Information Marketing the MOST Lucrative of all Internet Marketing Opportunities

Information marketing is probably the easiest and fastest way to build a business on the Internet.  (Already I can hear you say “Duh – Everybody knows that!)  Most people won’t try to make money using this venue and when they do, it is usually done wrong.

However, when you think of it, if everyone were great info-marketers the market would be absolutely saturated.  (Kinda like brick and mortar video businesses back in the 80’s.) 

Not to say it isn't highly competitive in certain niches already, but if you know how to target a hot niche or sub-niche, you can still rake in the bucks.

The Reality of the Info-Marketing Business – or – That Dirty Four Letter Word

I like to frequent forums where IM newbs (slang for Internet Marketing newbies) hang out.  Most of them are wide-eyed optimists, and right out of the starting gate, they make posts like this:

“How can you make $2000 a month selling info-products?”

“Frustrated with trying to make $$$ online”

“I’m totally broke and desperate and need to make good money now!!!”

You know, the usual.

My response to them is:

“Did you think this was going to be different than starting any other type of business?  It requires A LOT of WORK!”

Just like Edison used to say, “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

Information marketing IS lucrative, but you have to work it like a madman or woman to make money at it.

Consider What You Need to Do to Make Money

Outside of actually creating the actual product (videos, eBooks, reports, blog posts, etc.) you still have a load of work to do to actually get your product onto the market.

Market Research

Let’s say you’re going to sell a 100 page eBook.  You need to research first to see if there’s a market for it.  If you do it right, it may take you a few days or more of work to find out whether your product has merit. 

The reason I say this requires a few days of research, is because you really need to find out on the front-end of your project whether or not there is a marketable niche.  You need to find out if the market is large enough and hungry enough to buy what you’re trying to sell.

If you watch ABC’s Shark Tank, you’ll see that this is where most enthusiastic and new entrepreneurs fall short on that show.  People come into it expecting to go into business with seasoned, filthy rich venture capitalists on their ideas and products. 

Unfortunately, these venture capitalists are very experienced and business savvy.  If the budding entrepreneurs haven’t sold too many units, or have any existing market data to back up their claims, they won’t get a deal.

As one of the sharks on the show likes to say, “You’re dead to me.”

Marketing Plan

Once you've finished writing, formatting, branding and packaging your product, you still have a crap-load of work to do. 

You've got to figure out how you are going to attract your target market.  What methods are you going to use to attract and keep the attention of the people you want to have as paying customers?

What type of a sales funnel are you going to use? What is your unique selling proposition? If you structure a plan based on the sales funnel model, you’ll need to decide what channels you are going to use to broadcast your message.

Execution

Once you've figured out how you’re going to market your business, you've got to execute it. 

The Most seasoned marketers will tell you to use as many different types of marketing channels that you can manage.  That way, if one channel goes out for one reason or another, you’ll the other channels that you can still promote your business through.

For example, if you are accustomed to using nothing but YouTube videos to promote your product and then Google decides to kill YouTube for some reason, you’ll still have 4 or 5 other channels like social media, blogging, or whatever that you’re still using.

Selling

Once you get your crowd through your sales funnel, you’ll want to set up a sales page.  (Actually the sales page is part of your funnel, but let’s not split hairs here!)

You've got to have a page that convinces your readers that if they don’t buy what you have to offer, life on planet Earth will end.  You either have to have the skill to write compelling copy or hire someone that’ll do that for you.

Delivery

Once you get everything else in place, you’ll need to make sure you've got a way to collect money and deliver the product.  There are all sorts of ways to do this from making on line delivery systems to sending your product directly to the customer by way of snail mail.

Hot Tip #1 - If you have a PayPal account you can sell eBooks online relatively easy.  PayPal will process your transaction, but it will not DELIVER your eBook. For that, you’ll need an intermediary site.

  

There is a site called Upload –N- Pay that you can use as a delivery system.  The setup is fairly easy and you can be running in no time.

