There are innumerable ways to use E-Books to promote your business and drive quality traffic to your website. Once posted on your site, you can turn them into a daily course, which brings your customer back to read the next chapter. You can use them as a free gift for making a purchase or for filling out a survey. Put your E-Book on a disc, and you will have an innovative brochure. Blow your competition away by inserting the disc into your sales packages.

The most effective marketing products are those that are unique. Copyright your E-Book, and immediately, you have a powerful tool that you, and you alone, can offer to the public. People will have to visit your site to acquire your E-Book, which increases the flow of quality traffic and the potential of sales and affiliate contacts.

Make sure that you keep your E-Book current. Update it frequently as the market and trends change. Add new advice and techniques to show your prospects how your goods or services can enrich their lives. By constantly keeping abreast of new trends and techniques, you can continue to see profits from your E-Book for years after your original creation.

Another phenomenal advantage of E-Books is that you can test their marketing potential without putting out hardly any cash at all. You can even produce an E-Book one copy at a time, each time you receive an order, eliminating the need for storage and inventory. By this method, you can gauge the salability of your E-Book, and make adjustments as necessary until the orders start pouring in. E-Books allow you to learn about your market and customer habits and motivation over a period of time, without risking your precious financial resources. They also provide you with an invaluable way to gather marketing information, which you can use in many different facets of your business.

Use your E-Book to discover what the specific goals and problems are in your specific industry. Then figure out how to solve these problems, and publish an E-Book with this invaluable information. This will increase the value of your business, upgrade your reputation, and get you known as an expert in your field.

You can extend the value of single E-Book by breaking the book down into chapters for a serial course, into special reports available on your website, or into audio or visual tapes. E-Books can be broken down into several different promotional materials by accepting some of the articles and using them to promote your product. You can include a catalog in your E-Book to promote all the products or services you sell. You can include a thank-you note for reading your book and an invitation to download a trial version of your product. Or you can include a form for your audience to contact you for further information or with questions, thereby building your business relationships and your mailing list.

Using E-Books in this manner helps to cut the cost of individually producing separate promotional materials. You can use a single E-Book to entice new prospects and to sell new products to your current customers.

No other medium has this kind of flexibility and ability for expansion. Think of your E-Book like a spider spinning a beautiful and intricate web. Now go and create that web, and see how many customers and prospects you can catch!

The hardest part of writing is the first sentence. When you look at the whole project, it seems like an impossible task. That’s why you have to break it down into manageable tasks. Think of climbing a mountain. You are standing at the foot of it and looking up at its summit vanishing into the clouds. How can you possibly scale such an immense and dangerous mountain?

There is only one way to climb a mountain: step by step.

Now think of writing your E-Book in the same light. You must create it step by step, and one day, you will take that last step and find yourself standing on the summit with your head in the clouds.

The first thing you have to do, as if you actually were a mountain climber, is to get organized. Instead of climbing gear, however, you must organize your thoughts. There are some steps you should take before you begin. Once you’ve gone through the following list, you will be ready to actually begin writing your
E-Book.

E-Books are part of the new frontier of cyberspace. They are an entirely new medium for sharing marketing information, ideas, techniques, and expert knowledge. Each day the number of people accessing the Internet grows, causing the exposure of your E-Book to increase incrementally. It’s obvious why electronic self-publishing has become so popular so quickly.

The publishing industry, I hope, does not intend to forever banish the printed word to the dustbin of history. Books in print have their own special qualities and merits, and the world would be diminished by their disappearance.

Having said that, let’s look at what makes E-Books so important and so unique.

• E-Books have certain abilities and qualities that other mediums do not possess. For example, E-Books are fairly easy to produce, and their production cost is inexpensive. Just think about it: you don’t need a publisher, an agent, a printing press, offset film, ink, paper, or even a distributor. You just need a great concept, the ability to write it or to hire a writer, and the right software.

• Additionally, E-Books are easily and rapidly distributed online. They are also easily updated; they do not require a second print run. All you need is to go into your original creation and modify the text or graphics. Because of this flexibility, E-Books can change and grow as fast as you can type.

