Books to supplement your income by creating a product in 2-3 days and then selling it for as little as $7. Who on your list wouldn’t buy it, provided that the information was useful and the sales page was compelling?

The purpose of a mini E-Book to you and your business that we will discuss in this article has more to do with traffic generation. Many people don’t realize this – even as they pound away on repetitive search engine optimization tasks –but the mini E-Book is often the absolute best means through which to generate traffic.

Why spend hundreds of dollars purchasing content and hiring optimization specialists when you can simply create a mini E-Book, give it to your list for free, and watch it spread like wildfire, as your subscribers give it to friends – and their friends also give it to other friends? Of course, to ensure this level of success, you will have to create content that is worth reading and answers an oft-asked question.

You will also want to give your list some sort of incentive to spread the project for you. Perhaps you could make it a re-brandable report with affiliate links that could potentially generate revenue for promoters. Additionally, you will want to teach them how best to disseminate the report. Make sure you stress the importance of the purpose of a mini E-Book and YOU to your email list, so they understand how spreading it will benefit them.

Many talented list owners, including the famous Jimmy D. Brown, will attest that this strategy has the potential to pull in massive amounts of traffic with minimal amounts of work.

Mini E-Books – The Pros

There are dozens of ways through which you can generate traffic. To name only a few – you could optimize your site for the search engines, you could begin a link building campaign, or you could even create an opt-in list and use that to recycle traffic. In this article, “mini E–Books – the pros,” we will discuss using mini E-Books, which are often the best and fastest way to generate traffic.

Mini E–Books – the pros: they’re easy and fast to create and they provide considerably more perceived value than a single article. In fact, simply bundling any report in PDF format or executable file format will instantly increase its perceived value. This means that people will actually spend the time to read it. In many cases, people now simply disregard information and articles on webpages, but if it is packaged as an actual product, it will have a higher perceived value.

What are the other pros to mini E-Books? Another huge pro is that they are small enough to read in a single sitting. Why is this good? It’s good because a person can read the entire report and then take action while the thoughts provoked are still mulling around in their heads. This means that you can get an even greater response, faster.

Another important pros that this article, “Mini E-Books – the pros” stresses is the raw viral power of mini E-Books. Rather than promoting them yourself, you can simply spread the word that you have put out a completely free, easy-to- use report that is less than 20 pages long. If your subject is interesting, if your crowd is receptive, and if your pitch is reasonable and enticing, you can expect a significant response.

In a nutshell, the pros of a mini E-Book include its ability to provoke immediate, focused responses and its ability to act as a tool of viral promotion.

Mini E-Books – The Cons

In this article, “Mini E-Books – the cons,” I will explain some of the negatives to 6 creating a mini E-Book, rather than a full-length E-Book. While most would assume that there are no negatives, there are actually a number of important things you will want to keep in mind before churning out a mini E-Book to sell to the closest buyers.

The first of the cons we will cover in “mini E-Books – the cons” is completeness of information. If you are trying to entice someone to act on something, then your mini E-Book being incomplete is not a con; instead, it’s a pro, as it will put pressure on the readers to take action as soon as they finish reading it. However, if you don’t plan on circulating your mini E-Book for free, this incompleteness means you will have to charge a considerably lower price.

The second problem we will cover in “mini E-Books – the cons” is perceived value. While special reports or mini E-Books have a higher perceived value than website articles, complete courses or full E-Books have a considerably higher perceived value than a mini E-Book. Take, for instance, John Reese’s Traffic Secrets, which came in the form of MULTIPLE books and MULTIPLE CDs. This high perceived value – and, of course, an excellent marketing campaign – allowed John to successfully earn more than $1,000,000 in under 18 hours selling a $997 product. If he had been selling a 15-page special report, he never could have asked for such a high price. If he was lucky, he might have been able to pull in $27.

The last con we will cover in “mini E-Books – the cons” is that it is harder to find joint venture partners for lower-value products. This means that you will have to find a considerably better incentive if you realistically want to find joint venture partners.

Chapter 2: Why Give Mini E-Books Away for Free?

Why give mini E-Books away for free when you could sell them and make money? Many marketers might say there is no reason to give them away for free. In fact, giving them away for free might devalue them, leading people to overlook them, rather than spending the time to download them.

In stark contrast to this opinion is that of Jimmy D. Brown, who has made a career of doing precisely that. Why give mini E-Books away for free?

Because Brown and other marketers have repeatedly demonstrated that doing exactly that will yield higher sales and higher exposure than any other method you could possibly use, but in the long run.

Rather than gaining small profits for the short run, you can gain thousands of potential future customers, which answers the question of “why give mini E- Books away for free?”

With that being said, it is important to qualify this statement with some “must dos.” While giving away mini E-Books for free can create massive viral traffic, it has to be done properly.

The most important part of these free give aways is to find partners who will help you distribute the E-Book. The best place to look is actually on your own mailing list – people you already have a personal relationship with. Give your subscribers a really strong incentive to distribute the report (i.e. Allow them to re-brand it or to earn a commission on referrals).

The next “must do” involves implanting some sort of successful lead-capturing method into the mini E-Book.

For instance, you could place links throughout the mini E-Book that refer people back to your opt-in page, where they can become a subscriber. Again, if your goal is long term profit, rather than short term, gaining a subscriber is always better than gaining a potential, one-shot customer.

2.2 The Ultimate Goal of a Mini E-Book

Before you do anything related to product-creation or marketing, it is probably a good idea to first ask what the ultimate goal of your actions will be. Is it to generate more traffic? Is it to cement joint venture partner relationships? Or is it to simply generate revenue? All of these things are important to keep in mind, especially when considering the ultimate goal of a mini E-Book.

In general, you are probably better served if the ultimate goal of a mini E-Book you are launching is to generate subscribers and joint venture partners. If the ultimate goal of a mini E-Book you are launching is simply to generate revenue, you will have to go through the process of finding partners and promoting your new product through pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, and word of mouth.

In contrast, if you generate traffic and recycle it into long-time relationships via free subscriptions, you can not only turn around and market a product to that list once, but you can do it again and again on a monthly basis. You can also sell advertising space on your list, which means you can sell without having to make any pitches.

The ultimate goal of a mini E-Book might also be gaining joint venture partners. Many people are too short sighted with their marketing to realize what a goldmine this is – but it is. You could create a mini E-Book and allow a well-known site own in your niche to not only sell your product at a 100% commission, but also re-brand every single affiliate link it. Now, this sounds completely crazy, but it isn’t. In the short run, will you miss out? Maybe a little. But in the long run, you will gain significantly from your new partnership.

So what is the ultimate goal of a mini E-Book? It isn’t to get short term traffic without recycling and it isn’t to generate a quick buck. The ultimate goal of any mini E-Book should be to increase revenue potential in the long run by opening up relationships with business owners and with subscribers.

Pre-sell Your Products

Many people who use the mini E-Book business model do not realize this, but giving away a mini E-Book can actually be one of the better ways in which you can pre-sell your products.

But what does it mean to pre-sell your products? Essentially, pre-selling involves gaining your customers trust, so they think of you as a friend, rather than a pushy salesman.

Most people use salesletter modifications, such as pictures and handwriting, as pre-sales mechanisms. This helps the customer feel like he or she actually knows you and has some stake in your life, even if you two have never met and will never talk.

Now how can giving away a mini E-Book be a pre-sales method? It’s simple: rather than selling your products, you give them away for free, which means they gain wider exposure – and allow more people to learn how you think and that your information really is valid.

Another important component of pre-selling your products with mini E-Books is that you get the right people to distribute those E-Books for free. If you have a number of big names in your niche distributing your book for free – or at least linking to it – you will gain instant credibility.

This is best illustrated by Rich Schefren’s release of the Internet Business Manifesto. With all of the huge names he had backing him, he could have easily sold his book for hundreds of dollars. But he didn’t. Instead, he gave it away completely for free and ended up getting tens of thousands of subscribers in a matter of days. He also is selling out his seminars faster than he can schedule them.

While Rich obviously has a leg up on most of us, it is important to note that anyone can do exactly this by pre-selling your products with free mini E-Books and good partners.

Sell Other People’s Products as an Affiliate

Are you having a hard time coming up with a good idea for your first mini E- Book? No problem. Don’t come up with an idea. Instead, find someone else with a good idea.

