Creating a Free Ebook

It's a sad fact that crime exists on the Internet. There are many people who would willingly take your brand new ebook you worked so hard on, "copy" it word for word and start selling it online as their own.

Your product does not have to be limited to text in the form of an ebook. It may be delivered as audio or even video with the advent of broadband Internet connections, but increasingly though these alternative media formats are being used, they are normally activated by links embedded into ebooks and supported by text.

One of the main reasons for this is the ability of your product to deliver an automatic "backend" income stream for you, from other products or services you recommend and are affiliated with. By including your affiliate links inside of e-books, your customers can visit the sites of your recommended links and should they choose to buy anything you'll earn extra money on the commission due.

Many people actually produce e-books and actually give them away! They do this because of the "viral" effect that can be achieved. People pass around your book and they're also passing around your affiliate links generating increasing commissions for you!

A twist on this method is to sell ebooks you can create quickly and sell them for a low price such as $17. This makes sure that people actually read your book and will be more likely to click on your links because they paid for it. If you offer them "reprint rights" they have an incentive to sell more copies of your product distributing ever more of your affiliate links with no involvement on your part.

A second twist on this is to offer your customers "master resale rights" whereby you charge them a much higher price and in exchange they get to "brand" the links inside your product with their own. This increases the value to your customers and generates increased "frontend" profits for you -- but at the expense of potential lost backend sales.

Either way security is important but you also need the kind of flexibility that compilers such as the Active E-book Compiler provide, to enable or disable features such as branding & printing and password protection. You definitely do not want your product to be able to be copied and pasted straight into another document!

Ebook partners

You don't have to write hundreds of pages to justify publishing an e-book. You can produce short 500 to 1000 word "articles" and distribute them to Ezine owners who'll be glad to publish them with a link to your website.

You can also use these articles to compile short e-books with some of your own affiliate links embedded and offer it as a "free report" on your website in exchange for your visitors email address.

You can also find articles written by others who will allow you to include your own affiliate ID in the "resource box" that traditionally concludes these articles.

One such Internet marketing "guru" who allows this is Terry Dean. You can see a list of great articles he has available at his "Biz Promo" website.

How many short 10 or 20 page e-books could you produce using just a few of Terry's articles and simply adding some comments and information of your own?

Of course you'll want to make sure these comments give examples of products and services throughout and include your affiliate url!

Download A Sample E-book

There are several formats available to produce your own e-books each offering different advantages & disadvantages.

Text or Word Processor Files

It goes without saying that, whilst this is effectively free, it's simply the most insecure method you could distribute information in and complete madness if you expect to generate any backend profits from your efforts.

HTML (aka Your website)

It's perfectly possible to publish your information on a password protected folder of your website, but security is minimal & the "viral" effect & "perceived value" is generally not as effective.

Adobe PDF

A great format and compatible with both PC and Mac users alike. PDF also does not have the potential to pass around online viruses which is a small risk with "exe" type ebooks. PDF is quite an expensive option though.

E-book Compiler

This is the compiler that I have used to create my own products. It is easy to use, very powerful and extrememly well priced. What's more, you can download a trial copy to play with before you decide. It lets you keep a tab on every copy you create, which is a great feature if you want to protect your property.

E-Book Compiler - Free Trial Download 

E-bookPro

This has all the advantages of PDF at a lower cost and is the most secure format available today. It even allows you to disable a customers ability to read the e-book remotely if for example they paid by online check and the check bounced! This software was developed by Corey Rudl after his online business was nearly ruined due to to online theft.

There is an up to date news desk on the subject of ebooks here as well. It is an excellent free ebook resource because it is updated daily.