Creating A Lead Magnet eBook: Practical Steps To Write A Giveaway Short Report For Your Blog Readers
Have you written a giveaway eBook (aka ‘lead magnet’) to “gift” your loyal blog readers when they opt-in? If not, what do you give your subscribers, as a thank you gift for joining your list? If you do not have an eBook / free report as a lead magnet for building your email subscribers list, you are leaving a lot of subscribers to other blogs.
Are you a small or home business owner – selling or marketing a thing or two online? Are you giving something of value to your readers and subscribers? Do you know that you can significantly attract more audience (blog readers, subscribers, customers, and sales) simply by offering them something for free? An informational material such as a small eBook, report, software – in full or samples – can make them like you more and buy repeatedly from you, and even tell their friends (free promotions) about you.
You Can Encourage More Readers to Opt-In To Your List When You Offer Them A Free eBook/ Report As Gift
Although aware of the benefits of creating a freebie eBook, many online marketers, businesses and bloggers see the idea as cumbersome and time consuming. If only they knew there is an easy way to create their own free giveaway eBook in just a day, they’d write dozens of eBooks every month.
This post is a follow-up to “How to Increase Opt-Ins and Get More Buyers By Giving Away Free Reports”. You may want to get the full benefit of this series by reading that post after this. Although the objective of this post is to provide a step-by-step process for bloggers to create their freebie giveaway offer to subscribers, you can also use the steps herein for writing eBooks for profit.
Why Should You Create An eBook?
The idea of creating a new free report or eBook discourages new and even existing entrepreneur who are building their business online with blogging. It’s not their fault – there’s too much to do and yet only limited time in every single day.
In this post, I am going to show you a quick fix to create a traffic pulling eBook in just 1 day and then have a quality eBook giveaway that your readers would find useful and you can use to attract more subscribers to your opt-in form. Read on but be sure to have your computer ready to do every step in this post, while reading. It is advisable to print out this post first so that you do not have to switch between windows on your computer.
Below are steps to a quick and easy way to create your own free giveaway report. To make this easy to follow, I have written two different methods for two target categories of audience: (i) People just starting out on their blogs and have only but a few posts or just beginning to create posts for their blogs and (ii) people who have blogs with more than a few contents.
Step #1a – Method 1: For Older Blogs With A Couple of Contents
eBook Creation Method for Older Blogs
If you are not just starting your business blog, it’s so much easier to create your own free offer, and you can write an eBook to use as your free offer. An eBook is simply a collection of related topics that make up a theme, presented in a coherent order.
- Find Most Popular Posts: Find your top, most popular posts and/ or most commented posts (that is based on topics most loved by readers)
- Find Related Posts: Find 2 to 3 of your most popular posts that are related or serialized.
- Merge them: Take the most popular posts that are related and knock them together in a coherent order. Use a Word processing document (MS Word, Open Office or similar). Congrats, you’ve just written your eBook. Didn’t I tell you it was easy and would be fast?
Step #1b – Method 2: For Fresh New Blogs With Few or No Contents
eBook Creation Method for New Blogs
The steps below are for people who have just started their blog and do not have lots of contents yet. However if you have up to 10 posts you can still use the above steps to quickly create your own free giveaway report.
OPTION #1: Create Your Own Contents
Here’s a secret – if you take off time to do this, you can even reuse and repurpose the contents in the eBook for your blog posts – so you win both ways – got new free report PLUS new blog contents. No time lost!
- Main Topic Theme: Pick a theme to write your eBook on – think of one key problem that people in your market are struggling with and that you know how to fix. For example, the theme of my eBook could be “How to Write Your Own eBook in 1 Day”.
- Structure or Outline: Get out the skeleton. Next, write 5 main points around that theme – what are the main ideas you would like to share.
- Expand on Your Points: Here’s about putting flesh (contents) onto that skeleton (outline). Now take the main points one after another and fill them in. Start writing what you want share with your readers on that main point.
- Start writing – write fast, as if on impulse – just pour down every idea and and edit later.