Find someone who is planning a product or site launch and ask if you can pay them $100 for a 30-minute interview. In most cases, they will accept. They’ll want the publicity, anyway – and for $200 an hour, they’d be nuts not to take it.

Once you have completed the interview, take that information you extracted and carefully package it into a compelling, yet incomplete, report about the person and some of his or her best methods for doing whatever it is people do in your specific niche.

At the end of the report, put an affiliate link to the person’s new site or new product. It might sound strange, but you can actually sell other people’s products as an affiliate – and do it faster and more profitably than you would ever be able to manage if you worked through the product-creation process yourself.

This is especially true if you align your interview with the person’s launch. Not only will you be able to sell other people’s products as an affiliate and make money, but you will also be able to launch a coinciding project that can capitalize off of already-existing hype.

Additionally, you can capitalize when you sell other people’s products as an affiliate through mini E-Books in two other ways. The first way is by setting up the report as previously discussed, but rather than launching it yourself, you can give it away for free to any webmaster you can find in the same niche. All them all to distribute it to their lists, which will allow you to sell other people’s products as an affiliate on auto-pilot; you wont even need to do the marketing.

The last way in which you can sell people’s products as an affiliate through mini E-Books is by simply constructing a special report on a specific topic and carefully placing links throughout it to promote different affiliate products. You can then either give this away for free or sell master resale rights.

Build Your List

The purpose of any good mini E-Book is usually to build your list, which is ultimately the most important asset you will ever have as an Internet business owner. So how can you build your list using strategically-developed mini E- Books?

You can start by determining what people need a solution for in your given niche. For instance, do people need a faster way to do something? Do they need an easier way to do something? If enough people do – and if there is enough buzz surrounding it – you should definitely create a report that centers on it. You can write it yourself, hire a ghostwriter to write it for you, or simply interview an expert and copy the transcript into your mini E-Book, along with some sort of an introduction.

Once you have found your market and have created your product, you will then want strategically place links throughout the mini E-Book that will send readers back to your opt-in page.

Now that your report is complete, including the back-end system for capturing leads, you will want to develop a course of action through which to distribute your report for the largest amount of coverage.

If you are giving it away for free, you could contact other newsletter owners in related, but non-competing niches, and ask if they would be interested in sending out your report to their lists for free. For instance, if you’ve written a mini E-Book about cooking the best pie ever, you will want to seek out cookbook sellers.

Additionally, you will want to position a number of e-zine articles that point to your free downloadable course. You may even want to make signing up for your opt in email address the single criterion for receiving the free report.

Whatever you do, always keep in mind that using a mini E-Book can easily be the best way in which to build your list and recycle customers.

Bribing Visitors into Subscribing to Your Mailing List

No matter what products you sell, no matter how good your sales letter is, you are losing money – and lots of it – if you do not use your mailing list to develop long term relationships with subscribers, who you can recycle into multiple buyers.

But central to developing your list of subscribers is actually bribing visitors into subscribing to your mailing list. No, this isn’t illegal – and, no, you wont actually have to mail them a bag with dollar signs on it. Instead, you can give them something they want even more: free content in the form of mini E-Books.

One of the most effective forms of bribing visitors into subscribing to your mailing list involves requiring them to subscribe in order to receive a free mini E-Book.

What’s important to note, however, is that many of them will provide you with a free email account address for an account they don’t use if they don’t actually want your newsletter. This means that your emails will ultimately be ineffective if you do not grab that person’s attention in the first email, as they must read that in order to download your free report.

But how can you do that? Jimmy D. Brown, famous list builder and owner of List and Traffic, suggests that you give them two options in the first email: one is a link to download your free product (the tool you used for bribing visitors into subscribing to your mailing list) and then give them some compelling second option, which they can do immediately after they download the book.

For instance, you could give them the option to check out some other offer that will give them a strong incentive to read your newsletter the following day.

In addition, you should always – always – end with a compelling paragraph that entices them into reading the following issue.

And, in a nutshell, that is how you go about bribing visitors into subscribing to your mailing list – and then how you keep them reading it every single day.

Proving Your Credibility and Expertise

Proving your credibility and expertise is an essential part of mini E-Book creation for two reasons: if you don’t spend the time proving your credibility and expertise on the sales page, no one will buy or download your product; and if you don’t do it inside of the actual mini E-Book, no one will actually take action on the plan you’ve provided.

What are some tools you can use for proving your credibility and expertise on the sales page? http://www.vletter.com is one of the best tools you can use to prove your credibility. Even though this sounds foolish, if you create a professional – yet personal – sales page, you will gain instant credibility with viewers. The Vletter system allows you to add handwriting to your sales page, which aids in proving your credibility and expertise by making it look more personal. Another thing you will want to consider adding to your homepage is a picture of yourself. This, again, will enhance your credibility by making the page look personal. The last thing you will want to consider putting on your sales page are testimonials. You can send your book out to a number of publishers in your niche and ask them for their opinion. Take whatever positive responses you get and use them as testimonials.

Now, when you create your actual mini E-Book, it is also important to maintain a professional layout with quality graphics (if you use them), clean spacing, proper spelling, and correct grammar. All of these components will bolster your credibility. In addition to that, you may want to consider getting someone who is respected in your field to read your book and then write a preface or introduction. Simply attaching that name to your mini E-Book will give it – and you — instant credibility.

The last and most important way in which you can go about proving your credibility and expertise is through an actual demonstration of your knowledge. Make sure all of the methods outlined in your mini E-Book are based on real results.

Chapter 3: Getting Started With Your Own Mini E-Book

If you want to succeed in making a powerful, viral E-Book, you must begin by getting all of the tools you need to get started. Below, I have listed a basic set of tools you can use for free:

1. A PDF maker. There are a number free PDF makers on the market. Once such free PDF maker can be downloaded as part of the Open Office package at the following URL: http://www.openoffice.org/.

Not only will this tool allow you to create PDFs, but it will also allow you to edit them and to insert links. You can even create a document in the word processing application and then simply export it into a PDF file. Additionally, PDF 995 will also do this. You can download it at the following URL: http://www.pdf995.com. This is a good place to start getting all of the tools you need.

2. A natural handwriting creator. It is important to use natural-looking handwriting at least in your signature. This will greatly enhance the perception of your mini E-Book. You can find a 30-day free version of this tool at http://www.vletter.com, which is another place where you can begin getting all of the tools you need to get started.

3. Another place where you can begin getting all the tools you need to get started is http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/. This isn’t exactly a tool, but it can be extremely useful if you need supplemental information to include in your reports. The Federal government hosts this site, which means almost all of the information contained on it is in the public domain and can be repackaged into an E-Book, provided that you do not try to claim copyright.

And there you have it: you can begin the task of getting all the tools you need to get started by simply visiting those three sites and obtaining the valuable tools and information contained therein.

Research the Demand for Your Chosen Niche

Before you begin writing any mini E-Book, it is important to research the demand for your chosen niche. If you write a book that no one wants to read, it really doesn’t matter how powerful your marketing efforts are.

When you research the demand for your chosen niche, you can use a number of different avenues. One of the most straight-forward includes looking at aggregate data. You can do this by searching for your chosen niche at the following URL: http://inventory.overture.com. This will return a list of keywords, along with aggregate search data, which loosely translates into demand.

Another way in which you can research the demand for your chosen niche is by browsing forums. This seems highly anecdotal, but it isn’t. If you want to produce products that are inline with current demand, you will also want to understand your current customers. One way to do this is by looking for hot topics on forums. If people are ceaselessly complaining about something in your niche – and you can provide the exact solution they want through a mini E-Book – why not do it?

Another way in which you can research the demand for your chosen niche is through online surveys. Purchase some pay-per-click traffic and send it to a page with a poll about your given niche. Find out exactly what people want most.

Additionally, if you have a list, the best way in which you can research the demand for your chosen niche should involve sending out a mailing that asks your subscribers for input. If they all want the same exact thing, then give it to them in the form of a mini E-Book. Unless you have a good reason not to do this, this is an excellent way to take advantage of existing demand in your niche to make some product sales.

Selecting Affiliate Programs to Join

No matter what type of mini E-Book you create, you should have some sort of revenue generation plan in mind, whether it be short term or long term. One excellent way in which you can generate revenue in either the long or short term is by selecting affiliate programs to join.

