Oblivious Webmasters and E-zine Publishers Sitting on a 24 carat Goldmine!

By Duncan Carver
Posted Wednesday, January 12, 2005

It continues to amaze me that everyday I see more and more webmasters and e-zine publishers still worrying about the high costs of online advertising and promotion when all this time they have been sitting on a 24 carat goldmine. A goldmine so valuable that it promises to end their worries for months if not years to come.

As the webmaster of Carvers E-Book Marketing Center (http://carver.bizland.com) I see day after day visitors who are sitting on what promises to be one of the most effective and exponentially growing free advertising mediums that they've ever explored. A free advertising medium that is so effective (unlike the majority of the rest) that it literally made me drop all my other online ventures overnight and focus entirely upon e-book marketing.

Before I continue it would be best to explain a little about e-book marketing as the majority of online marketers that I meet seem to know little to nothing on the subject. To put it simply effective e-book marketing harnesses the power of giving away "substance for free" in an attempt to build ongoing trust and future purchases from potential customers. We see this everyday with major corporations such as Microsoft giving away free software and companies such as Hypermart that provide free web space in hope to on sell other products and services.

While many of us just can't afford to be throwing away such elaborate software products there is still room for even those on the tightest budget to harness the same power and bring similar results as the major online players. How do we do this? E-book marketing of course!

E-Book marketing works in much the same way as publishing an e-zine, helping to develop trust within potential customers and continually building on that trust by maintaining consistent interaction with your online business. Not only that but it also acts as an exponentially growing free advertising medium which literally pulls people to your web site.

Mark Joyner the CEO of the Aesop Marketing Corporation (http://foreverweb.com) created his first e-book titled "Search Engine Tactics" a subject that is directly related to the products and services that his company sells. Since its release in early 1998 it has now been downloaded over a million times which equates to 1 million readers! A fair estimate based upon independent research would be that at least 95% of those readers visited his web site and depending upon the conversion rate of his sales pitch at the time can you even begin to imagine how much extra revenue was obtained from his e-book?

Terry Dean of Bizpromo (http://www.bizpromo.com) has experienced similar results. Here is a direct quote ripped straight from his e-zine,"Web Gold" Vol. 2, #40, October 8, 1999:

"We produced our first electronic book for download back in December of last year. It was titled "101 High Profit Businesses You Can Start Online with Little Or NO Money." I announced it as a Christmas gift all of my subscribers could download. The first couple of months it was online, it received 500 to 2,000 downloads per week... I currently estimate that around 1/3 of my current business is still being generated by this one e-book being given away for free on hundreds of sites. I consider it the most valuable promotion my business has ever done!."

There's no doubt about it e-book marketing works and is effective. Even the highly intelligent and respected people at IMC (http://www.marketingchallenge.com) have realized this and released their own e-book of articles that they've previously published both in their newsletter and on their web site - so what about this 24 carat goldmine I mentioned you're probably sitting on? Well we'll take two examples that will clearly show how many of you can begin to tap into this medium almost overnight.

The first being the content from the web site of a person who visited Carvers E-Book Marketing Center several days ago. You can find their web site "The Small Business Knowledge Center" at (http://bizmove.com). This is prime example of an online business that is truly sitting on a 24 carrot goldmine.

On their home page you will notice 8 major sections all quite distinct but at the same time all similarly related to small business information. Here I already count 8 unique e-books that if complied in the appropriate manner and released for free distribution could see this web masters web site promotion blues gone forever! Imagine if just one of those e-books brought similar results as that of Mark Joyner's. Imagine if 2 or 3 of them did!

While this an extremely good example anyone with a set of articles, a short tutorial, back issues of their e-zine or collection of useful information can create an e-book. Let's take a different example. Take a quick visit to "Golfgateway" at (http://www.golfgateway.com). You will find a link on the left side titled "Tips from the Pros". While this web site lacks any articles as such, even golf related web sites could harness the power of e-book marketing.

Compiling an e-book of all past pro tips effectively titled "The Little Golden E-Book of Super Golf Tips from the Pros" and then giving it away for free they would have then created a book that I'm 100% certain people will begin to pass on to their friends. The beauty is that these friends share the same interests and are therefore the same highly targeted prospects that are the most desired visitors to the Golfgateway web site!

I'm also 100% certain that they would find or already have associated web sites that would gladly like to offer their free e-book for download as an incentive to attract more visitors to their own web sites.

It's also probably quite ridiculous the amount of money that both webmasters from these examples spend on web site promotion each and every month. When you consider that the small cost to begin and continually harness the power of e-book marketing it's almost crazy they themselves and others aren't exploring it.

While this article couldn't possibly provide you with all the techniques and methods that are required to successfully explore and experience the results of e-book marketing I hope that I have brought this relatively new medium to your serious consideration.

About the Author
Duncan Carver is a student at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. Visit he's eBook Marketing Center for tons of free eBooks Internet Marketing related eBooks and eBook Creation Software. Visit: (http://carver.bizland.com) today!