• E-Books are also immediately obtainable. You don’t have to go to a bookstore or search through endless titles at an online bookstore. All you have to do is download it from a website, and presto! It’s on your computer, ready to be read.

• E-Books are interactive. This is one of the most unique and specific qualities that E-Books offer. You can add surveys that need to be filled out, order forms for customers to purchase your products or goods, sound and video that draw your reader into the virtual world of your E-Book, even direct links to relevant sites that will expand your E-Book outward. The potential is virtually limitless.

• E-Books have a particular kind of permanence that other mediums do not possess. Television shows and radio shows air once, and then may rerun a few times. E-Books remain on your computer for as long as your choose, and they can be read and reread whenever you choose to. They can even be printed out and stored on the shelves of your traditional home library.

• Another wonderful quality is that E-Books have no barriers in terms of publishing. You don’t need to go through the endless process of submitting your manuscript over and over again, and then once you land an agent, having the agent submit your manuscript over and over again. Nor do you have to shell out thousands of dollars for printing a self-published book. All E-Books require is a writer and appropriate software.

Figure out your market, write your book, post it on your website, and with the right business savvy, your audience will come to you.

Finally, you have creative control over your E-Book. You don’t have to compromise with an editor or the publishing trends of the time. You don’t have to haggle with a designer or wait for copyedited galleys to arrive by snail mail. You are in complete control of the design and the text.

Today, I want to share with you one of the biggest mistakes affiliates make. I want to share this with you so you wont make the same mistake:

The one major mistake many affiliates make is NOT setting up a list!

Affiliates will often send traffic that they generated to affiliate links, rather than a list. When they do this, they are unknowingly making a bet that visitor will buy on first contact. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case.

Visitors often need to be warmed up to a product - through the course of multiple visits and additional information - before they are willing to purchase from a person or a business. This is where building a list comes into play.

By building a list, affiliates can fix this problem. Additionally, they can retain traffic, warm it up, and then direct it to different purchases in the future. This means that it isn’t a one-shot deal: instead, they can attempt to sell the same person multiple products over the course of time.

Now, in order to do this successfully, the affiliate in question must purchase the necessary tools. I personally suggest using http://30daysfree.aweber.com for the actual auto responder service.

Aweber is relatively inexpensive ($20/mo.) and comes with a formidable range of services, including spam checkers and macros. Best of all, it is whitelisted by many email clients and boasts a delivery rate of 99%.

This service will not only manage your list, but it will also help you build it. It includes free tools that allow you to create web forms, pop-ups, and hover-ins - all of which can be used to increase your opt-in rate.

Now, in addition to purchasing the auto responder service, you will need to setup your own site if you do not already own one. If you already own a related site, you can simply add your opt in form to a page on your existing site. If not, I suggest purchasing cheap domain and hosting and using this to host your list forms. Http://www.27hosting.com currently offers some of the cheapest hosting available on the market.

Once you have your site and your auto responder setup, there are only two steps left: the first is building a course of some sort that is related to the affiliate products you will sell; and the second is creating an opt-in form that converts.

The first part is relatively easy. Start by determining your topic and then outline it over the course of five to seven days. Remember that everything should be written as if you are talking to a person, rather than as if you were writing a formal article.

If you don’t feel comfortable writing these articles yourself, you can always hire a ghostwriter at http://www.elance.com for $5-15 per issue, depending on the size.

Once you have created your auto responder series, you will want to feed it into your auto responder, setup advertisements in the text for the affiliate product you are planning to sell, and then create an opt-in form for your list.

Once you have setup your opt-in form, the only remaining step is to drive various traffic sources to your opt-in list, collect their email addresses - and then wait for the commissions to roll in!

Did you know that the free viral report is quite possibly the most deadly weapon in an affiliate marketer’s arsenal?

It allows him o her to quickly multiply his or her efforts while slashing down on marketing costs. All the marketer has to do is develop a viral report for little or no cost, embed an affiliate link in said report, and then find various avenues of distribution that will ensure that the report is perpetuated as far as possible - from group to group to group.

Now, with this being said, when it comes to developing free viral reports, a considerable amount of precise calculation and back-end system setup is needed. Simply jotting down garbage, tossing in an affiliate link, and then attempting to send it to everyone you know in .txt format isn’t likely to gain you anything; nor is it likely to multiply your efforts by inducing other marketers to redistribute the report for you.