Some excellent sources of affiliate programs are http://www.paydotcom.com, http://www.clickbank.com, http://www.cj.com, and http://www.linkshare.com. Whether you plan to sell physical products or info products, you will be able to find something for any niche in one of these affiliate program catalogs.

Once you have begun selecting affiliate programs to join from these catalogs, you will also want to think about how you can generate revenue through them. As a long term plan, you could create an opt-in list and a newsletter that contains at least one affiliate link in each lesson. You can then give your mini E- Book away for free and use it to generate viral traffic for your opt-in form.

Another good way in which you can generate revenue after you have finished selecting affiliate programs to join involves conducting an interview with an expert in your given niche. Rather than writing the mini E-Book yourself, you can contact an expert, conduct an interview, and then include the transcript in your mini E-Book. As you discuss each of the person’s programs or products, include an affiliate link for each of them in your report. You can then circulate this report to dozens of site and list owners in your niche – and suggest that they circulate it to their lists as a free report.

Once your report begins to circulate faster and to more people, you will notice that selecting affiliate programs to join – and then inserting them into your revenue-generation mechanisms – is one of the most profitable systems you can use.

Setting Up Your Own Mailing List to Build Leads

Setting up your own mailing list to build leads is a crucial part of any far- reaching, long run Internet business plan. This is because conversion rates for direct sales are dismally low – on the order of 1-5% per targeted visitor. But as the amount of contacts increase, so does the conversion rate. In some instances, you could increase your conversion rate to as high as 30% simply by using follow-up emails, rather than direct sales techniques.

You can begin setting up your own mailing list to build leads by developing some material. You will want to find some crucial topics related to your niche – and you will then want to build a short e-course along with a mini E-Book. If you want to same some time, you could even outsource both of these projects to ghostwriters. Just make sure you provide them with enough information to ensure that their work will contain complete, useful information.

Now that you’ve developed your product, you will want to begin setting up your own mailing list to build leads. You should first purchase a subscription to an autoresponder service, such as http://www.aweber.com.

Next, browse the interface and help section until you have a rough idea how to setup a newsletter using whichever autoresponder service you selected. After you have done that, begin loading all of the components of your e-course into the autoresponder; additionally, make sure you use powerful, enticing subject lines and curiosity-building lines at the bottom of each lesson to entice the reader into reading the following day’s letter.

The last part you will want to complete is your sales page and opt-in form. With opt-in form pages, you will usually want to provide a short description and then immediately give the visitor the chance to opt-in. Additionally, you will want to explain that opting-in entitles them to a free copy of your mini E-Book.

And there you have it: a step-by-step system for setting up your own mailing list to build leads.

Deciding the Font and Layout of Your Mini E-Book

Deciding the font and layout of your mini E-Book actually is a crucial aspect of appearing professional. In addition to optimizing any images you use, you will want to make sure that the rest of your mini E-Book looks clean.

Don’t believe me? Then consider the following example: you purchase a 25- page Mini E-Book on how to build professional mini E-Books. The sales page is great and you can’t wait for the mini E-Book to arrive, so you can get working on your first mini E-Book. But when the mini E-Book arrives, you notice that the font is point 70, is bright yellow, and is in some sort of ridiculous, unreadable symbol font, where the letter R is represented by a cactus. After scrolling down three inches, you notice that the first graphic is a giant box with a red x through it. You then find out that the next page is completely blank.

Now, do you want to learn about creating professional mini E-Books from the person who created this travesty? Probably not. Of course, this is an extreme example, but it is also an important one to consider if you are producing Internet marketing products.

When deciding the font and layout of your mini E-Book, you will want to consider the tone of your mini E-Book. Is it relaxed? Maybe you’ll want to use comic sans. Is it professional? Maybe you’ll want to use verdana. Is it somewhere in between? Try Georgia font. Additionally, use a reasonable size font. In most cases, size 12 or 14 will do.

When deciding the font and layout of your mini E-Book, the last thing you will also want to consider is the layout. Do you want to have an index? Should you have a glossary? Should you have some sort of an introduction? Should you include graphs and charts? Should you include pictures? All of these components are important considerations.

Once you have finished deciding on the font and layout of your mini E-Book, there are only two tasks remaining: you will need to compile your mini E-Book – which you can usually do by exporting your document into PDF format – and you will need to market it through JV partners, search engine optimization, solo m

Chapter 4: Creating Your Own Mini E-Book Under 24 Hours

Before you write anything, commit yourself to deciding the theme of your mini E-Book. It sounds like something obvious enough, but many times, we will begin writing a project, whether it be an article or an E-Book, and we wont have any clear theme in mind. What does this leave us with? Usually, a jumbled writing project that has no clear focus and it makes it a lot harder for anyone to derive benefit from it.

So start by deciding the theme of your mini E-Book.

I’ve said this dozens of times, but I will continue to say it: pick a theme that your audience wants to read about, not one you want to write about.

Again, this seems obvious enough, but when deciding the them of your mini E- Book, there is always the temptation to simply write about something we want to write about, regardless of whether or not anyone can actually benefit from it. And what does this leave us with? A product we can’t market because no one wants to buy it.

Before deciding the theme of your mini E-Book, spend some time feeling out the market. Look at aggregate data. Put polls on your website. Post on related forums and specifically who wants to know what about your subject. You might be surprised at how positive and useful the comments will be.

Once you have determined whether or there is a market for your E-Book, you will want to consider how saturated that market already is. You can do this with a brief scan of Google. Do the top twenty sites in your niche have high PR? If so, it might be a good idea not to plan to outcompete them with search engine optimization. Instead, plan on using social marketing techniques. Perhaps you can even pull off a joint venture with site owners.

In any case, determine a relative level of supply. If demand is high and supply is low, get into the market immediately.

And there you have it: a simple plan for deciding the theme of your mini E- Book.

Writing Your Own Content

Writing your own content is definitely easier said than done. Initially, we all assume that we can simply sit down at a computer, open up Microsoft Word, pound out that 20-page report – and then simply export it into a PDF File. Right? Wrong…

You will probably find that writing your own content becomes incredibly harder as soon as you sit down at the computer and begin typing. You’ll get caught up on every sentence. You’ll lose track of where your project is going. You might even get so nervous about what you are writing that you will cease to do it altogether.

Here are some easy tips for writing your own content that will help you get on track:

1. Compile a list of resources. If your project is going to be at least partially- researched, spend some time to compile important books, site bookmarks, and letters, so you can easily access them while you are writing.

2. Compile a list of illustrations and anecdotes. Illustrations and anecdotes can often be very useful when explaining a hard to understand concept. So spend some time writing down illustrations you have used in the past that are useful for the concepts you will present.

3. Organize your information in notes and outlines. Outline your book and your chapters within your books. This will give you a good direction – and it will also ensure that you convey everything as intended and with the correct impact.

4. Actually write the mini E-Book. Forget about failure or who told you what about something. Get to work and forget all else. Set hours each day to work and do not break with that schedule.

If you follow the schedule above carefully, you will find that writing your own content isn’t as hard as it initially seems. You just have to break it down into simple steps and then take action.

Leverage on Experts through Interviews

If you can gain leverage on experts through interviews, there is absolutely no reason to create your own mini E-Book. Regardless of whether you hire a ghostwriter or write your mini E-Book yourself, it is going to take longer and be more time consuming than if you simply gain leverage one experts through interviews – and then add the transcript to your next E-Book.

One powerful example of this is Bryan Kumar’s Money and Power interview of Allen Says, owner of the Warrior Forum. Even though Bryan could have written his own E-Book about the same subject, he secured an interview with a name that immediately commands an audience.

People were so desperate to get their hands on those interviews that he was able to sell resale rights for hundreds of dollars and regular copies for $100 each. All of this was because he simply leveraged Allen Says fame through an interview – and this gave him an instant market for his product.

You can do this, too: you can gain leverage on experts through Interviews. You just have to determine who the experts are in your field – and which might reasonably be approachable. Additionally, you will want to come up with an extremely compelling reason for them to pay attention (i.e. Not only will this give you exposure, but I will pay you $100 simply for allowing me to interview you for 30 minutes).

There is one important thing to keep in mind when gaining leverage on experts through interviews – and that is to always clearly explain what you plan to do with the content and exactly how much they will be compensated for it. If they’re only getting $100, don’t make it confusing – let them know that is it. If they wont do it for $100, you might want to attempt to work some type of profit-sharing agreement, which may be a good idea, anyway, as it will give them some incentive to promote the product themselves.

