Create a Free Report
While digital product comes in many forms, creating an E-book is by far the best digital format for both selling and giving away on the Internet. E-books, in general, come in two forms: .PDF or .EXE format. In the case with your E-zine or mailing list, you want to give your own free report away to your visitors as an incentive for subscribing to your E-zine.
Creating Your Free Report in .PDF Format :
STEP 1: OPEN YOUR MICROSOFT WORD PROGRAM
Open up your Microsoft Word Program. It should be readily installed in your computer. Get ready to fire up your keyboard!
NOTE: You will want to use "Letter" size pages (configure this in “Page Setup”) as it is the standard paper size for the Americans if they are your target market.
STEP 2: CREATE THE COVER FOR YOUR FREE REPORT
You can either create your own E-cover or hire a good designer to design it for you. You can engage a good professional designer at ps-indepth.com. Most designers charge a minimum $99 to design E-covers but this one charges a very affordable price and if you are thinking of having your covers designed by someone else, this one is recommended. Alternatively, if you do not wish to engage a professional designer.
Paste the graphic or design your simple-but-professional cover on the first page of your information product.
STEP 3: COMPOSE THE CONTENTS
This step is the most time-consuming step to creating your digital product. There is no strict format on composing the contents of your digital product. However, you have to focus on adding quality information to your report for your readers, though you are going to give it away for free.
Profit Center #2
Here is how you build in Profit Center #2: insert advertisements and recommendations with your own links or affiliate links in your free report. Convey Give Away Rights to your report to encourage your readers to give your report away for free. This is aptly called “viral marketing”.
As long as someone purchases a product or access to service as a result of clicking on your referral links in your free report, you make your percentage of the product or service price. Thus giving a free report away is not only a good incentive for your visitors to subscribe to your E-zine, but you also get to prove your credibility and expertise first-hand while making your money just by giving quality recommendations!
Another Profit Center within Profit Center #2?
Did you know that you can also charge a fee for any of your readers who are interested in rebranding the affiliate links within your report to theirs?
For example, you can charge each reader $10-$30 so that they can have the privilege of having their own affiliate links in your free report.
This method can strongly motivate your readers to give your report away for free with the context that they can make money from back-end links, ads and recommendations in their own referral links.
You can leverage on other people’s marketing effort and still make money from their successful referrals as long as your affiliate programs are 2-tier.
STEP 4: CONVERT YOUR WORD DOCUMENT TO ADOBE PDF FORMAT
Convert your Word Document into Adobe PDF Format using Adobe PDFMaker. The latest PCs should have this program installed in your Microsoft Word Program.
Regardless of any Adobe PDF Converter program that you use, be sure that you set your options to disable the copying and editing functions to the contents in order to protect your product from being altered by your customers. However, you must enable printing by your customers so that they can print your E-book contents for easy reading.
Now in Adobe PDF format, no one can edit, modify and delete the contents within your information product. And only you have the master copy of your product in Word format. Also note that everything in the file remains the way it was even after the conversion of your product format. This is the final and complete product.
STEP 5: CREATE YOUR PRODUCT IMAGE
To create your own product image, you can either:
1 Create your own using Paint Programs such as Adobe Photoshop,
2 Hire a designer to design the product image for you, or
3 Utilize software that specializes in creating product images. For this, you can get a professional cover-designing tool at http://www.virtual-cover-creator.net/.
You have just completed your own free report!
Why Not to Format Your E-book in .EXE Format
A survey on “.PDF vs. .EXE E-book format” was carried out on a forum and the following were the results:
18 people voted for PDF format while only 2 people voted for .EXE format. 3 people thought it was okay. 3 people fear the virus that .EXE E-books may carry. 3 people place very little value on .EXE E-books as compared to .PDF E-books, price to price. The E-book being offered in both formats for sale, 18 people still choose to download .PDF format only while 1 person chooses to download both formats. No one will want to solely download the E-book in .EXE format. I was also told that 10% of the Internet users are Macintosh users, therefore can’t execute. EXE files.
The choice is clear. .PDF format win hands down.
If You Do Not Want to Create Your Own Free Report
Creating your own free report is time and effort consuming. I don’t know you but you might not have what it takes to write a good piece of work.
