eBooks - (A subset of List Building)

So, you wondered why I didn’t try to sell all the valuable

information in this eBook, did you? The fact is that eBook s

almost can’t be sold anymore, because every marketer and

their uncle has penned at least one eBook lately and given it away!

Why would we do this? Well, it’s the same principle as Article Marketing, except

that it builds more brand recognition and is much more dynamic. For instance,

you’ve probably notic ed an affiliate link or two throughout this PDF document.

Some authors write these eBook just as a way to spread their Affiliate links

alone. Some even pay a team of ghost-writers to crank out a bunch of eBooks for

them to do just that, on a larger scale!

The most common use of eBooks nowadays and one that still works wonderfully

for most niches outside of Internet Marketers is offering a free eBook in

exchange for your visitor’s eMail address. Like eBay, it’s a great source of

targeted traffic. That’s it - you basically just bribe people to get on your list.

There’s nothing wrong with this tactic, it works. It’s not like you’re misleading

anyone, either. Most of them came to your site to find more information, and

probably would have signed up for your newsletter anyway just to find what they

were looking for.

The third and lesser-known, but more effective method of using eBooks, comes

from combining them with Viral Marketing… Such as the product you are reading

right now.

Unless you got an advanced copy of this eBook, many of the Affiliate links you

saw here weren’t my own. My primary objective when writing this eBook was to

get visitors to my website and build up brand recognition for Surefire Success…

Keeping control of all the affiliate links in it would have been a nice stream of

income for me, but the book would not likely have gotten into your hands, as I

wouldn’t be offering an incentive to other marketers to pass this around. I explain

this tactic more in depth under “Viral Marketing.”

An obv ious drawback is that it can be slow to get going. However, it doesn’t have

to be. If your book is really good and offers a great incentive, (like I hope this one

does) then more and more affiliates will send it out, and technically you could

build up a huge list in no time that way.

Using JV Partners (see “Joint Ventures”) is a great way to launch your eBook for

that purpose. If you can offer it to a bunch of big-list owners to send out to their

lists, their main incentive will be the revenue from your affiliate links in the

document they send.

Also, don’t be discouraged at all from making an ebook because it seems hard to

write or compile one. I understand that most people don’t have a PDF writer

software, so they think that making an eBook will cost them money or even be

something difficult to learn. –Nothing could be further from the truth though!

PDFs are so well integrated into the business world now, that there are dozens of

ways to make your MS-Word document into a PDF doc ument, and it will look and

work just as good as it would if you composed it with expensive Adobe software.

I even made a film showing you just how to do it:

How to Convert an MS Word Doc Into a PDF for Free

I hope that helps… Now all you have to do is start writing.

eZines

- (Your own Newsletter, or your “List”)

If you’ve been marketing online more than a minute, I’m sure

you’ve been bombarded with the phrase “the Money’s in the

List.” Well it’s 90% true. It doesn’t end there; you still have to

work at it. Keep giving to your list once you sign them up, much like a one-sided

relationship.

If you ask any of the subscribers to my own list, I hope that they tell you I’ve been

doing just that. So far, I haven’t had any more than one single unsubscribe, and I

believe it is because my newsletter offers something for everyone, not just a new

Advertisement each week. Anyone can send out a bunch of solo Ads from JV

Partners and the affiliate programs that they’re pitching, but I wouldn’t

recommend it if you’re interested in building a solid, trusting relationship with your

subscriber base.

There are hundreds of places online that harvest email addresses, usually by

some sort of co-registration, (where a person doesn’t even know he’s signing up

for the second newsletter simultaneously) and will be glad to sell me a whole

Solo Ad mailing allotment to that list of 200,000 or more for something like $50.

Sure, it sounds like a great deal, but what would it really get me? About 200,000

eMail boxes filled only with Ads that are no longer opened anymore.

Why should these people read such eMail? Would you watch a TV channel that

ONLY showed Ads?

The only way to make your own list profitable is to offer the same valuable

content that you would in a product or informational website. If you are just

looking for a quick product launch of one event, I don’t recommend an eZine for

you at all. Owning any eZine list that is worth its weight in kilobytes is a long term

process that requires plenty of upkeep. In that case, you should Joint Venture

with lots of other eZine owners

The rewards are astounding, however. This is the only traffic method in this

whole eBook that receives a perfect score. And yes, it is free to build and eMail

your list regularly; there are many software email utilities and even auto-

responders floating around for free. A good percentage of web host control

panels now have them built into your hosting controls.

Naturally the hard part is the time it takes to build up the list. I give it a 5 out of 5

for delivery speed however because once you send out your email to the whole

list, you can have thousands or even tens of thousands of people on your

website in minutes. Nothing else in the whole IM arena can claim to do that.