Engaging Ghostwriters

Engaging ghostwriters is a crucial part of creating successful mini E-Books, especially if you want to work on multiple projects at the same time. Rather than pounding away on a mini E-Book, you can setup a template for mini E- Book creation, send it out to a writer, and then begin your pre-launch marketing campaign. By the time your mini E-Book is finished, you will have already created an impressive pre-launch buzz.

Before you can do any of this, however, you must begin engaging ghostwriters for your project. There are two good places to find ghostwriters: one is Guru.com and the other is Elance.com. Both of these marketplaces will allow you to put projects up for auction and then begin engaging ghostwriters as they bid. You will be able to view their portfolios and ask them questions.

Any successful interaction with a ghostwriter should involve some form of clear agreement. For instance, if you don’t explicitly state that the writer cannot do this in your rules, he or she might decide to resell the same project he or she sold to you. Additionally, you may find that he or she will borrow heavily from other sources, reducing the amount of original content in the articles and putting you at risk of plagiarism. Another important consideration is how payment will be handled.

If you’re really worried, you can always contact an escrow company to hold payment until the project is completed, so both parties involved know that they will get what they wanted if they stick to the contract; however, in most cases, this simply isn’t necessary. Some ghostwriters will allow you to pay upon completion of a project; others will require you to make some sort of a deposit. In either case, you will want to check out their records on Guru.com and Elance.com to get a rough idea of what type of service and what quality of product they have produced in the past.

And there you have it: engaging a ghostwriter successfully to write your mini E- Book is quite easy, but you must come into it prepared and plan to give precise instructions, so you are both on the same level.

Saving Time & Effort with Private Label Rights

Many people mix up the terms “private label” and “ghostwritten.” What is the difference? Essentially, private label content is less expensive, but it is also not exclusive only to you; however, saving time & effort with private label rights is definitely possible – and, in fact, many people choose to do it over hiring ghostwriters, which can often be a drawn out and expensive process.

So how can you begin saving time & effort with private label rights? You can start by searching out sites that sell private label rights articles for your given niche. Currently, there are dozens of private label content businesses on the Internet, many of which sell bulk content at a fraction of the price.

Saving time & effort with private label rights, however, comes with two qualifications: in order to get the most out of your articles, you must be willing to re-write them or hire someone else to write them for you. While an article from a ghostwriter might cost you around $9 to purchase, you could probably get around 50 articles from a private label rights seller at twice that price, but so will anywhere between 25 and 300 other people (of course, many will not use it properly).

If you simply compile the information into a mini E-Book and then attempt to sell it, you may find that you aren’t saving time & effort with private label rights at all; instead, you are creating a headache, as someone else may put out the same exact book in the same exact niche. The same is true if you use them for search engine optimization: if someone else gets spidered first, then your content will be considered duplicate.

Additionally, there is one more qualifier you will want to consider before you begin saving time & effort with private label rights articles: not all membership sites allow you to rebundle private label articles, which means you not be able to use them with your mini E-Book. Instead, you might only be able to use them for personal applications, which will be ineffective unless you rewrite them.

Even with all of these qualifiers, it is still easy to begin saving time & effort with private label rights articles, provided that you use them according to the terms and have them rewritten.

Using Public Domain Works

In the past year and a half, using public domain works has become increasingly more popular among site owners. This is because public domain works are available on nearly any subject – and are completely free to use, repackage, and resell.

One example of using public domain works includes purchasing old books, scanning them, and then reselling them as mini E-Books or E-Books. In some cases, people will even sell them in hardcover.

Another example of using public domain works includes publishing it to blogs and websites as fresh content. You could even use it in newsletters and e- courses that teach someone something specific about your niche.

One excellent place to find public domain information is at U.S. Government websites. In almost all cases, you can find massive PDF reports, instructional courses, and data-laden pages that have no copyright whatsoever – and are completely free for use and repackaging by anyone. The only catch is that you can’t claim copyright to anything in the public domain.

You can begin using public domain works by pulling some information from websites such as http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/ for free; and then determining what information you can use legally – and how you can include it in your mini E-Books or package it in an especially useful way.

Another good place to find public domain material is at old bookstores. Many old books are now in the public domain, which means you re-package this content in E-Book form and then resell it over the Internet.

Using public domain works has dozens of powerful applications, only some of which I have listed above. Some authors, such as David Christopher Ray (aka Mr. Unconventional), have created groundbreaking works on taking public domain information to completely new level, including where you can find good sources for writing, music, and even video – and how you can use it.

Making Use of Articles with Reprint Rights

When creating a mini E-Book, making use of articles with reprint rights can be quite profitable. This is because it gives you the ability to create large sections – or even whole mini E-Books – using articles that you never had to write to begin with.

So how can you begin making use of articles with reprint rights? Your first step is to go to a site like http://www.goarticles.com and begin looking up articles in your niche that contain high-quality content.

Your next step in making use of articles with reprint rights involves contacting the author to ask whether or not you can use his or her content in your upcoming mini E-Book. Make it clear that it will get him or her a lot of exposure and will also position him/her as an expert. Additionally, you may want to come up with some other pitch to sweeten the pot for the author. Whatever you do, make sure your letter to the author is personal and provides a compelling reason to allow you to use his/her work in your upcoming mini E-Book.

Once you have secured some affirmative responses, you will want to begin organizing these articles into some type of mini E-Book. You might entitle it “Seven Powerful Essays About ____.” If you plan to sell the E-Book, you will definitely want to include a good amount of unique content.

Another way you can begin making use of articles with reprint rights is by setting up an autoresponder course for your mini E-Book. Rather than writing the course yourself, you can take some excellent reprints right articles and arrange them in an autoresponder. At the bottom of each day of the course, include a link to the sales page for your mini E-Book.

Both of the techniques described above have enormous profit potential as means of making use of articles with reprint rights.

Co-Creating the E-Book with Another Author

So you’ve decided to write a mini E-Book, but you’re not sure what angle to take on your niche and you don’t yet have enough exposure to call yourself an expert. What can you do to ensure a successful product launch?

Co-creating the E-Book with another author is often the best way to ensure success, even if you haven’t yet experienced it. Find someone in your niche who is creating a product and is looking for a means to promote that product is often your best bet.

You may want to look for sites announcing product launches in your niche – and then take the time to contact the webmaster and ask if he or she is interested in co-authoring a book with you; however, it is vital that you communicate what benefits the webmaster will derive from co-creating the E- Book with another author.

For instance, you may want to consider writing the entire thing yourself, but allowing your co-author to include valuable information, which you will turn into chapters. Additionally, you might just want your co-author to include some articles he or she has already written or an introduction.

Regardless of what is added when co-creating the E-Book with another author, simply turning your mini E-Book project into a joint venture will increase its credibility, especially if you select a high-profile co-author.

Additionally, co-creating the E-Book with another author gives you the immediate advantage of having a joint venture partner who will promote your mini E-Book for you. If you plan to give it away for free, you can both include some sort of upsales mechanism in the book. Perhaps you could include your newsletter and he or she could include some sort of a pitch for his or her upcoming project.

Last, keep in mind is that you should always give the potential co-author a powerful incentive for taking you up on your offer – and you should always make the process as easy as it possibly can be for your co-author.

Mini E-Book Creation Tips

There are a number of mini E-Book creation tips you should keep in mind before you begin your next (or first) project. Paying attention to these small tips could save you hundreds of dollars in lost sales.

Tip #1 – Use a professional sales page and a professional format for your mini E-Book. If you cannot do either of these on your own, you really might want to consider hiring someone to do the job for you. Simply having a clean, impressive sales page with good copy and a cleanly formatted mini E-Book will do wonders for your credibility.

Tip #2 – Create high-quality information and keep a long-term strategy in mind. It is often easy to follow mini E-Book creation tips that focus on the short run – that teach you to milk every last dollar you can get out of a customer in one shot, but if your goal is to make repeat sales – which is ten times more effective than reselling to new people every time – then you need to thing long term. Maybe even give your E-Book away for free. It sounds crazy, but it will gain you a loyal following of supporters and subscribers.

Tip #3 – Create your mini E-Book in PDF format, rather than in an executable file. Executable files are notorious for being bugged and not opening – or even crashing computers.