Hot Tip #2 – if you want to produce your own physical Audio CD’s or Video CD’s there’s an excellent company called Kunaki that silkscreens the CD and packages it in a nice case.

 A while back, I was making sports videos for kids that wanted to get scholarships for college, and I needed a way to get the video CD into a box.  I used Kunaki because they print on demand.  

I uploaded the video, sent in the case photo and for an extremely reasonable price got my video and case created. 

An absolutely amazing service! Here is their price list: Kunaki’s Prices 

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

How I Found My First Niche and Made My First REAL Money On eBay!

Yesterday I told you how I got started on eBay and how I finally figured out

You can make money from
eBay if you know how!

where in the heck I went wrong.  

If you want to really get the lowdown on how all that happened, you can go back and read the previous post here:

eBay!- How I Made My First REAL Money on the Internet!

The Reason Why eBay Is so Easy to Make Money From…

eBay was instrumental in my getting started in Internet marketing, because it had so much going for it.

For one thing, you could know absolutely nothing about building a website and still be able to set up a site on eBay in a reasonable amount of time.  Since I already had some HTML experience to begin with, eBay was an absolute snap. 

All I had to do was take pictures of the products I wanted to sell, make a brief write up about them, and boom! -- I was in business.

The other wonderful part about selling things on eBay, was the fact that you got TARGETED TRAFFIC to your products.  If you had a website, you had to somehow drive traffic to your site that wanted what you had to offer.

For people just starting out, that meant shelling money out on ads, which sometimes required lots and lots of money.

With eBay, all you had to do was put your item on the auction block in the category that was relevant.  Once you did that it was duck-soup getting people that were in your target market bidding on your stuff.

Finding My Niche and Making Money…Finally

So after a few bad attempts at selling random stuff on eBay, my wife and I decided to go into the embroidery business together.  And as I mentioned in my last post, I threw a rather wide net and started making any kind of embroidered item that I thought people wanted.

Once again the old marketing adage, “Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one.”

So, my feeble attempts at making any kind of good money fell flat. 

Our Master-Blaster Hat

It wasn’t until I came across the idea to mix two of my passions together that I got the idea to mix embroidery with music.  I created Ellistrations music apparel.

I made all of the digitized designs myself.  Hats for every type of musical instrument you could think of.  Trombone hats, shirts, and jackets.  Trumpet apparel, etc. 

And I must have been some sort of pioneer in the niche, because at the start, people were fighting over my stuff. 

I remember designing an oboe hat and putting it up on eBay.  It had a cool design with an oboe crossed in front of it and it said, “Double Reed Disaster” in the design.

Two or three women started bidding on it and it quickly escalated to $65.  Man, I was elated.  After wholesale the hat only ran me about $6.00 total and I didn’t pay shipping because I had already included it in the price.  So, I made about $60 on just one hat.  

We even sold flute purses!

I started to make other hats and shirts as well. Sax hats, trombone shirts, bassoon jackets and every other piece of apparel and musical instrument I could think of.

 

I digitized my own designs and came up with my own catchy slogans and ideas.  Flute shirts that said “Fluteaholic”, Bagpipe hats that said “Piping Hot”, and tuba hats that said, “Blastissiomo Con Forte” on them. (That phrase is kind of a joke with brass players.  It means blow the *$%@ out of the instrument as loud as you can.)

How I Expanded on My eBay Business

I quickly recognized that there was real market for this music apparel stuff, so I created the Ellistrations website.

Since I’m cheap as they come, I decided to get the cheapest hosting plan I could find and build the site myself.  I needed a merchant account, but during the year 2000 merchant accounts ran about $500 just to get started.

I searched the web extensively and found two alternatives: PayPal and another site called 2Checkout.  Since PayPal had not evolved to a full blown merchant service yet, I needed a way for people to pay by credit card if they wanted to. 

That’s where 2Checkout came in.   

This site would process credit card orders for you without the commitment or outlay of cash that you needed to get started.