Alternatively, you can source for other people’s reports that have Give Away Rights or allow you to give to your subscribers as an incentive for subscribing to your E-zine.
However, make doubly sure that the free report has your own affiliate links embedded within, even if it means having to pay a small rebranding fee to the original author. I think that it is more expensive NOT to have your own affiliate links within when you could have make successful referrals as a result of your effort.
Also, the free report must be related to your E-zine.
Warning! Be careful NOT to poison your subscribers with too many freebies. It is okay to give free gifts, even once in a while, as a token of appreciation for your subscribers who stay subscribed to your E-zine. But you wouldn’t want to have a pack of free-loaders in your E-zine who ignores whatever offers you have with a price tag on, would you?
Getting an Auto Responder
An Auto Responder is a program used to send out a series of pre-written E-mail messages to your subscribers.
You write out your series of E-zine issues in advance and store them into the Auto Responder system and set to send them out in intervals based on your chosen frequency of E-mail messages.
In other words, your subscriber will receive the first E-mail (normally the confirmation E-mail) in the series, and the second, third and subsequent E-mails in the series automatically by the Auto Responder system based on a schedule set by you without any manual work on your part!
You can use the Auto Responder with Broadcast features to:
1. Thank your subscribers for joining your mailing list.
2. Send your E-zine issues to your subscribers.
3. Send endorsement letters to your subscribers.
4. And much, much more!
Once you have set it up your Auto Responder, it will work for you around the clock! Since you have written your E-zine issues in advance, you can either load them into the Auto Responder to be sent out to your subscribers regularly or manually send on a frequency determined by you with just a click of the button!
You can get a good Auto Responder system from either one of the following resources:
1 aWeber
2 Getresponse
Creating Your Lead Capture Page
Now that you have already got your free report done and Auto Responder account set up, it is time to create your lead capture page.
This involves a degree of copywriting skills on your part. I cannot be covering everything about copywriting in this book but I will hand down some school of thoughts to you so you know what to write in your Lead Capture Page.
First thing’s first: treat it as if you are writing a sales letter for a product you are selling, even though you are giving your report away for free and charging $0 for subscription to your E-zine because if your sales page can’t sell, you can’t sell freebies, either!
When your visitor arrives at your Lead Capture Page, you want to sell the benefits of joining your E-zine and getting the free report. If there is nothing in for your visitors, there is no compelling reason for them click any further.
Lucky for you, I am going to save you from attending a copywriting class or even guessing for that matter (that is even more expensive, by the way) by giving you the no-brainer Lead Capture Page format you can follow for your own!
One Time Offer
This is Profit Center #1 – your first chance at making money from your subscriber.
We have discussed this Profit Center in general at the earlier chapter of this book.
You already understand that when your subscriber fills in the opt-in form to join your mailing list and get your free report, he will first see your One Time Offer page before downloading your free report.
Your One Time Offer can be:
6. Your selling product that has additional irresistible bonuses that your prospect cannot find anywhere else. If he passes this offer but later decides to purchase your product, he will have to purchase it without the add-on bonuses.
7. Your selling product at a huge discount. If your prospect passes the offer but later decides to purchase your product, he will have to pay at its full price.
8. A product or package that cannot be found elsewhere. You can assemble a group of products you either own or other people’s (must be conveyed with Resell Rights) and sell at one irresistible price.
Writing your own One Time Offer with a good conversion rate demands a high degree of copywriting skills on your part. If you are not good at copywriting, you are advised to learn this skill (especially if you are an Internet Marketer, as this skill is an asset to your sales success) or hire a good copywriter.
Your subscriber will first see your One Time Offer before downloading the free report. Your subscriber has two choices:
1 He can buy your product(s), or
2 He would not buy your product and chooses to proceed with downloading your free report.
If your subscriber buys from you, good! If he does not, you would not be letting him get away that easily, would you? That brings us to the next and last Profit Center…
Your Thank You Page
This is where Profit Center #3 is going to be built in. The Thank You Page is a perfect place where you can refer your subscribers to other products or services which might appeal to them, either you own or are an affiliate for.
As long as you have directed in targeted traffic into your Lead Capture Page and the visitors are interested enough to subscribe to your E-zine, you have another opportunity to cater to your subscribers’ needs even though he may not take advantage of your One Time Offer!