- What are people talking about on that subject? Do a few research to see what others are talking about related to that topic. If you need help here, read my post on how to listen to what people are talking about on a subject. Do a Google search on a Keyword for your them and look under the discussion (left panel) – check out the questions people who actually want solutions are asking. This exercise can even give you ideas for new blog posts. Note: The idea here is not to deflect to other people’s content – just to get a few ideas about shaping your contents – such as picking up a few buzz words around it that can contribute to hot keywords: that’s why it’s the last step in this section.
- Editing: Spell check and edit your document .
This option is great for you if you work full time, or for any other reason, do not have time to write your eBook contents. You can purchase pre-written articles or reports, and then tweak them to make them uniquely yours. For where to find affordable pre-written articles on any topic of your choice, click the image below.
Step #3. Placing a Twitter Share Button In Your eBook
Follow the steps below to make it easy for other people to want to share your giveaway eBook/ short report (i.e your lead magnet).
- Insert retweet buttons inside your new eBook. Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examinerhas written one of the best how-to posts about doing this and these were the instructions I used while creating my own eBooks.
Your contents are now ready. Yay! Next thing is to dress your new giveaway eBook – make your eBook attractive and convert it to PDF.
Some businesses have mastered the art of turning their prospects and customers to their referal engine, so that their a large percentage of their sales comes purely from other people freely promoting their products and services – it’s an art that you can also learn to apply in your own business. (Source: The Referral Engine – the link is at end of this post).
Step #4. Packaging Your eBook: eBook Layout – Portrait or Landscape?
The only factor to decide a layout is the readers’ comfort.
I love the Landscape layout (i.e. sideways, wide) as it makes a book more readable, providing more read space than the portrait. Portrait is the usual straight up, length-wise format.
The whole idea is to use a layout that makes reading easy on the eyes. I have found landscape to do it for me – it’s kind of best for online reading because it displays one full page at a time, so that the reader is rid of scrolling several times to read a single page. In addition, the display comes with a nice zoom that is easy on the eyes.
I sometimes use portrait layout for very short reports.
In MS Word 2007, you do that from page layout >>Orientation >>Landscape
I’ve got lots of my eBook readers telling me they just love the layout I use and I thought it’d be a good idea to share it here.
**If you want to see what the layout looks like, check out one of my eBooks.
Step #5. Making Your Short Report / eBook Easy To Read – Fonts and Formatting
Again, the focus is on making the eBook easy-to-read. You can use font formats to make your eBooks appealing or enticing to read. Font formats play with ease on the eyes of readers.
Here are a few formatting tips you may want to use – they make reading online easy on the eyes. Ensure your formatting is uniform all
Font Type: Arial, Verdana,
Font Size: 12
Heading Styles: Heading Styles 1, 2, 3 for Major headings, sub and sub-sub headings.
Paragraph Spacing: 1.5
Step #6. Title Your Short Report/ eBook – Make It Compelling For Anyone To Desire It
Now that you have your whole eBook contents put together, you will need a name for your eBook.
Give your eBook an attention grabbing title. You may want to write a list of 5 titles and get friends or even readers to vote for the best one.
Step #7. Create eBook Table of Contents – Make it Searchable
Readers love it when a book is scan-able – make it easy for them to quickly hop on to specific sections of your book.
Don’t you just love it when you are looking for a quick fix and you pick up a book only to quickly locate a sub-topic that relates for what you are looking for? That’s what a table of contents would do for your eBook – they lead a reader to page numbers of topics within a book.
Some authors do not include Table of Contents; you may decide to include it or not.
However, if you decide to create a Table of Contents, here’s how to do that in Microsoft Word: Click References >>Table of Contents
Step #8. Give Your Short Report/ eBook an Appealing Front Cover Page
With Microsoft Word you can quickly create nice covers from their inbuilt templates.
Here’s how to do that – Click Insert >>Cover Page (then select the one you like).
**Note: After selecting a cover page, you can replace the graphic image from Microsoft Word cover page with yours. Just click the image, delete and then paste the one you have somewhere in your laptop.