It merely took a percentage (2.5%) of each of your sales.  All you had to do was go to the 2Checkout site, type up the prices and label the merchandise, copy and paste the code into your website and you could take credit card orders!

It was perfect for a cheapskate lie Moi.  (That’s French, I think.)

A Huge Lesson in Internet Marketing From the Trenches

Everything was going real well, I was making sales from putting my stuff up on eBay and then directing those happy customers to my website and making sales there. 

It worked perfectly.  I was in business and making money doing something I loved.  

That is... for about a year…

For some reason, I started losing sales on eBay; sales just weren’t coming in as fast as they were before, and I was starting to feel the pinch. I did some investigating, reading and searching. 

Turns out I had made a big miscalculation.  You see in business, if your idea is can easily be replicated, you’ll have competition sooner or later. (Watch Shark Tank if you don’t believe me.)

I started searching eBay and found out that other businesses were duplicating me with much slicker marketing and material as well.  They weren’t making high quality embroidered apparel, they were cranking out silkscreen designs of all sorts.

Anyone can duplicate your business...
if you aren't careful!

Pretty soon, I had at least 20 other businesses competing with the same types of ideas as mine.  It didn’t take long before burn out and long hours multitasking took their toll on me. 

So, I made as much money as I could, socked the money in the bank and sold my machine. 

Turns out that I made quite a bit of money from my little venture, better than I had expected, actually.

But the BIG IDEA I learned from this was: If your business is easily replicated by others, you’ll have loads of competition.  

The key to creating a unique, hard to replicate business is to figure out a way to make it so complex, it will be difficult for other businesses to follow.

So I was pretty much out of the online embroidery business.

However, while running my business I discovered an easy way to make money that was so lucrative, and easy to create, it blew my mind.  This is an idea ANYONE can do if they put the time and effort into it.

However, I’ll tell you more about it in my next post.

Until we meet again…

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Another 5 Ways to Get Traffic to Come to Your Website or Blog

In my last post I gave you 5 dirt-cheap ways to get traffic to come to your site.  If you’re interested, the link to that article is here: Cheap Marketing Methods 

Now, I have another 5 ways you can promote your website that are very cheap.  However, I’d once again like to point out that these methods do require labor or, at the very least outsourcing. 

5 More Ways To Promote Your Website for Free

Reciprocal Links and Banners - It never hurts to send your readers and visitors to high quality websites.  The emphasis needs to be stressed on quality because you want to become a known and respected source of information.  If people come to your site expecting excellence and you refer them to a shabby website that has poorly written information, their stink will probably rub off on you.

Another thing that’s important to consider is that you don’t want to trade links very much.

The other day, I got a request from someone that wanted to trade links with me.  His site was an insurance review site which was totally outside my niche.  Also, I noticed that his site was an Adsense site wherein his site was merely written to generate clicks for Adsense revenue. 

Upon further inspection, I noticed that he had loads of what appeared to be outsourced articles. 

So, I declined his offer to exchange links. 

If you want to read a very well written article on link exchanging, read this article by Michael Bluejay:  Why Your Link Exchange Request Failed 

Donating Your Services to Charity – If you know of a business or charity that can use your products or services, you can donate your help to them.  Not only will you help others in need but they may also point your business out to others. 

My personal take is to help others in need without expecting anything in return.  That’s just the way I am.  I once got an email from a band director that had a trombone playing student that had cancer.  I was operating a music apparel business online and I wound up making a beautiful embroidered jacket for the kid.  I didn't make a dime or any notoriety for doing it, but it sure did feel good to make that student happy.

Put Your Web Address Everywhere – You can place your website’s URL on your car, shirts, business cards, letterhead, as well as any promotional items that you give out for your business.  Also, make sure that you use it in your email signature, eBooks that you’ve written and any communications you use. If you have a bricks and mortar business, make sure that you put your URL on the door of your business, on your menus, receipts, and any other item you use that has your branding on it.