Tip #4 – Create a clear production creation timeline – and do not break from it. This will allow you to have a rough idea when you will complete things, so you can begin creating a buzz for your new product before you even begin to sell it.

Tip #5 – The last of my mini E-Book creation tips — is to find joint venture partners to help you launch your product. If you can find someone who will send your report out to his list completely free of charge, then you can actually avoid paying for advertisement altogether.

Wave of the Future: Going Multimedia for Mini E-Books

Wave of the future: going multimedia for mini E-Books or simply staying as executable files and PDFs? As with all things in marketing, products tend to migrate to the medium with the highest perceived value – that is, as soon as the technology becomes affordable.

Initially, most mini E-Books came in executable format. These E-Books quickly became commonplace to such a degree that no one saw them as valuable. In addition to that, they were riddled with bugs. So E-Books moved to the next medium: PDF files. Currently, files in PDF format still have a relatively high perceived value, which means they can still demand higher prices than products in older mediums. This means that our question, “wave of the future: going multimedia for mini E-Books or simply staying as executable files and PDFs?” can be answered in two ways: for the foreseeable future, PDFs will still have value, but audio and multimedia applications have already begun to grow in popularity.

Why is this? For the most part, it is because the average person who creates an info product doesn’t have the skills or budget (even though it is relatively cheap now) to create a multimedia or audio application.

When people see multimedia and audio applications, they almost instantly associate it with quality, even if that isn’t the case. Additionally, people tend to prefer multimedia and audio applications over reading. This allows them to listen to a mini E-Book while doing something else on their computer, like reading and writing email.

So is the mini E-Book the wave of the future? Absolutely. As the technology becomes less and less expensive, more people will begin to use it, which means it is crucially important that you learn now; otherwise you may find that your products will continually lose value over time.

Chapter 5: Putting The Finishing Touches To Your Mini E-Book

One important part of creating a mini E-Book is designing the mini E-Book’s cover. This is one of the standard parts of creating a professional sales page that will actually have a high conversion rate.

You can begin designing the mini E-Book’s cover through one of two methods: you can either contract a professional to work on designing the mini E-Book’s cover with you or you can create it yourself using an image editor and some stock photos.

If you plan on designing the mini E-Book’s cover by yourself, ideally you will want to use Photoshop or GIMP if you don’t have Photoshop. GIMP is completely free to download and you can find it at http://www.cnet.com. Additionally, you will need to find some type of stock photos that you can use in the cover.

One excellent place to find images for free is http://www.stockxpert.com. Of course, it is important to read the licensing agreement to ensure that you do not use any of these images illegally.

The key to designing the mini E-Book’s cover well is creating the right perspective. This is especially important when you create the binding on the mini E-Book. You will want to correct all angles so they fit the right perspective. You will also want to make sure that you select an image that is conducive to your theme.

Now, if you don’t feel you have the skills to take on the task of designing the mini E-Book cover yourself, then you will want to hire a professional to do it for you.

Currently, there are a number of skilled professionals who do exactly this – design mini E-Book covers. One such professional is Brent Turner, who owns E- Cover Frog: http://www.ecoverfrog.com/portfolio.htm.

No matter the niche in which you are planning to launch your mini E-Book, it is crucial that you create a mini E-Book cover to boost your credibility and increase your conversion rate.

Building Your Backend Income Through Affiliate Programs

When generating revenue with a new mini E-Book, you have three basic options – all of which can be used interchangeably and even in conjunction with each other.

Your first option is using the mini E-Book to drive traffic to a page that contains advertisements – or a list that is monetized with advertisements. Your second option is to direct readers to pages where they can purchase your products – or, again, a list where you will send them information and product pitches.

Your last option is building your backend income through affiliate programs. You can do this by signing up for multiple affiliate programs in your niche. You can find these programs at http://www.cj.com, http://www.linkshare.com, http://www.clickbank.com, and http://www.paydotcom.com. All of these sites contain various affiliate programs for both brick-and-mortar and information products.

Your next step should be to create a free mini E-Book in which you explain the exact details for using some type of system that involves purchasing certain tools. You can then begin building your backend income through affiliate programs you signed up for in the previous step: all you have to do sprinkle these tools throughout the mini E-Book in the form of affiliate links.

Whenever someone makes a purchase, you will be credited through one of the four aforementioned programs.

Additionally, you can also circulate your E-Book for free – and try to get opt-ins, rather than direct sales. You can then tailor an autoresponder course that will train subscribers – and, at the same time, use affiliate links as a means to generate backend income.

Using either or both of these methods, you should be able to generate a substantial amount of readers, subscribers, and buyers – and ultimately begin building your backend income through affiliate programs, rather than adspace or your own products.

Squeezing Backend Leads

Squeezing backend leads out of a mini E-Book is a function of a simple formula, which is this: market exposure x compelling incentives to opt-in = total amount of subscribers generated.

Let’s start with first component of the equation — “market exposure.” As Mike Filsaime discusses in his Butterfly Marketing course, simple changes can make a huge difference. For instance, publishing an article at the right time and in the right place and with the right compelling incentives could give you significant market exposure. Additionally, contacting the right partner at the right time with the right incentives could yield increased market exposure. Luckily, all of these factors are firmly in your control.

Again, let’s start with the “right time” factor. Contacting someone in the middle of a product launch with an offer that isn’t related to the product launch is bad timing. Conversely, contacting someone with a related offer near a launch is good timing, as they will most likely want the extra exposure. The next thing you will want to consider is the “right incentives” component. The biggest incentive you can give anyone is money without work. If you can setup everything before you even approach your potential partners, that means they can promote you without any additional effort.

The next part of the equation that you will have to consider is “compelling incentives to opt–in.” If you’re trying to squeeze backend leads, you will have to give them a significant reason to opt-in, especially if they have to pay to do so.

One of the best ways in which you can do this is by giving them an offer they cannot resist, but is also entirely reasonable. For instance, “learn how to lose 5 pounds in 5 days without making significant changes in your diet or exercise.” It’s believable and it’s irresistible if you want to lose at weight fast.

And there you have it: a short, yet crucial formula to use when determining how best to squeeze backend leads.

Conveying Master Resell Rights or Give Away Rights

Conveying master resell rights or give away rights is an important part of generating traffic and subscribers with your mini E-Book. This is what will move you from a minor launch (with only you promoting your mini E-Book) to a major launch, where your personal army of affiliates and site owners are actively promoting your book through solo ads, PPC, and posting on forums.

When conveying master resell rights or give away rights, there is one crucial thing that you must keep in mind: why would anyone want to resell or even GIVE AWAY your book? This might sound crazy. Who wouldn’t want to get another product to sell without creating it? And who wouldn’t want to get something for no charge that they could give away for free?

The problem is that many of your best potential partners – those who have big lists and big sites – already get plenty of these offers on a weekly basis. Scores of people are seeking them out in a similar fashion – and they all want to get their products promoted.

So, when conveying master resell rights or give away rights, you must create some sort of unique, powerful, and compelling incentive that will make webmasters, list-owners, and even affiliates sell and give away your products for you… or at least feel foolish if they don’t, so they will know to get in on it next time.

How can you do this when conveying master resell rights or give away rights? It’s actually quite simple: spend the time to figure out what your affiliates and what your potential JV partners want most. Surprisingly, the answer isn’t hard to figure out: they want good products that generate revenue quickly and easily.

This means that your proposal needs to work out everything for them in advance. If you want them to be your affiliate, create pre-packaged material to use when they promote your product. Make it extremely easy for them to setup an affiliate link that points to your product. And give them a huge commission or even exclusive rights to give the E-Book away for free. If you concentrate on building the correct incentives, you will also get your most desired responses.

Offering Re-branding Rights to Your Mini E-Book

I say this a million times, but I will say it again: if you want people to actually disseminate your mini E-Book – even if it is 100% free – you absolutely MUST give them some sort of incentive for doing so. Simply being free is a good incentive for webmasters, who might bundle it with other products.

One compelling way in which you can give an incentive is by offering re- branding rights to your mini E-Book. This will give anyone who owns it the incentive to market it in some way. Rather than simply giving it away for free, they can give it away for free and earn some sort of profit by changing the affiliate links in the book to match their Ids, rather than yours.

If someone offered you dozens of books you could give away for free, would you? Probably not, unless you had some way in which to earn money by giving them away for free – or unless you planned to sell them. Likewise, your subscribers and your contacts will look at your offer in the same light.