Instead, you must start from a different point. You must determine what topic people are looking for related to your specific affiliate product.

For instance, do they need more information about the product itself? Do they need to know how to use that product effectively? Whatever your angle happens to be, make sure that it lines up with the wants of your customers and also ties in nicely with your affiliate product.

Next, create the actual viral report and embed your affiliate link in multiple places. If you have a site and a list, you may want to instead post a link to your list - and then use back-end mechanisms to make the sale.

Your last step is to actually ensure that this viral report:

a) Gets into as many people’s hands as humanly possible; and
b) Gets into the hands of people who will definitely redistribute it to others without charging any fees. This is where the art of free viral report distribution comes into play.

A good way to distribute your viral report is to create a buzz on forums. You will want to discuss some specific experience you had related to the topic you will cover in the report - and you will want to do it well in advance of your release date.

You will then want to start talking up your release - and also explain that the report will be completely free. Furthermore, you may want to even start locking people in for immediate distribution via email by getting them to join a list. To learn more about viral marketing through this method, you may want to check out some of the case studies at the following URL: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/.

Additionally, you may want to check out http://www.viralPDF.com, which is an excellent tool you can use to create the actual viral reports.

Once you have begun building a forum buzz for the report, you will want to go to e-zine owners in your particular niche and ask them if they are interested in getting a free report on whichever subject you are marketing. The distribution effect will multiply, subsequently multiplying your sales.

Please note that I will provide a free viral report that you can use to promote my affiliate product. This will cut out the development phase for you.

And the ultimate grand of schemes, which I have purposely saved this method for the last (yet most important!).

Take a look at some of the viral reports I created for my Dating Site.

http://DatingProfitsCenter.Com

You might not know this, but social networking sites aren’t just for teenagers anymore. In fact, social networking sites have evolved into something different altogether than what they once were - networks composed mainly of teenage girls.

Today, social networking sites span the spectrum of demographic groups. While teenagers are still more apt to use them than older people, there are now niche social networking sites, which target people who all share some common interest, such as a skateboarding or investing.

Now, in addition to teenagers and adults, social networks are increasingly becoming used by another group - businesses. That’s right: many businesses are now infiltrating social networks to advertise in some subtle manner - and then replicate their message through systems that are already available within the social network.

The most prominent social network is http://www.MySpace.com, which boasts a membership base of 1.06 hundred million (and still growing!).

If the affiliate product you are selling has a broad appeal, you may want to use MySpace to market your product, as you will be able to reach the largest crowd quickly.

Now, there are a number of different ways in which you can market your affiliate product through MySpace. One way is to setup a profile, purchase what is called an “adder robot,” and then begin adding friends to your list on a daily basis. The robot can add as many as 300 per day without any problems. I recommend http://www.badderadder.com/ for this purpose.

Depending on your goals, you may want to add a personal profile for yourself and then talk about your business/product on your page; or you may want to simply create a profile for your business and use that to market your product.

While you can send out bulletins advertising your product through MySpace, this is generally discouraged by the MySpace staff and could lead to your getting banned. It is probably a good idea to avoid this; instead, post related bulletins that don’t advertise your product, but talk about something similar.

This will drive interested visitors to your page, where they can learn more about the affiliate product you are selling. Note, however, that you will have to link to a non-affiliate page, as affiliate links are expressly forbid on MySpace.

Once you have had some experience marketing to the MySpace crowd, you will want to consider looking at other social networking sites.

One other large site is Friendster, which you can find at the following URL: http://www.friendster.com. Bear in mind though, that this site is generally very popular in South-East Asia and other Asian countries.

Http://www.facebook.com/ is another large social networking site, which caters specifically to college and high school students. You will also want to look for niche networking sites, which will afford you an opportunity to capture a more targeted audience.

Whichever sites you decide to use, keep the following in mind: your goal should be to develop a network of people who share a common interest and could potentially be interested in your specific product.

For this reason, it is always a good idea to think long term (i.e. don’t do things that are going to get you banned); instead, concentrate on building your network and introducing them to your affiliate product.