Use Free Classified Ads – There are literally hundreds of free classified ad sites on the Internet.  Many of them service specific countries, so you’ll have to take a close look at them to see what country or area they service.  The downside of using free online ads is there are time limits on how long your ad will run.  You’ll have to go back and check to see if your ad is still running. 

Not only that, but there are a lot of people “phishing” on them.  Phishing is an online searching activity where nefarious people look around on sites where you would place your contact information, and then call you and try to sell you something.  They will also collect your email address and spam you like crazy. 

Here is a brief list of the best free classified sites to use:

Craigslist 

eBay Classifieds 

USFREEADS 

Back Page

Recycler 

Offer a Free Course on Your Website – This requires some effort and time, but if your visitors can get some excellent training, whether it’s audio, video or even a series of lessons, then you can post them for free on your website. 

Years ago, I created an extensive Photoshop course that you can still access today as well as a series on how to make your own blog using Blogger.   It was well received by people that used it.  So put your thinking cap on and think about a video course that you can come up with that is related to your business.  Not only will people come to your site looking for free information, but you can also embed your URL into your videos on YouTube to get even more traffic to your site.

Mark Ellis’s Photoshop Training Videos:

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Use eBooks to Cheaply Drive Free Traffic to Your Website or Blog

I have written eBooks, and as a marketing tool, they work pretty well.  There are two schools of thought on how to create them.  One is to sit your butt down and knock it off and the other is to hire a ghost writer to make one for you. 

Since most of you are like me (lazy), in this post I’ll tell you how to hire a ghost writer to create an eBook. In the next post, we’ll explore how to write your own and some of the pitfalls to avoid, but for this episode we’ll go the ghost writer route.

What Are eBooks and Why Does Everyone like Them So Much?

Just in case you’re brand new to Internet marketing, here’s a brief description of electronic books or eBooks. You can easily become a publisher without having to print up books the traditional way.

These are electronic books that you can get online and read on your computer.  These are sometimes called .PDF files. (PDF is the file extension that means that the file is basically text and graphics in book format.) You can have great pictures, and text laid out in such a way that makes the book look great, and the book can be as big or small as you want it.

One of the best thing about eBooks is that you could really load one up with pictures and graphics and you’d save a lot of money over traditional publishing because using traditional methods, you’d have to spend butt – loads on money getting full color pictures into a book.

Not only that, but distribution costs are super cheap.  They can be downloaded as file from one place on the Internet to the other, and they can also be sent as an email attachment from one place to another.  You can also sell them from a variety of places online such as Clickbank, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.   

Another super-plus benefit to eBooks is that they can also be Interactive.  Just like the Internet, you can place links to websites and products you’re trying to sell, and you can even embed video into them.  However, the computer that you are reading them on needs to be connected to the Internet for the links and video to work. 

The main benefit of creating an eBook is that no longer will you need to go through a publisher and all of the traditional routes to become an established author.  You can call yourself an author without needing anyone’s backing or permission and you can do all of this for next to nothing.  Amazing!

The Downside of eBooks and How to Overcome It

As I see it, there are two main setbacks to using an eBook.  First, everyone is making them and giving them away.  Some of the best eBooks I have read were eBooks I’ve gotten online for free.  (I’ll leave links to these at the end of this post.) 

However, a lot of the eBooks that are given away SUCK.  Plain and simple. We’re not going to go that route.

The other drawback is taking the time to sit down and write them.  The two disadvantages go hand in hand when overcoming them, as you’ll see in a moment.

 So, let’s tackle both problems at the same time in steps.

Step 1: Identify the Niche You’re Operating In.  If you don’t know what your business is all about, you are in an extreme disadvantage.  You’ll need to figure out where you are and how you’re going to get there.  If you haven’t taken the time to read the post I’ve already written on exploring niches, check it out here: Ways to Find Niches

  

Another method of finding out what your niche is, as well as your unique selling proposition (USP) is to actually sit down and write out a business plan.  The way I wrote mine was I got a copy of Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Workbook.  This book is not only a great marketing book, but it will help you write out a fairly decent marketing and business plan.