Step #9. Create an eCover for Your eBook
You may want to skip this step for now, it’s not compulsory – at the time of writing this tutorial, I only managed to create an eCover for only one of my eBooks, and plan to create other eCovers later.
Note that this post is about creating your own eBook in just one day so we are not going to use any complex design tool here.
- Do-it-yourself Method #1: One method is to take a screen capture of the cover page you created in the step above and paste it where you need to use an eBook cover. It would suffice in many cases. Jing (by Techsmith) is an excellent free screen capture tool – I use it too.
- Do-It-yourself Method #2: MyeCovermaker.Com is a cool website where you can create quick eBook covers for your eBook free – does not require any learning curve and is fast and easy to use – simply select one of the free eBook templates they have, upload an image for the cover (if you have one, if not just use theirs). They have on-screen instructions you can follow.
If you are too busy to create your own eBook, you can outsource your eCover design to a freelancer on Fiverr OR use the services of Vaughan, who creates eBook covers for many top marketers, at affordable rates (see his eCover samples on the left image).
Step #10. Insert Your Blog Links (URL) In To The eBook
Insert the URL to your blog or website somewhere in the eBook. You may want to do this in the page footer or within the “About Author” area.
It’s neater to wrap your links to a phrase or keyword instead of having plain open “www.YOURWEBSITENAME.com”. Do this by selecting your blog name and then clicking the “insert link” option so that when readers click that word they are automatically taken to your blog.
Step #11. Write An “About Author” Page – Don’t Be A Stranger to Your eBook Readers
If you have an “About Me” description on your blog, you can simply summarize it and paste in your eBook.
I have seen some authors place their “About Author” pages at the beginning of their eBooks while some place it at the end of their eBooks.
If you already have got some some success stories and testimonials in your niche, keeping your ‘About Author’ in the beginning pages, before or after the Table of Contents.
If you are just starting out, you may want to first put your best contents upfront and place your “About Author” at the end of your eBook, so that readers can judge you (as a value bringer first) from your contents – if they accept your contents and find value in it, they will accept you as a brand and an upcoming authority in the market.
- You may want to look at my own expanded “About Me” page for this blog, to get an idea for yours. Note that on eBooks and free reports, I condense my “About Me” to about 2 medium sized paragraphs.
Step #12. How to Convert eBook to PDF and Still Retain Clickable Links (URLs)
Ensuring to use a PDF converter that keeps your links clickable.
Clickable links make it easy for readers to go to your website and take the next action
Here are few PDF converters that preserve hyper-links (URLs):
- Free Microsoft PDF plugin for computers with Office 2007 and above installed. I use this and love it because it creates very white pages and nice reading layout. It’s an Adobe Air programme so first get Adobe Air program installed before getting this – it’s a fast install and also free.
- Free version of Primo PDF
- OpenOffice.Org
Step #13. How To Upload Your eBook – Give it a Home
Now that you’re done with packaging your eBook/ short report, where would you store it? You need a place to store your eBook on your blog and you need the link to that place to give out to people to download your free report.
This is the download link you will give people or send your subscribers to download.
There are two ways about hosting your eBook – on your blog’s server or a cloud storage.
- Housing your eBook on Your Blog Server: Mitz of Websitebuilder.com has one of the simplest easy to follow steps and videos to upload your pdf to your wordpress blog server. Again this is the same steps I used to do mine. Click here to follow the steps to upload your new eBook to your hostgator server.
Note: if you use another hosting platform (not Hostgator), the steps would be slightly different. However, you can also upload your eBook or any document to your server using any FTP (Filezilla or similar) .
- On Cloud Storage: As time goes on, you may create more eBooks and may want to house some outside your blog server. I have a few eBooks and have now now stored some on Dropbox cloud storage which gives free 2GB space and you can lock any document you do not want the public to see. Every document stored gets a link (URL) which you can give people to download from – that’s what I do for most of my eBooks. You can get your own Dropbox free 2GB storage here http://db.tt/JqaJGCv.
