The marketing E-book is a slightly different animal from just an E-book. Marketing E-books contain text, images, links to web pages and navigation controls. The marketing E-book has become a very important part of marketing on the Internet.

With a marketing E-book you can present your story in an effective way and include links to your web sales pages. Your E-book can become your best salesman.

First, your E-book needs to be interesting and informative. It always has links back to your web site and to your sales page.

Next, be sure that you have a prominent section telling readers that they are free to give your E-book away. Let them know that they can post it on their site as a free download, that they can use it as a bonus, and that they can bundle it with other products. This is the way to create viral marketing for your products or services. Remember those links back to your site contained in the E-book?

Last but certainly not least before you send your E-book out to the world, double check spelling and grammar and be sure that you have tested every link to verify that it goes where it is supposed to go. Obvious errors will reflect badly on you and will not be of much value to you, it could even by damaging.

Post your E-book to some of the E-book directories. Many let you post it for free, or will let you post a link on their site to your E-book.

This is the basic principle that was used by Hotmail to get established. When the two founders set up their free email system, all the messages that were sent by subscribers had a text message at the bottom which identified Hotmail as the origin. People who sent emails to their friends advertised the free email site.

Using viral E-books as a marketing method is cheap. It doesn’t take long to set up and it’s even quicker if you use rebrandable E-books that have been written by others. Just use your favorite search engine and do a web search. You will find many rebrandable E-books that are available on whatever subject you are interested in and that apply to your e-business. One method of distributing the E-book is to offer it to visitors in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. If they pass it on to their friends and family it will promote your business for you.

E-books are capable of reaching a large audience and are limited only by the enthusiasm of the participants.

E-books are fairly easy to create. It’s possible to produce your own E-books by combining articles that you have written or have gotten from public domain sources, such as directories.

A common approach is to use material that has Private Label Rights, including articles and reports that have been written specifically for that purpose, for that niche. Using a portion of a larger work that you have prepared such as the first three chapters of a large E-book could also be used as a viral E-book.

1.    E-books are cheap to produce and don’t take long to set up. If you have articles that you have already written about the subject you are promoting, you can simply combine these articles into an E-book.  If, on the other hand, writing isn’t your forte, you can use rebrandable E-books that have been produced by others.  Just use your favorite search engine and do a web search for “rebrandable E-books”.  You will get a lot of hits and have many to choose from.  One way to distribute these E-books to visitors to your website is to give them as a free gift for subscribing to your newsletter. If your E-book contains material that people will want to share with their friends and family, they will pass it along to them… they will pass it along to others…and you will make money.

2.    E-books are capable of reaching a large audience.  The only limiting factor is the enthusiasm or the participants.  Therefore, it is absolutely vital that your E-book contain something that people will want to share like timely information or humor.  Remember that people like to know something that the rest of the world needs to know. They will pass along something that makes them look like they are in-the-know.

3.    E-books are a way to sell other products other than the one you originally targeted.  For example; if you are selling garden products, your customers could also be interesting in E-books about lawns, trees landscaping, etc.

4.    E-books are effective in building your reputation. It is an implied recommendation if you give a quality E-book and users willing pass on to others.

The web page for your ebook should contain a sales letter that is immediately visible. In fact, your web page really doesn’t need to contain much else, unless you choose to use additional pages for other uses.

Here are the components of a great sales letter.

1. a catchy headline.
2. a list of amazing benefits for the reader. Tell visitors what problems your ebook solves or how it will improve their lives.
3. testimonials. Quotes from people who have read the book or from people who know you and are willing to write something great about you for your site.
4. a guarantee.
5. a link to a sample chapter.
6. a link to purchase the ebook.
7. the price. Going rates are $5.95 to $19.95.
8. about four pages in length.
9. a narrow page with wide margins for easy reading.

10. dark text on a white or light-colored background, for easy reading.

Tip: Get testimonials early in the game by offering your ebook free to those who will in exchange, give you a one or two sentence testimonial.

You should also provide a mail box where visitors can send a check for your ebook, but this is only to show them that you have an address. It adds to your credibility, but don’t expect many orders, if any, through this channel. In fact, if you only provide a postal mail box address and do not provide your customers with the ability to click and pay by credit card, you can expect to lose 95 percent of your buyers. However, put the address on the site, and do process orders that come in that way. Use a box that is not your personal residence for reasons of personal security.

Services abound that will accept credit card payments and send you the money. A common one is http://www.paypal.com. Paypal and most other services charge an upfront fee and percentage, but the charges are reasonable. Get set up immediately. You want your customers to buy immediately.

You can, of course, put your ebook on the web as a MS Word file. This makes for a cumbersome download and then your customer will need to have a similar program to read your book. Some word processing files can be compressed for quicker downloads. But that still doesn’t solve the problem of your readers needing MS Word or similar purchased software to read your book.

You can put your ebook on the web in .html format so that it can be read just like a web page. Some word processing programs have html converters that you can try. To me, this is going to extra trouble that you just don’t need. Take the simpler road – .pdf.

Free Word to PDF converter www.doc2pdf.net

If your ghostwriter already put your ebook into one of these formats, then you are all set. If your ebook was delivered in a word processing file, then you’ll need to convert it to either EXE or PDF. You can buy software that will make an .exe file, or you can purchase or use free software to convert the text to a .pdf file.

I recommend the .pdf approach for several reasons. First, of the two options, .pdf results in a smaller file. This will allow buyers to have a faster download of your book. Secondly, .pdf files can be read easily with free software on either a PC or a Mac. Thirdly, .pdf conversion software is not terribly expensive and there are even free versions you can use.

Most of the free versions work really well if all your ebook contains is text. However, the free converters tend to contain popup advertising.

