Day Five: Internet Marketing eBook

Posted by Bonny Albo Jan 8, 2007

If this is your first time visiting the thirty-day Make Money without Spending a Dime Challenge - Welcome! If you want to start from the beginning, you'll find the first posting here, and a list of all of the make money challenges to date here. Also, don't forget to join in the discussions.

My only goal today was to edit and redesign an internet marketing ebook for my seo copywriting business, which I planned to offer for free to my target market: small and home business owners. I found some free templates online for content, but found what I already had tucked away in my saved files to be of more use. I also wanted to get some artwork in the internet marketing ebook to snazz things up a bit, but wasn't too sure where to look without being virus bombed - or worse - not finding what I needed after hours of work. Instead, I used some free credits over at iStockPhoto I had left over from another project. Even if I did have to pay, the small artwork only costs $1 - a small price, especially when you know finding what you need would be a days-long headache otherwise.

Problem was, I didn't get it done. The RSS aggregator I set up over at Google was overloaded with copywriting and marketing leads (see Day Two for a how-to), I had a bit of planning to do for my meeting with the Okanagan Home Business Association, I had several emails to follow up with from forum postings I made, and I wanted to participate in a couple of marketing conference calls to get more ideas for this Make Money without Spending a Dime Challenge.

I also got sidetracked a couple of times; most notably with other free internet marketing eBooks, such as Joan Stewart's Best of the Publicity Hound's Tip of the Week and Chris Marlow's 10 Steps to Landing High-Quality, High-Value Clients. The material in these ebooks are a week alone of tips and practical suggestions to get started with today. I'll blog more about what I learned later this week from these gurus, and others.

Back to the point of this posting, however: how and why to create internet marketing ebooks for profit.

Creating eBooks are simple if you are a web site copywriter like myself, because you already know what your target market needs, and what kinds of questions they ask. In fact, if you've done your market research properly or have been in business for a while, you'll know exactly what questions get asked constantly - and that's what you should focus on in your eBook. That way, when you are asked the same thing - yet again - all you have to do is forward them a copy of your internet marketing ebook, and voila! Problem solved.

If you aren't a writer, or don't have time to create something from scratch, that's okay too. Hire an seo copywriter, compile an eBook from article sites like EzineArticles (making sure to keep the blurb at the end of the pieces you use intact), or scour the web for other business owners like yourself who are willing to give you resale rights to their internet marketing eBooks. The choice is up to you.

The key, however, once you've compiled the information, created a table of contents (both Word and Open Office's Writer do a great jobs) and transferred the information into a PDF file (try SmartPDF, it's free), you need to distribute it. How?

Find your target market. What associations or clubs do they belong to? Where do they hang out online and off? Find those places, then make sure that your eBook is placed somewhere where they can easily download it. Contact the association's newsletter writer or publicity chairman, contact the local Chamber of Commerce, talk to newspaper or magazine editors... you get my drift.

I'd highly recommend setting up an autoresponder to take care of the internet marketing eBook requests however. You may be deluged with more requests that you can handle.

Alas, the deluge will have to wait until tomorrow for me, since I didn't get my internet marketing ebook edited and redesigned. Yet.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, business leads, internet marketing ebooks, make money, money making, bootstrapping, free publicity, copywriting, free marketing, publicity ideas, entrepreneurs, small business, home business, homebased business.