Everybody and their sisters are jumping on the bandwagon to create free ebooks. Why? Because they know freebies are great sales tools and can bring loads of visitors to their site.
Is this a correct assumption? Yes and no. It used to be correct but now if you go into altavista.com and do a search on “free ebook,” you’ll get almost 75 million results. Now that’s a whole lot of competition. So what do you do?
Produce a “better FREE ebook.”
And that’s exactly what we are going to discuss – what makes a better ebook. Does it have a:
Good Cover & Snazzy Title
Your ebook cover and title should make people sit up and take notice immediately. The old saying, “you can’t tell a book by its cover” doesn’t apply on the Internet. You only have a couple of seconds to grab a reader’s attention so the more professional your ebook looks, the more likely someone will download it. Especially, if its sitting on a site other than your own which offers free ebooks.
Does this mean you have to spend close to $100 to produce a cover for your “free” ebook? Well you can, if you’re a “marketing guru” wanting to disguise a hyped filled promotional book as a free ebook or you have money to burn.
But if you just want to make a free ebook which helps people make better decisions about products or services you sell, then you are better off finding a free ecover template like the ones offered here or here.
and creating your own text and graphic to put on the front with a free photo editing program like IrFanView. With just a little time, creative effort and a snazzy title, you’ll have an ebook people will download and actually read.
Good Content
In other words, is your free ebook specific. Don’t try to be all things to all people. The object here is to provide information people need to make informed decisions. They don’t want hype! In fact, “no hype” will instantly put your free ebook in a class all by itself. Thus making it better.
Think of your reader. S/he has already downloaded a ton of free ebooks. If, after one or two paragraphs your ebook hasn’t provided any useful information, guess where it’s going to go. Yup, into etherland via the delete key so make sure every one of your pages has great information with no sales “stuff” in it.
Good Ending
Here is where you shine and really make a better free ebook. Instead of doing a full pitch on why this person should immediately click over to your site and buy all your products, you merely wish the person success. Then you put a “small” resource box with a pithy two line signature line and your site’s URL.
Think this won’t get attention? Think again. Soft sell always does better than hard sell. Besides, you are also going to let your reader know it’s perfectly okay for them to forward the ebook on to their friends. And, by not blatantly advertising your products and filling your free ebook with hype, they probably will because you’ve produced an ebook that “shines” above the rest.
Judith Tramayne-Barth’s site is http://www.agoodread.com which has free books, articles and link pages you’ll love. She also writes excellent “how-to” books.