Step #14. Make a Shorter Version of Your eBook Link
Shorten the long eBook link: You would see that the download link to your eBook is long, I am sure you’ll want a prettier, shorter version of the same link.
Get a pretty link version of your eBook’s long download link before giving the links to people. Use Bit.ly to create short smart, prettier links.
- What you do here is to enter bit.ly in your browser address bar
- Then paste your long (ugly) eBook link and wait a few split seconds for bit.ly to give you a shorter version of the link.
**You’ll need bit.ly again and so it’s a good idea to signup (free) so that bit.ly keeps a record of all the links you’ll shorten and the click analytics in one single place.
Step #15. How to Track Number of eBook Downloads
Apart from making eBook download your link prettier and shorter, bit.ly also keeps a track of the number of people that click and download your eBook. Any time you sign into your bit.ly account you’ll see a record of clicks your eBook download link has got – an indication of how many people downloaded it.
Step #16. How to Increase Your Subscriber List With Your Free eBook
Now that your eBook / free report is ready, one way to use it is as a lead magnet. Successful bloggers / online marketers are always building their lists. They use free reports to encourage and entice their readers to sign up to their list. That makes it a win-win situation.
If you’d like to build your lists using your free reports, do not give away your eBook PDF download link yet. You are going to create a bridge for your readers to pass to download – that is an opt-in form.
If you already have a subscribers opt-in form on your sidebar, it’d be a good idea to tell your readers to “get your free report by subscribing to your list” or “subscribe to your list and get your free report” —write this in a way that’ll compel anyone to want to download your eBook before leaving your blog.
**If you do not have a subscriber form yet on your blog or if you’ve not started building your own (customer) list, I’ve got your back – it’s easy and you can learn how to do it quickly from this post: Top 10 Effective List Building Strategies to Increase Your Subscriber Base This Year.
That’s it! Congratulations, you now have a free giveaway for your readers and would never again ask (for email addresses) without giving something upfront.
You’ll want to learn how giving away your new eBook/ report to your readers, for free can increase subscribers and sales. Click here to Discover how giving away free gifts can inccrease lead generation and sales.
Step #17. Promote Your eBook For Free
You are done. Congratulations, if you got this far.
- Promote it. Now go tell the World about your eBook – share your eBook short link on Twitter, Facebook, forums and everywhere you think the audience will benefit from it (that’s hoping your book shows people how to solve a problem). Other places to share your eBooks for traffic include scribd (I love this), slideshare, docstoc, eSnips, free-ebooks.net and getfreeebooks.com. I’ll share more places to promote your eBooks for free, in a future post.
- Give your Free Report to your subscribers. Be sure to let your readers know they’ll get your free eBook simply by subscribing to your blog newsletter. Include this message on your opt-in form.
- Track download. Once in a while go check the number of people that have downloaded your eBook – note that the proportion of download you’ll get is proportional to the level of people you exposed your link to. Lesson: Don’t get stuck on checking your download metrics; instead focus more on sending people to your eBook link – share it, share, share…
Liked this Post on Fast eBook Creation?
That’s my Definitive Guide to Creating An eBook or Report for lead magnet. I tried to make it very comprehensive and hands-on so that you won’t miss out any steps to creating a lead magnet to build your list.
- Comment. I would love to know about your new eBook and how wild it’s spreading. Leave me a comment below and I’ll definitely respond. Did I miss anything or do you have any twist to creating an eBook in one day? I’d love to hear it and I’m sure your insights would also help a few people.
- Share it. If you picked a thing or two from this post, chances are your friends will also benefit from it. Why not click the share button(s) below and share this post via email, on Twitter, Facebook Stumbleupon, Digg…
Thanks for reading and I’ll meet you up in the comments side below.
Yours in success,
Stella
Photo by nate steiner @flickr.com/photos/nate/
59 replies on “How To Create a Traffic Pulling Free Report in Just 1 Day – To Entice New Opt-ins”
HI STELLA. I am so lucky to have found your blog with such wealth of practical information. I am on my way no to create my first ebook thanks to your tips.
