5 Deadly Viral Ebook Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
By John Hocking
Posted Sunday, October 10, 2004
Creating a viral ebook marketing campaign can be one of the easiest and most effective ways to promote your product or website.
Before you begin writing your viral ebook, you need to know the 5 most common mistakes that can cost you time and potential income.
1) Never Link Directly to Content You Do Not Control
You should always use redirect links placed on your own server instead of direct links to affiliate programs.
You never know when the program you are promoting will change the way its affiliate links work or go out of business. Using redirect links allows you to quickly replace the affiliate links with the new version or redirect to a similar product.
I can not stress enough how important this step is to you. Once you launch your viral ebook, you can not get it back to make changes to it. Using redirect links will prevent dead links and lost profit.
2) Avoid Using Dated Information By Providing Too Specific Details.
Do not talk about free trials or time specific discounts.
The affiliate program you are promoting my not always be offering the trials or discounts. You will anger your readers if they can not get the bargains you promised.
You should also avoid statements like "Just Released" or "Just Launched!". The program you are talking about may have been around for years but the time your reader gets your ebook.
3) Never Include Information You Do Not Want All Over The World.
Because of the viral nature of your ebook, it will eventually spread to every corner of the world.
If you include personal information like your home phone or your cell phone number, you may be unpleasantly awakened at all hours of the night. The person in England or Japan, may not be aware you live in United States.
It is best to provide only an email address or autoresponder for the initial contact.
4) Do Not Brand The Ebook Yourself
Putting yourself in the position of having to manually brand and send each copy of the ebook is a sure way to turn your campaign into NIGHTMARE.
You may be thinking, "What's the BIG DEAL?"
Let imagine for a moment that your ebook starts out slowly and only 10 people request a branded version the first week. It takes you about 6 minutes per ebook to brand it and send it to the user. You have just given up an hour of your life.
Now those 10 people each give it away to 10 people that also request branded versions. You now have 100 new requests at 6 minutes each. Now were are talking 60 hours.
As you can see with each passing generation, you will quickly become unable or unwilling to fulfill requests.
The solution is to give your carriers the ability and instructions to rebrand the ebooks themselves. This will take you out of the loop and allow your virus to grow exponentially unattended.
5) Do Not Forget To Launch A New Window For External Links
When linking to any information not found directly in your ebook, you should always open a new window. Many sales processes use javascript that could cause compatibly problems if viewed within your ebook.
It would be terrible if a viewer where ready to buy a product based on your reccomendation but was unable to because you failed to include this simple step.
Avoiding these 5 simple viral ebook marketing mistakes will greatly increase the profitability of your campaign while avoiding the pitfalls.
About the Author
John Hocking created (http://www.guidetoebookmarketing.com) "Your Source of Information on Creating and Marketing Ebooks" To learn how to create your own viral ebook visit John Hocking's Viral Ebook Resource (http://www.viral-ebook.com)