Step 2:  Gather Resources.  Once you’ve identified your niche, go online and

peruse books and courses in your niche from Amazon, eBay and other book – type resources.  Find out what’s really hot in your niche and start buying and gathering information from them.  If you have to buy books from Amazon, you can get them cheap by buying them used.  You are looking for the absolute best information you can find in your niche.  The best way to determine this is by looking at the Amazon ratings as well as the number of comments that are on the site. 

TIP: Another awesome place to get this type of information from is forums.  Start reading and copying and pasting the best posts, questions and answers you can find from them.  Some of the most incredible advice I've gotten is from forums, so copy and paste your favorite readings into a word processor and keep them.

You’re going to need quite a stack of resources on your subject.

Step 3: Start Reading and Highlighting Your Resources.  Now, take the resources that you’ve been gathering and start reading.  Whenever you find something in them that you think is dynamite or useful, highlight it with a highlighter.  Do this to all of your resources. After doing this, you should have quite a pile of information.

Step 4:  Get reasonably priced writer and have theme write your material.  There are many places on the Internet to find writers that will do your ghost writing for you.  Here’s a partial list of places you can go to on the Internet to outsource writing:

Moving AheadCommunications 

Ghosts R Us – Specializes in outsourcing eBooks     

Fiverr - A unique site that vendors can only charge $5.00 a gig.  

oDesk 

eLance 

Freelancer 

99designs 

Hire the World  

There are loads of outsourcing sites and you’ll need to get used to using the one or two that you’ll feel most comfortable with in order to get your eBook or eBook written.

Step 5: Send your highlighted material to your ghostwriter and have them rewrite it.  Once you have your ghostwriter hired, send them your highlighted books and have them rewrite the material for you.  You are not plagiarizing, but rewriting the material into someone else’s words.  Not only that, but you are picking material from a variety of resources.  So, you are not copying, but using the material you highlighted as source material. 

Step 6:  Brand your eBook.  Make sure all of your marketing information is in the eBook before you give it away or sell it.  Make sure that your Web address, email, business number and any other contact information that you have is in the eBook.

Pretty much, that’s all there is to it.  One thing to keep in mind, you’ll need to check and read the material sent back to you by your ghostwriter.  You don’t want to have your name on anything substandard because you’re trying to build an excellent brand and reputation, here.

To Your Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Free eBooks that are just outstanding:

How to Make MoneySitting on Your A** by T.J. Rohleder

Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy 

Blow Away the Competition Using This Traffic Generating Method of Giving Away Free Content

One of the biggest words in marketing besides “New” and “Sale” is the word “Free”.  If you read my last post, you’ll know that I’m an advocate of “Paying it Forward”.  It’s one of the best things you can do for yourself and others, and a super easy way of building a loyal group of followers as cheaply as possible.

However, before I give you some great FREE ideas, let me just mention that just because you’re giving away something as cheap as FREE you don’t have to make it cheap.  You still need to make your gift as high quality as possible.

Recently, I heard a podcast by a young guy that mass produces eBooks on Amazon. His business model was to pick a group of pen names, (a different one for each niche he was targeting) have someone ghostwrite eBooks for himself - dirt cheap, and then sell them for $5.00 each because there wasn't any pain for prospects in parting with such a small amount of money.

He claimed he was raking in the dough.  Maybe he was...don’t know.

The problem with this business model, as I see it, is he will always have to rebuild his customer base.  People that buy cheap items that are just thrown together probably won’t be back, and probably aren't successful enough to buy anything that you’ll want to sell them later at a higher price. 

That’s just my way of thinking.

Why the Big Boys are Big

The reason why marketing experts like Dan Kennedy can command $300 an info product, or charge $3000 a seat at a seminar is because he DELIVERS super-high quality information, products and services and carries that reputation around with him wherever he goes.  And he’s been doing it for over 30 years.

That kind of clout comes with putting YOUR back into it, rather than hiring a ghost writer to dash out some fast junk. The Dollar Store does well at selling super-cheap stuff because that’s exactly what it is--super-cheap stuff.  