One free, ad-free, basic converter is the create Adobe pdf online service directly from Adobe, the father of .pdf generators and readers. There are others you can find by web search.

For a modest fee in the $20 range, you can have advertising eliminated from some of the free .pdf conversion services and programs. To me, it’s worth it. But if you don’t mind one or two pop-ups each time you convert a file to .pdf, you can save a few bucks by using free services.

To be able to convert every bell and whistle in your ebook to .pdf, you can purchase Adobe’s program to do so at a cost of over $200. This may be necessary if your ebook is unusual, containing animated film clips or other technically unusual features. Free or cheap converters will convert your text. Basically, your .pdf file will end up looking like what your printed pages would look like. Converters abound, and therefore you can use free or buy a converter that will only do what you need for a fraction of the $200 you would pay to get every bell and whistle.

Finding a web designer online is much of the same old same old. Do an Internet search, or ask one of your technical friends for recommendations.

Use the home-page designing software provided by your web host, or just pay the web host’s fee-based designers.

What I recommend is that you tap into your ebook cover artist. Remember how I said you should develop a relationship? Once you get to that point, you can get some additional advice and help from them. Ask if they also do web page design or if they can refer you to someone good.

Note: Novice web designers use software such as MS Word or FrontPage. Experienced web designers may use Macromedia Fireworks with Dreamweaver or other package.

Definitely outsource your web page design, at least for your first ebook. This is worth the money, in the same way that hiring a ghostwriter and cover artist is worth the money. After you outsource your first web page, and some time down the road when you have more time on your hands, you could learn a bit about web design. Then you can copy the page you had designed professionally and use it as a template to self-design additional pages for new ebooks that you create.

How to survive any phase of life. People face numerous demons and battles as they live their lives. For many, when they’re in need, they’ll be reaching out for help. Support groups, private therapy, being with friends, starting over – these are all solid topics for an ebook. You could also reach out specifically to certain people needing emotional assistance. How to get through the terrible two’s. How to cope with a cancer diagnosis. Living with your own shortcomings. How to live with someone who is dying. Surviving high school. Any of these will do.

Anything to do with pets. People are pampering their pets more than ever before. Some pets are treated better than people. It’s the people who spend small fortunes on their pets that will also be willing to pay good money for an ebook that gives them ideas on how to treat their animals even more royally than they already do.

Write books on how to pamper your parakeet, homemade meals for picky dogs, where the pet spas are, how to train your kids to be cat-friendly, million dollar homes for mutts, which animals make the best pets, or pet psychology.

Traveling mixed with the subjects above. Not only are people traveling like crazy, but they want to customize their itineraries and their methods of travel with their hobbies and lifestyles. Try a few of these on for size: where to dine around the globe and still stay on a low-carb diet plan. Hotels with the best exercise facilities. How to travel exquisitely with large dogs. Crime-proof your campsite. Be creative. There’s a market here.

Using the Internet to meet people. As I said, the craze is upon us. Everyone’s online, and sometimes folks spend more time chatting with Internet buddies than they do talking face to face with actual friends. I know I’ve been guilty of this one myself. Anyway, along with the advent of the World Wide Web, came people who need a little help figuring out how to get where they want to get. They want to find like-minded people, find a date, find love, find support.

There’s a huge ebook market for hooking people up with people online. Here are just a few things that could be covered: speed dating online, virtual music jams, taking online classes, hooking up with people who share your hobby, and finding online support groups. Any of these and more are of interest to people who wish to get maximum benefit from their ability, thanks to the Internet, to network with people in the farthest reaches of the world. In fact one of the appeals with online communing is that distance does not matter. Help these people in foreign lands find each other with an ebook.

Ebooks, because of their brevity and because they are marketed primarily on the Internet can target smaller audiences. You don’t have to write a universal book like How to use a computer (which may not be interesting enough to sell anyway in this decade). Ebooks can cover more specific territory. Knowing this, you can 1) create your ebook in a specific way for a specific niche readership, and 2) create additional ebooks for different facets of the same subject, and sell each one separately!

Say you’ve decided to write an ebook on fishing. (FYI, this is one of those hobbies where enthusiasts are willing to spend money!). You could create “How to Catch Freshwater Trout,” “How to Tie Your Own Flies,” or “How to Plan a Successful Deep Sea Fishing Trip.” Almost anything related to the hobby can become a separate ebook depending on how much detail you include. Clearly, “How to put on waders,” probably wouldn’t be a great choice (though some would say it’s impossible to underestimate today’s consumer), because you would have to strain to fill up 60 to 100 pages on such a simple topic. You get the idea. The topic would need to be, in most cases, book worthy. Use good judgment.

Then, life itself requires instructions, as we know from “Life’s Little Instruction Book.” So, life also qualifies as a good how-to book topic. There are numerous subtopics, and you’ll never run out of ideas. Here are a few examples:

• “How to ensure your child gets an A+ in math”
• “How to have a successful garage sale”
• “How to organize your home office”

And while we’re on the subject of how-to books, I’d like to make one quick point. The titles of these ebooks do not need to be incredibly clever. Be sure the words “How to” are the first part of the title, and the rest should tell exactly what the ebook is about.

For example, which of these three titles would be best?

1. “How to have a successful garage sale.”

2. “One weekend away from a cleaner house”

3. “How to sell your old shoes for a profit”

Although numbers 2 and 3 are clever, a little punchy, and correspond with the ebook content, I would still recommend using title number 1. “How to have a successful garage sale” sums it up pretty well and will catch the eye of an Internet surfer who is interested in putting together a garage sale and needs a how-to manual.

Anyway, back to the point. Any phase of life, way of coping with life, or large or small thing about life can be the subject of a how-to book.