Regards
Hector
Thanks for reading, Hector. I’m glad that you found useful tips to help you start off your new eBook.
All the best!
Great, I’ve been thinking about how to easily do my first ebook as a CTA on my site and I had thought about using some blog material. But you’ve given me the conviction to go for it, so I will, thanks!
Great John! I’m glad this post gave you the desired conviction to use your existing contents as a base for your eBook.
Thanks for reading and hope to see you around some more. Good luck packaging the book:)
[…] Here’s a post on steps to quickly create your viral, free eBook in the next 24 hours […]
Wow Stella, great post. Last time I tried writing an eBook I worked on it for 2-3 months and then abandoned it because things took a different direction.
I was never much of a reader but my first e-reader made me cultivate the habit of reading more often. E book is a better solution to book lovers, I also like the green concept behind e-books. I’m motivated by what you shared in this post.
Giving away free e books to your readers is a good way to cement your relation with them. The tips you have shared on creating one are awesome.I think if this is done then it will make your readers feel appreciated and they will be encouraged to keep reading your posts.
Hi Stella,
This is a great post, exactly what I was looking for. I have an ebook but didn’t know how and where to store it and how to get my subscribers the link to download it. Important technical details that I found hard to find until I came across your blog.
Thanks again!
Susan
I just wanna say thank you for the information that you have been shared to us readers. Thanks for posting this kind of theme.
Very profound Stella! I know it’s hard for beginners to actually finish an e-book worth reading for just one day but with these tips, I might actually do it. I have quite many old posts, that are worth reading. I need to compile them first and see what happens. Thank you very much!
Hi Leila:
Yes, you’re right that a beginner may not be able to compile their eBook in 1 day BUT what I discovered (from doing my very first eBook as a beginner blogger) is that beginners often get the idea that it has to be a BIG Book. No, that’s not it – just pick a single topic – a sub-topic of a topic and create a helpful article (like you would in a blog post or 2) AND package it as your giveaway short report.
Readers even like it when it’s like “7 steps to do XYZ quick” than a master book on “how to do XYz”. There are lots of information online – everyone with their own ideas and I was taught that it should be big and I spent weeks doing a big eBook.
If I knew then what I know now, only a chapter of my first eBook would have been it. So, what am I saying? So, whip up a quick help guide or something like that. Even a beginner can do that in a day. I hope that helps, if not you can shoot me any further question and I’ll be glad to guide you.
Thanks for your kind words, I’m glad you found value in the post. I like your review site – clean, crisp and good contents.
Stella,
I have always been procrastinating on my ebooks partly because I just think that it is too hard to do. Read your post from top to bottom. I think I have an idea now. Bookmarked it and will work on my ebook based on what you wrote here 🙂
Hi Jim:
I’m glad you found the post useful enough to help you make ‘compiling’ your eBook easy. You may also like to read this: ways to increase sales with your free giveaway report.
I look forward to reading a copy when you’re done.
I like your Grill site – well done. I’m currently working on a pilot niche site, based on Amazon stuff. Thanks for coming around and I look forward to seeing you again. Enjoy your day!
Stella,
Thanks for the compliment and giving some advice there on giving away the ebook there 🙂 I’m reading the link you’ve left there as I type this.
Cheers!
Thanks Jim:
It’s my pleasure, and you’re welcome always:) Let me know if you found that post (link) useful to you. Hopefully, it should.
Thanks for coming around and Do enjoy the best of this weekend. I hope to see you around some more:)
This is AWESOME…you make it seem so doable. I have over 300 blogs and articles written and posted…time to make use of that. Thank you SO much.
Hi Tambre:
It’s always a pleasure seeing you around. Thanks for taking the time off your busy schedule to come read and comment.
Wow, you have a lot of contents there and I know you write really well because I enjoy your posts and articles. You should “CONVERT” them in singles and some in groups, to PDFs and use as giveaway freebie to your readers, from time to time.