You won’t find Dyson vacuum cleaners that will last for 10 years or more there, because that’s not their niche.  (Of course you won’t find me buying a vacuum cleaner there either, no matter how cheap they sell them.)

Now, I know what you’re gonna say.  “Wait a minute Ellis! You’re telling me on one hand to give stuff away for FREE, but then you’re telling me that I don’t want to have a cheap reputation.  What kind of double talk is that?”

They Already Have the Job

People that want to become teachers go through a gauntlet you wouldn't believe.  In order to become a school teacher in the U.S. you have to go through at least 4 years of college, take a whole battery of certification tests, do your student teaching for at least a semester in a regular school, and then make sure you follow the rest of your certification requirements in the state you’re teaching in. 

In the state of Kentucky, for example, you have to go through an extra year of a state run program.  That program requires you to be observed and monitored by other teacher’s at your school as well as administrators and state administrators.  

By the time you’re done with that program, you’ll have a book full of state forms and lesson plans that’s as thick as a New York City telephone directory.  If you pass all of that, you still have to teach in your subject area for 3 years or take some upper level graduate classes.

Full-fledged teachers don’t make that much money for the first 10 years they’re teaching either.

I remember when I was doing my student teaching in college, there was a professor that was prepping us for that experience.  She really hammered out the fact that she didn't care what the rest of the staff at the cooperative school was dressed like, we had to be dressed to the hilt, very professionally.  She went through the whole laundry list of what women and men were to wear while doing their cooperative teaching.

Some of the students asked why we had to get so decked-out if the rest of the school teachers were dressed more casually.

Her response was quite blunt. “They already have the job.”

So, consider what other professions have to go through just to get started before you start whining, please.

The Reasons to Provide Free Content

•        Your customers, prospects and fans want it, plain and simple. 
• 
  
•        You are trying to establish and prove your knowledge and expertise in your niche. Cheapest way to do it.
• 
  
•        If done correctly, it could be used to provide an online watering hole for your fans to congregate, comment and exchange ideas on a regular basis. 
• 
  
•        If you use offline newsletters, online eBooks and other wonderful vehicles, they could be passed around so you’re ideas and reputation could be spread virally.

The Grateful Dead Goes Live

A real good example of this type of FREE activity actually working, is from the famous rock group the Grateful Dead.  From a marketing perspective, they were unique in many ways.  But one thing stands out that they did which nobody else was doing at the time:  they’d let you record their concerts for FREE.

As a matter of fact, there was an area right next to the mixing board, where the best recordings could

be made called “taper sections”.  This is where people recording their live events could make their own recordings of Grateful Dead’s concerts.

Most music moguls would freak out at the revenue lost, but not the Dead.  They went viral before the Internet. People were exchanging recorded tapes, talking about them, and spreading their fame very quickly, and it paid off handsomely.  Hardly anyone hasn't heard of the Grateful Dead.

Google Gets a Jump on Free

Still don’t think high-quality FREE works? Take a good look at Google.  They have great free services that would take pages to list here.  It’s even been rumored that one of their latest ventures is to provide free Internet services to anyone that wants them, but that’s a future goal I’m not sure will happen.   

Google, like the Medici banking family of the Renaissance is collecting geniuses; there’s a whole battery of tests you’d have to take to get in their doors.  These people work in an environment that does nothing but give them freedom.  

Freedom to think, play around with ideas, and learn more.  People that work for this company don’t want to go home, so they stay and put in many hours. 

They are keen on FREE.  If they’re that smart, perhaps we should follow their lead.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

How to Get Loads of Traffic to Your Website by Giving Away A FREE Product

I know for a fact that this technique works, because it worked on me.  Years ago, I had an online embroidery service that I ran almost day and night like

a mad man.  I sometimes look back at the 5 or so years I put into that business and ask myself, “What were you thinking?” 