One tool you can use when offering re-branding rights to your mini E-Book is ViralPDF, which you can purchase at http://www.viralPDF.com. The price is $67, but this tool is invaluable, especially if you plan to send out regular mini E- Books.

ViralPDF will allow you to do exactly what I described above – turn mini E-Books into powerful tools by allowing all of your affiliates and contacts to re- brand them.

Additionally, since this tool works with PDFs, your work will look considerably more professional, as old, executable E-Books have an extremely low perceived value.

So, in summary, one of the most important parts of a successful mini E-Book launch includes putting affiliate links in your mini E-Books and then making them re-brandable using some sort of PDF branding tool.

Adding Advertisements to Your Mini E-Book

Adding advertisements to your mini E-Book can be done for a number of purposes. For instance, if you do not want to upsell your own product with your mini E-Book, you can find partners who will want to advertise in your mini E-Book and you can ad in links to their E-Books either for a fee or as part of a swap agreement. Additionally, you can insert affiliate links, links to your products, and links to your opt-in list in your E-Book.

There are a number of ways in which you can do this. One popular way is creating an appendix. In your appendix, you can come up with a list of products that you would genuinely recommend – and then give a link to each, along with a short description of what the product is and how it fits into the overall scheme.

Another way in which you can do this is by adding advertisements to your mini E-Book on the very first page. Immediately suggest that readers sign up for your course or buy your product. This will work a lot better if you didn’t make them pay for the E-Book to begin with. If they paid for it, finding an upsell on the first pages will probably make them angry.

If you circulated your E-Book for free, you can begin the process of adding advertisements to your mini E-Book by building up to certain points that would require your readers to purchase a tool. It would be nice if they could complete your plan for free, but this simply isn’t the case in many instances. In many instances, they will have to buy something or learn more – which is why you should take advantage of this by carefully adding advertisements to your mini E-Book.

You will want to select tools that you have actually used and will actually provide tangible results for your readers – and ones that actually do fit into the overall plan. This will increase your customers’ level of trust and subsequently secure future purchases.

How to Brand Your Mini E-Book to be Unique

One question that will undoubtedly run through your mind during the product- creation process is how to brand your mini E-Book to be unique. This is especially important if you plan to give your E-Book away for free, as dozens of other people will also do the same. When a mini E-Book is free, it can often be perceived to have little or no value at all, which is important to take into consideration when thinking how to brand your mini E-Book to be unique.

The first way in which you can do this is by selecting some type of controversial angle – or some hot, current topic on which to base your mini E-Book. This might be easy if your niche is politics or religion, but otherwise, you will have to dig a little further. If you read about your niche on a daily basis, though, it might not be quite as hard, as you will already have a rough idea.

Once you have determined the topic, you will want to come up with some inflammatory email subject lines, some powerful, compelling headers, and some unique angles you can use to market your book. This is one method you can consider when determining how to brand your mini E-Book to be unique. The more inflammatory and controversial the message, the more people will decide to purchase your mini E-Book – if only to see why you have taken such a radical position.

Another way in which you can make your mini E-Book unique is by taking a themed or unusual approach to the sales page. Take, for instance, the Rich Jerk, who, instead of opting for a more traditional approach, decided to be a complete jerk to his customers. For some reason, this worked and his book ended up rising to the #1 slot on clickbank for his selected categories.

These tactics definitely do work when determining how to brand your mini E- Book to be unique. Test some of these out with your next mini E-Book. Perhaps you can try replacing your normal picture on your sales page with a picture of you in a gorilla suit.

Chapter 6: Marketing Your Mini E-Book

Once you’ve completed an exhaustive mini E-Book project, giving it away to your subscribers for free probably isn’t the most attractive idea you’ve ever had. But if it isn’t, you will want to consider the following: what works best in the long run is often what works worst in the short run (at least in terms of revenue generation).

You might be anxious to milk every last cent out of your subscribers by making a desperate attempt to get every last one of them to buy your mini E-Book, but ultimately, that leaves you with a little cash, but an opt-in list that essentially has not changed in size at all.

Instead, you will want to look at your list for its true potential, which as Jimmy D. Brown puts it, is that it is your most valuable asset for finding business partners. Sure, the people you on your list are learning from you, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t experts themselves – or at least really skilled, even if they haven’t yet found a way to make money with those skills.

So next time you create a mini E-Book, consider giving it away to your subscribers, rather than charging them to buy it. You may end up with an impressive amount of exposure without paying a dime. You may also find out that giving it away to your subscribers may prompt some of the experts on your list to come out of the woodwork and offer you partnerships.

Additionally, if you use clever backend sales techniques, you can give it away for free and still make money. For instance, your E-Book could be a really compelling method to do something, but an ultimately incomplete method. This means that your subscribers will be moved by the material, but they will have no other option but to take action when they are finished, rather than putting what they learned into action. You can then direct that action towards buying the product that completes the idea or method.

Contact Membership Site Owners for Contribution

One way in which you can circulate your mini E-Book is to contact membership site owners for contribution. If, for instance, you have a mini E-Book about pie, you can then look for membership sites that sell pie articles and recipes. Contact the owner of the site and ask him if he or she is interested in giving your product away for free to his members. Many people don’t realize why this is such a powerful system, but it’s simple: by contacting a single membership site owner, you can get your mini E-Book distributed to every member without contacting anyone else. This is a powerful system indeed.

Now, if this person owns a large list, you might get your E-Book sent to several hundred thousand people; however, many may never download it or read it. But you are almost guaranteed to pick up several thousand new leads, whether they be in the form of subscribers or in site visitors.

Additionally, if you contact membership site owners who distribute content to webmasters, you may be able to multiply your efforts several times over. This is because the webmasters who are paying for the content will then turn it around and begin selling it themselves. Immediately, you have created a chain of incentives that will guarantee that your mini E-Book is widely distributed without much additional effort.

Of course, as with any attempt to create partnerships, you will want to approach membership site owners in a personal and compelling way. You could start by sending them a message and simply saying “Hey. I’ve seen your membership site at XYZ and I have a question for you.” If they respond, you can then go on to explain the benefits they would derive by simply passing out your mini E-Book for free.

And there you have it: contact membership sites for contribution – and then watch your mini E-Book spread like wildfire.

Submit to E-Book Directories

As you understand well by now, there are dozens of different ways in which you can promote your mini E-Book. One of the more promising methods is to submit to E-Book directories. E-Book directories are usually multi-purpose sites that also display articles from a range of different topics. Their main purpose, of course, is to act as a massive directory of different free and paid E-Books.

One easy way to find E-Book directories is to search Google for an “E-Book directory list,” rather than an “E-Book directory.” A number of Internet marketers have assembled full, free lists of directories for this exact purpose.

There are a number of things you will want to keep in mind when you submit to E-Book directories. The first is the title and description you use. While you are submitting primarily to get downloads from site visitors, you will also want to integrate natural search engine optimization techniques whenever possible. By placing the keywords you are targeting in your title and description of the mini E-Book, you will gain a more relevant backlink.

The next thing you will want to consider is how to differentiate your mini E- Book from all of the other offers in your category. One good way is by getting good graphics work done. This immediately makes your mini E-Book look more professional than other E-Books in the same directory.

Another way in which you can differentiate your mini E-Book is by putting together a compelling description paragraph. Give a powerful, focused incentive for visitors to actually download your mini E-Book.

The last way in which you can submit to E-Book directories and get better results involves re-branding to allow anyone who downloads the mini E-Book to insert their affiliate links. If your goal is to get opt-in subscribers for your list, then letting anyone distribute it and take the affiliate commission should be no problem for your business plan.

Offer as an Incentive for People to Subscribe to Your List

One way in which you can quickly gain subscribers with your mini E-Book is to offer it as an incentive for people to subscribe to your list. This is routinely done for Internet marketing products, but it isn’t quite as popular for other markets, as they usually catch on a little slower. This is good news if you aren’t selling in the IM niche, as people who are searching for products in your niche wont be quite as suspicious.

If you are in the Internet marketing niche, you will notice that a good amount of your subscribers will put you on a “swipe file” or “mass email” account. This is usually an account they open with Hotmail and Yahoo – and never bother to read. They simply use it to download free products without having to be bothered by the emails that come later. This means that compelling them through your offer to get them to subscribe will have to be paired with an effort to get them to continue reading.