On another note, you know some of those posts would need more exposure to your new readers and other people that do not yet know about your blog – you can distribute them to document sharing sites, while having your blog in the PDF cover page and footer (for traffic back) – I use some weekends to covert some of my posts to PDF and distribute to document sharing sites such as Scribd, Slideshare, DocStoc.
You also use those PDFs to build your list by offering them as a contributor in “JV Giveaway events” (see them at newjvgiveaways[DOT]Com.
Those are 2 other ways I use my old posts that I converted to PDF. They require no additional work – just upload to submit, and generate fresh new traffic and subscribers.
I love blog entries packed full of valuable information and great resources! Thank you so much for writing this as I have been pondering writing an eBook and didn’t know where to start.
I consider myself a newer blogger, although I’ve had my blog for about a year so maybe I’m not so new after all. One thing I’ve learned in life is no matter how much experience I have, there’s always great new experiences to enjoy, and new information to be learned. Your blog entry is a great example of that.
Thank you so, so much Chrysta for coming to read and comment. I really appreciate your time here to read other posts too.
I’m glad you found the steps in the post useful to help you to quickly create your own giveaway free report of eBook. When I was starting out blogging, I didn’t find a guide to create my first eBook and so I thought that documenting how I went about it would help others too.
One year in blogging is still kind of new, but like you said no matter how new or old a blogger has been in it, there’s always something new to learn to build a better blog. The moment learning stops, it will be hard to continue delivering relevant contents.
Thanks you so much for your kind words, about my blog. I always never take this kind of feedback for granted – it means so much to me, and encourages me to do better. It can be dampening if one spends hours to create a post and no one finds it useful. I hope to see you around again:)
I’m just reading your post “Work Happy: How to be Happier at Work”. Tweeted it and will leave you a comment.
Hello Stella,
Just stumbled on your blog today. Thumbs up! I have to say this is the best blog I have seen by any 9ja (I assume you are). I will be following your blog as I realize that I have a lot to learn from you ‘cos I am about to set up my attraction marketing system as read from magnetic sponsoring. Just bought the MS ebook over the weekend and with what you are doing, I can picture everything that was said in the book being practiced by you. I would like to give you a call. Pls, email your phone number and I’ll give you a call. Once again ‘Thumbs up’.
Thank you so much Derin, for your kind words.
I always feel happy whenever a reader tells me they found my posts useful. It helps me to know what to to write more of.
Good to know that you’ll be following my blog. I hope you’ve signed up to receive my every future update and news – it’s free PLUS you’ll get my free welcome gift, which is a 120 page eBook I wrote to help beginners setup their blog, get traffic and subscribers fast, and a 30 days plan to make their first profit online. Here’s my book download page: Passion to Profits Blueprint
Magnetic sponsoring is good for Network marketers transitioning to become online Network marketers. I also bought it. However, I also suggest you get Ann Sieg’s “Attraction Marketers Manifesto” – it’s and awesome free eBook. The link to get it is in my eBook.
Yes, I’m 9ja but I’m not in town, and can be reached via Skype (stelsie318). Just add me and let me know via Twitter or Facebook page when you want to talk. You can connect with me on Facebook and Twitter via the side-bar (on the right).
I look forward to seeing you again, and also hearing from you. Do not hesitate to let me know where you need guidance.
Wow, Stella! This post was packed with valuable information! I’m definitely going to be sharing this one! =)
I never realized that there would be so many considerations in creating an eBook. In fact, I didn’t even know I should be intimidated until I started reading this post, but by the end of it, I felt like you had covered all the details so thoroughly that I didn’t need to be afraid anymore! =)
I’m going to have to hop on the eBook train very soon! =) Thanks for the encouragement, friend! =)
Thanks Sam, I really appreciate that you found those steps helpful to make your own ebook TODAY!
Hey girl, you got contents (on blog and everywhere else), so don’t go ‘analysis-paralysis’ or sweating the small stuff – use the method for blogs that have contents already and merge two or three of your best, related contents (copy from blog, paste in Google Docs, MS Word or Open Office Docs) –> Then convert to PDF. And Bam! You’ve got an eBook. Put the link there, while making the cover, and when done, replace the link.