Not that I didn’t do well in the business, I was doing fine. It’s just that I did everything.  I digitized the designs, sewed them out, created and maintained the ecommerce Web site, packaged up the products and sent them to the customers, handled the messed up orders and communicated with the customers. 

Yeah, you guessed it…I got burned out!

I also did the marketing, which is where I started to learn many new things I never knew before, like the power of viral content.

What happened was this:  I was bouncing around the Internet, looking for ideas on how to sell my products and I got a free E-book from a guy by the name of Dan Kennedy.  It was all about how I could market my products and services easily by following his advice. At the time, the only marketing book that I had read in its entirety was “Guerilla Marketing” byJay Conrad Levinson.  An excellent book, and I would HIGHLY recommend it.   

I found the Kennedy EBook to be MOST enlightening.  So much so, that I remember reading the entire contents in one setting.  Of course, this led me to look for more about the man, which gave me a very fast education; he was all over the Internet and he had quite a following.

I am always impressed by people that can actually do what they say they can do.  Monsieur Kennedy had loads of published books to his credit, a massive website loaded with mouth-watering marketing products, and a world class newsletter which I quickly subscribed to.  All in all, I would say that I spent somewhere in the vicinity of $5000 with the man over a period of 5 years.

And to think that sale all started with a free EBook. 

So, please don’t tell me that this tactic doesn’t work, because I’m living proof (At least from a prospect perspective) that it does. 

What I Have Since Learned About Creating and Using Viral EBooks

There are a few lessons that I have since taken away from this experience that I think would be worth noting:

·         You can spread your marketing message around to whoever you want FOR FREE.  Always keep this in mind, because it is important.  You may think that it is a waste of time because you have to take the time to write the material, but when you compare the time you spent versus the amount of money AND time you would have to spend on an advertising campaign, the price is minimal.

·         The information that you put into your EBook must be as high quality as you can deliver.  If you hand out crap to your potential clients and customers, what will that say to the folks that would consider hiring or purchasing something from you?  So, always put out world class information in your EBook.

·         Make sure you know how to format your material in the EBook, and take a little time to plan out what you are going to say.  A good way to do that would be to create a table of contents before you actually write the material.  Once you have the skeleton (Table of Contents) you’ll be able to write the EBook much quicker and in a logical progression.

·         Make the darn thing interesting.   I can’t remember much about Dan Kennedy’s book specifically, but I do know that his writing was interesting.  If you can write stories that people can remember and add that personal touch to what you are writing, then your document will sing!   People will pass it on to others that will find it interesting and then pass it on to others that will find it interesting and then ….Voila! VIRAL CONTENT!

·         If you can, try to find or create pictures that you can include in your Ebook that will emphasize or make your points and information more interesting. 

·         If you refer people to other resources, try to make the resources as high quality as you can.  You want people to not only read your material, but also you want them to look up to you as a valuable resource.  If you refer someone to a dynamite resource like a book or a course and they loved it, then they’ll look to you as a source of information.  That means that they’ll refer you, come back to you and even use your products and services.  See?

HOT TIP:  If you are wondering where you are going to find the time to write all of this material, there are several things you can do to lighten the load. 

Idea 1: For one thing, if you write your own blog posts and can create a theme out of them, you can take the material from the blog, embellish it, organize it, put relevant images and resources in it and use that as the material for your EBook.   You don’t have to worry about duplicate content issues in a .pdf file online.

Idea 2: The other idea is you could always hire a ghost writer.  Hey, Internet marketers use them all of the time to create online articles and posts, so if you can do it within your budget, why not?

Check Out These Excellent Free EBooks and Use Them as a Model for Your Own

I could go into more detail, but what you need to do now, is take a look at a few Free Ebooks so you can get an idea of what type of books to write and pass out.

Here are a few that I know of that are well done and FREE!

How to Make Millions by T.J Rohleder

63 "Killer Marketer Strategies" by Dan Kennedy

Magnetic Marketing

The Secret 7 EBook by Mark "Elmo" Ellis

Once again I hope you gained a lot of knowledge that you can actually use on your own viral content EBook!

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com