The place place to compel them is either in the first email or in the actual mini E-Book itself. These are the two places in which you are guaranteed to reach them. If you don’t reach them hear, you might never get the chance to do so again.

Now, if you’re not selling IM products, you wont have to worry about this as much, but you will still want to consider making sure you structure your offer as an incentive for people to subscribe to your list. Many people structure it in a disjointed way that never lines up. People don’t understand why they are joining a list in order to download the mini E-Book – and they don’t understand what the two have to do with each other.

You will want to make sure you solve this problem by correctly lining up the information in the book with the course that will immediately follow it logically. This will give readers a clear transition.

Contribute to Give Away Events

Another way in which you can quickly disseminate your mini E-Book is to contribute to give away events. These events usually occur when a number of business owners in the same niche – although it is mainly popular in Internet marketing – decide to get together and jointly give away a massive amount of products in the hope that they will all benefit from the collective publicity generated.

The best way in which to contribute to give away events is by carefully timing your mini E-Book release to coincide with give aways. These give aways will often be scheduled around Holidays, such as Christmas. You can usually find out more by browsing offer pages on other sites in your niche.

Additionally, you may want to organize your own give away, rather than relying on someone else’s. You can do this by creating a list of other webmasters in your niche. You can then create a form letter (but personalize it for each email) and send it out to all of these webmasters to see if any of them are willing to contribute to your give away event.

If you can get five or more people to work with you, your product will gain massive exposure, especially if they all have lists. But even beyond the exposure gained from their subscribers, you will also find the Internet will be buzzing about this massive joint venture give away.

The last way in which you can contribute to give away events is by participating in Internet marketing give aways, even if you don’t sell Internet marketing products. This might sound weird, but in many cases, Internet marketers will give away a bundle of non-IM products when they setup a give away. This is because their buyers not only want to learn more about marketing, but they also want products that they can actually sell in non-IM niches.

Use as a Bonus to Another Product You Are Selling

Among other things, Internet marketers are known for piling giant heaps of crap bonuses onto offers to make it look more desirable. Interestingly, enough, there has been a sort of counter-movement to this, especially since many people feel that being loaded down with questionable bonuses indicates that the real product is seriously lacking.

How can you avoid this problem and still generate a high conversion rate with your sales page? You can do it by using your E-Book as a bonus to another product you are selling, rather than using 17 different E-Books that you downloaded from some site you Googled as you were writing the sales page. Even though these freebies might actually contain some useful information, the perception is that you are using worthless bonuses.

Another problem with giving away billions of worthless bonuses is that you weigh down your potential market with too much information. You might be ready for product launch number two, but all of your customers might still be reading “Secrets to Finding Crap Bonuses to Put on Your Sales Page, Volume 12” that you slapped on there as bonus material.

So avoid piling on the crap, no matter what market you are in. Instead use your mini E-Book as a bonus to another product you are selling, rather than using someone else’s product.

Additionally, if you plan to use this strategy, also make sure that you stress the exclusivity of it. People are going to assume it is a crap bonus unless you explicitly state that it is not.

The last thing you need to keep in mind when you use your mini E-Book as a bonus to another product you are selling is that you absolutely must make an attempt to interface the two products. The last thing you want to do is send your buyers in two completely different directions, even if both of the products are useful.

Other Known Mini E-Book Marketing Methods

In addition to simply marketing your mini E-Book through joint ventures, search engine optimization, and pay per click advertising, you will also want to apply other known mini E-Book marketing methods.

One of these other little known mini E-Book marketing methods is forum posting. It sounds simple enough, but many people fail to include it as part of their mini E-Book marketing campaigns. You can generate a lot of traffic to your mini E-Book download page by simply posting on forums and including the free download link in your signature.

There are two important things to keep in mind when doing this: the first is to read all of the signature rules on the forum first. The worst possible thing you can do is post a blatant advertisement (your signature) on a massive public forum in your niche when it is completely against the rules. At best, you will get severely rebuked by members and moderators. The second thing to keep in mind is that you must actually make yourself known to forum posters. You can’t sit back casually, post every once in a while, and expect the downloads to roll in. Instead, you have to actively engage topics and attempt to respond to or feed off of controversy whenever possible.

Another one of the other known mini E-Book marketing methods includes publishing e-zine articles. This usually involves writing 5-10 articles that are tightly focused around the core subject presented in your E-Book. At the end of each article, you should include a compelling resource box with a link to download your E-Book.

You will then want to take all of these articles and distribute them to various e- zine publishers and article directories. The more sources you spread them to, the more inbound links you will have to your download page.

Using these two other known mini E-Book marketing methods, you can drive a considerable amount of extra site to your download page.

Using Traffic Exchanges

One way in which you can promote your mini E-Book is by using traffic exchanges. While using traffic exchanges can mean a number of different things, it is usually meant to be a means of trading impressions on your site for impressions on another site.

If, for instance, your site gets 50 unique visitors each day – and you use a traffic exchange banner, you are then entitled to 50 impressions on someone else’s website.

There are some pros and cons to using traffic exchanges. The pros are that they are relatively easy to use and they are a completely free way of getting more traffic to your site, which you might finding intriguing if you are on a low budget. All you have to do is slap a banner or some code onto your site and then wait to get impressions from someone else.

There’s one major downside to using traffic exchanges – and that is that impressions don’t always translate into click-thrus. Which means you might have 50 visitors view your banner on another site, but only one might click through, which means you have traded 50 impressions on your site for one visitor.

In addition to these traffic exchanges, you will find the type of traffic exchange model that http://www.trafficswarm uses, which is quite different. Rather than exchanging banners or code, you are given code to insert into your website. Everytime someone visits, you gain points, which then go toward auto-surf credits. People who visit traffic swarm and surf through the pages will then be forced to view your page for 30 seconds at some point in order to gain credits themselves.

If you’re looking for free exposure for your mini E-Book, using traffic exchanges might be a good option, even if they aren’t always as highly-effective as more expensive forms of advertisement.

Paid Newsletter Advertising

Paid newsletter advertising comes in several different forms: online, offline, solo ad, and classified ad. Let’s look at some of the important pros of using paid newsletter advertising and also some of the cons.

Let’s start with offline paid newsletter advertising. You could do this through a number of different venues: you could contact companies and organizations that put out a newsletter and offer to pay a certain amount if your advertisement can be inserted in exchange. Or you could pick up some free newsletters from a local paper store rack and look for information about advertising. The key to successful paid newsletter advertising offline is simple: concentrate on demographics, circulation, and alleged responsiveness of buyers.

Next, let’s consider online paid newsletter advertising, which is usually more popular among site owners, anyway. To find newsletters that allow you to pay, you will want to start browsing directories on the Internet. You can find these through a simple Google search of “e-zine directories” or “e-zine directory list.” Next, narrow down potential newsletters by niche. For instance, if you’re making a mini E-Book about pie, look for those pie e-zines to advertise in; additionally, you will want to look at larger e-zines with larger circulations that cover your general topic. These may actually be better to publish advertisements in, as they will have less directly competing products.

Once you have selected your medium of paid newsletter advertising, you will then want to select an advertisement type. For instance, should you submit a classified at or a solo ad? A classified ad will be smaller and will receive less exposure. A solo ad might take up an entire page in the newsletter – or, in the case of an online newsletter – it might make up the entire issue for that given day.

Depending on the quality of the newsletter you select, the medium you use, and the circulation, demographics, and quality of your solo or classified ad, you can either win big or lose big with paid newsletter advertisement – all of which will depend on your careful research and decisions.

Using Your Blogs to Give Your Mini E-Book Away

Another way in which you can disseminate your mini E-Book is by giving it away through your blogs. This is especially effective if you own more than one site in the same niche. For instance, if you sell Internet marketing products on 25 different sites, you can begin using your blogs to give your mini E-Book away, even if the sites the blogs are on do not contain the sales page for your site.

Another great way in which you can begin using your blogs to give your mini E- Book away involves first posting a quick advertisement for the mini E-Book on your blog – and then commenting on others’ blogs. It is important that you do not spam. Not only is it unethical, but it is far more likely to hurt you than it is to help you. It will probably eventually get you blacklisted from commenting and banned from search engines. Instead, you will want to post useful, relevant comments on blogs – and then direct them back to your site with a link. No only will this get you traffic from other blogs, but it will also increase your search engine rankings by pointing a link from a relevant site to your blog.

