Using eBooks to Promote Your Product or Service
This morning I’ve been working on an outline for an eBook that I’m planning to use to promote my Blogging videos.
The eBook will be free and the intention of it from a business point of view is to give something valuable away for free, as a traffic generation and promotional tool.
During one of my many ADD moments I wondered over to Biz Opps blog and found a cool story about a free eBook called “What You Must Know Before Hiring An SEO Company.” Not wanting to waste a moment that I could be not working,
I downloaded and read the book.
The effect of the eBook surprised me. Now I had no intention of hiring an SEO company, it is already something that I think I’m pretty good, but if I was going to hire someone it would probably be Jonathan, who wrote this ebook.
Why?
After reading the book I trusted him. The book wasn’t obviously trying to sell me anything…I really believed that he had my best interest in mind and was giving me information to help me avoid having bad things happen to his readers businesses.
If you’re going to try this approach the trick is to give great information but not let the agenda of generating business get involved in the information presentation. So to try and keep myself on the straight and narrow with this [I admit that sales in this manner is new to me so I can come across like a used car salesman sometimes] I developed a technique.
Let’s Play Make Believe
I learned this technique when I was four and, too bad, haven’t used it too much since. For the eBook, I’m writing it as if I was going to charge for it. By pretending that I will want people to pay money for it I know it should accomplish both the primary goal of giving high quality information in order to let prospective customers get to know me and in the long run, increase sales.
I really like the strategy and technique, especially if you are in a area [like Jonathan is with SEO] that is filled with misinformation and crooked practitioners.
Okay, back to surfing Blogging working on my eBook.
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Comments ( 7 )
prlinkbiz added these pithy words on Aug 16 06 at 1:52 pmHey Jon- great topic. I have a couple blogging series that I was thinking about turning into ebooks. Wonder if I should charge a couple of bucks for them? Thoughts?
Jon added these pithy words on Aug 16 06 at 2:35 pmprlinkbiz, the long answer would require its own post, but the short answer it a question…”what is your intention?”
If you are using them as promotion for something else…your blog or a product or service, then give them for free to see if you can get them to go “viral.”
If you want to get into the business of selling info products, then you already have the tough part done! Then charge for them.
My advice would be to do one or the other fully, but not something in between. As I’m learning selling products takes considerable determination so it is tough to do casually.
My 2 cents.
btw…how come keyboards don’t have the ¢ key anymore like my old typewriter did?
pop quiz…how did I type it in there?
J added these pithy words on Aug 16 06 at 4:19 pm¢
J added these pithy words on Aug 16 06 at 4:21 pmDo I win a prize or something?
¢ (ALT+0162)
(sorry about two comments… wasn’t sure if it would take the first go)
-J
prlinkbiz added these pithy words on Aug 16 06 at 9:50 pmHey- where’s the rest of my message? lol
I said my goal at NLL is to create a resource for women’s financial education- so I think a couple bucks might be good for a couple of ebooks?
Jon added these pithy words on Aug 21 06 at 10:02 amJ…sorry no prizes for this one.
prlinkbiz…what the heck is that c\_/ ???
did your cat walk across the keyboard?