Aside from focusing on useful comments, it is crucial to take a number of other things into consideration. For instance, you will want to take into consideration the blogs you comment on. One way in which you can find high ranking blogs in your niche is by searching the http://www.ask.com and http://www.google.com blog directories. You can then sort blogs by importance and by commenting rules – and then carefully select the ones that will give you the best benefit by posting on them.

The last crucial part of using blogs to give your mini E-Book away involves creating a powerful landing page on your blog. If you generate traffic through comments, but are ultimately unable to convert any of that into subscribers, then it is essentially time wasted.

How to Go Viral with Mini E-Books

If you don’t plan to create a tidal wave of viral promotion with your mini E- Books, then you might be better off promoting your business with some other form of advertising. This is because mini E-Books an extremely powerful viral ability that works in forms of pre-selling, exposure, and trust-building in a way you cannot do through pay-per-click or search engine optimization.

Below are some tips on how to go viral with mini E-Books:

Tip #1 on “How to Go Viral with Mini E-Books”:

Upload your mini E-Book to as many Bit Torrent-like systems as possible. These systems will allow people from all over the world to download your book, even if they aren’t the type of Internet-users who would normally be using E-Book directories.

This is especially effective as many users of these systems believe they are downloading a product that normally has a cost for free – not a free product. This actually creates additional perceived value, which will give them the incentive to read it.

Tip #2 on “How to Go Viral with Mini E-Books”:

Be generous. This sounds like an irrelevant principle, but it really isn’t. All great Internet marketers espouse it because it actually is true. The more incentives you provide, the more you give, and the better quality products you create, the more people will want to work with you – and the more people will spend money on your products.

Tip #3 on “How to Go Viral with Mini E-Books”:

Create initial exclusivity. If your book is perceived to be rubbish that you are throwing into as many trash barrels as possible in hopes that someone will pick it up, few reputable site owners will actually want to be one of those trash barrels. In contrast, if you start out by restricting distributing to only 10 sites for the first two weeks, then you can create some exclusivity that will boost the perceived worth of your mini E-Book. Next time you launch a mini E-Book, re- consider these important tips for going viral with mini E-Books.

Secret: What Makes People Give Your Mini E-Book Willingly

You’ve probably already determined that giving away a mini E-Book sounds like a good idea. You know that it is an excellent means of getting traffic and also a means to get exposure for your business or for your other products.

But what is the secret that makes people give your mini E-Book willingly? For the most part, people don’t spend their time giving away free things, even if they don’t have to pay them. This is especially true for business owners, who would make some of your best potential partners. They spend time doing things that are profitable for them – not things that are profitable for you, which is why you must build in some sort of reciprocity into your mini E-Books. And that is the secret that makes people give your mini E-Book willingly to other people.

One type of reciprocity you can build into your mini E-Book is re-branding. This allows people who downloaded your E-Book to change the affiliate links inside of the book, so they can get credit for all of the sales they generate. This will give people a powerful incentive to redistribute your book.

Another secret that makes people give your mini E-Book willingly to other people is pre-created advertisements. This takes a good amount of the work out of promoting your E-Book. Since many cannot write well or do not feel comfortable doing so, your offer will be far more attractive if they don’t have to do any additional work. For instance, if they can simply upload the book to their site, slap a pre-made advertisement onto the forum signature, and then go post.

The last secret that makes people give your mini E-Book willingly to other people involves using contests. For instance, you could offer to pay the person who makes the most referrals $200. This will give everyone the incentive to promote your E-Book in emails, to friends, on forums, on blogs, and on their own websites. Additionally, it will generate interest in your site from Internet marketers, who might be interested in joining future competitions.

Chapter 7: In Closing

There are three common mini E-Book mistakes you should avoid. If you don’t take the proper precautions to identify these mistakes and to make sure you don’t commit them yourself, you simply will not earn as much as you potentially could.

The first of the common mini E-Book mistakes you should avoid is failing to provide the proper incentives for your affiliates and resellers. Heard this before? That’s because it’s important and true. People will go out of their way to download something if it is free, but if they have no incentive to then redistribute it, it will probably sit on their computer and go nowhere. So, before you even create a mini E-Book, you will want to create some clear, compelling incentives for your potential distributors.

The second of the common mini E-Book mistakes you should avoid is failing to create pre-launch buzz. This is one of the best possible ways in which you can gain massive amounts of traffic – create anticipation! Get people returning to your site simply to see if you’ve launched your product yet. Perhaps you can even use a countdown clock, as John Reese did for Traffic Secrets. You could even do the reverse and create scarcity. Make your mini E-Book a legitimate one-time offer for a short period of time. Everyone will rush to get it before that time expires.

The third of the common mini E-Book mistakes you should avoid is failing to find joint venture partners. While natural search engine traffic and pay per click traffic might be a reasonable means to further circulate your E-Book, you will also find that they they will return pitiful results when compared to successful joint ventures with partners who already have a lot of traffic.

And there you have it: three of the most common mini E-Book mistakes you should avoid. Keep away from these E-Book launch killers you’ll considerably increase your profit potential.

How to Make the Most Out of Giving Away Mini E-Books

At this point, you might be wondering how to make the most out of giving away mini E-Books. You now understand that some of the best Internet marketers do this on a monthly basis simply to generate subscribers and sales, but you’re not exactly you can do it yourself.

Here are some important tips for how to make the most out of giving away mini E-Books:

Tip #1: Make it easy for partners to participate. If Joe the giant site owner gets 20 joint ventures each week, which is he going to choose? The one that requires 10 hours of participation or the one he can can put to use immediately with no additional work? All things being equal, Joe is going to take the one that doesn’t require as much effort. So make it easy for Joe. Give him solo ads, descriptions, graphics, and even a sales page.

Tip #2: Make a huge list of possible participants and contact them in a personal way. Sure, you’re sending out your joint venture offer to fifteen dozen people, but that doesn’t mean they have to know that. Take the time to get acquainted with their products and services; maybe even sign up for their newsletter – and then contact them in a non-aggressive manner. Don’t email them a sales page on your first contact. They receive those every week – and they hit ‘delete’ immediately. Instead, let them know you have a question – and then state it in a polite, reasonable manner. You may even want to fax it or make a phone call.

Tip #3: Build a backend system into your E-Book. Again, I can’t say this enough. When determining how to make the most of giving away your mini E-Book, you absolutely must take lead generation into consideration. Don’t simply send out a poorly constructed mini E-Book that contains no real incentives for your readers to become subscribers and then expect to see the subscribers pour in. It simply wont happen. Make sure you link to your site and make your purpose clear.

If you carefully apply all of these three tips, you learn how to make the most out of giving away mini E-Books.

Comprehensive List of E-Book Directories

Another excellent means through which to distribute your E-Book and get backlinks for your course is by consulting a comprehensive list of E-Book directories. These directories usually allow you to submit your E-Book completely free of charge.

Below is a comprehensive list of E-Book directories, listed according to popularity:

http://www.jogena.com/E-Bookdir/E-Bookdata.htm – This is one of the more popular E-Book directories on the Internet. While it focuses on business and marketing related categories, it also does accept submissions for E-Books in other categories.

 http://www.mindlikewater.com/ – This massive E-Book directory usually accepts E-Books on all topics, fiction and non-fiction, but it has temporarily suspended submissions. When it is up again, you will want to submit to it, as the site receives a great deal of traffic.

 http://www.E-Bookpalace.com/ – E-Book Palace is another popular directory to which you can submit your mini E-Books. Unlike most directories, they have highly-nuanced categories and even allow visitors to review E-Books.

 http://www.E-Bookmall.com/ – E-Book Mall is yet another big directory. E-Book Mall sells over 150,000 E-Books, including a number of hardcover titles that have been converted into PDF format. This is another great place to list your mini E-Book.

 http://www.E-Book2u.com/ – E-Book2U is yet another formidable directory. Unlike most directories, it contains strictly free E-Books, which means that your target affiliates – ones who want to redistribute free E- Books – will probably be browsing this site.

 For another comprehensive list of E-Book directories, check out the following URL: http://www.marketingforrealpeople.com/E-Book- directory-list.htm. This lists some other E-Book directories that are less popular, but you will still want to consider submitting to.

 This simple step could significantly increase the amount of peoplewho find and are subsequently able to redistribute your E-Book.

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