I’ll be looking forward to getting a download link, tomorrow?:)
Hello! I’m preparing an eBook and found your material while doing my research. DropBox looks like something I’ll be able to make good use of! Thanks for sharing!
Hey Lucas, I’m glad that you found this post useful for you as you create your eBook.
Yes, Dropbox is great for hosting eBooks, blog images and drafts (and even vital documents from you computer). It’s one of my best tools.
Thanks for reading and especially for commenting. I appreciate that.
Just reading your views about blogroll and personally I prefer to link on a per post basis, to any blog post that richly increases a post I’m writing, and would add more value to my readers at that point. I see you did that even in this post, mentioning other bloggers and their relevant posts, in the specific context
Wow! This is a complete and detailed how-to. 🙂 Thanks Stella.. I was only searching on how to make an e-book file and I was given more than that. So generous of you to share this information.
Regards,
Drew
Wow, you just made my day – I’m glad that you found this post helpful to make your eBook.
You’re welcome Drew:) Be sure to check out other detailed how-to, tutorial style posts, any time.
I’ll be at your blog later to read:)
Hi, Stella:
Nice to meet you, I’m Missy. What a great resource on ebook creation, even though I plan to sell my books your tips still apply to most of the process.
You’re a great, detailed and thorough writer, so paid ebooks are something you should definitely consider…so that then you can write a good post for us on how to best do it. lol.
Look forward to hearing from you on Twitter and around the blogosphere.
Cheers,
Missy
Hey Missy, it’s my pleasure e-meeting you. Thanks a bunch for visiting my blog, and especially for leaving me your kind comment.
I’m glad you liked reading the eBook fast creation tips. The premise of the post was to enable more bloggers and marketers to get beyond the thought that creating a giveaway eBook would be difficult or time consuming.
Thanks for your kind words – I feel encouraged and appreciated reading your comments. I would like to get into paid eBooks – may be I can learn how you managed to get yours out. Lol.
I look forward to catching up with you on Twitter and the WWW:) BTW, I’m jumping in on your Facebook page promotion offer:)
Stella, this is AWESOME!!! I am writing an ebook right now and this is so timely.
One thing you reminded me to do is to create an “about the author” section for the end. I will get right on it!
I am divided about doing table of contents because I don’t know how to make them clickable. And I intend to use myecovermaker for the cover.
Good suggestions all! I even liked the part about using blog posts you have alredy written. Maybe I’ll do that for my next one :).
Thanks for this great post!
Jeanine
Hey Jeanine, it’s always a pleasure to see you around. Thanks for reading and, especially commenting.
I’m happy that this post came right on time, for you, and I hope the tips here would help you speed up packaging your very first eBook.
Yes, that ‘about author’ is as important as the reason why ‘about you’ should be on a website. Your readers would want to be sure that you are authority / experienced enough for them to trust your tips. My first eBook didn’t have that though but after I learnt why it’s a ‘must have’ I created a one pager ‘about author’ which I now use for my free reports and eBooks.
*I can show you how to make clickable table of contents, if you use Microsoft Word -it’s easy and auto one you use the and sub-heading heading tags (h1, h2) – if you don’t know how to do that too, I can tell you. Let me know…
Jeanine, you know why I love your blogging niche? It’s fun and every month/ week/ day is fun dress-ups. Now is the ‘no pants challenge’.
Hey Stella,
Your post is great! Complete and convincing.
Moreover, I wasn’t considering to make an ebook. I think I will now. You make it look feasible. Thanx.
Hi Gustavo, it’s a pleasure to see you around. Thanks for reading and especially for commenting.
You should, with those steps you’ll see how easy it is. If you’re looking to increase subscription rates, then now is a good time to do it, as you’ll see that most subscribers opt-in to get your freebie report.
You already have your blog running and got some cool contents. You can do it! All you have to do is find 2 or 3 related posts among your most popular (most commented, most traffic) posts and merge them to a single content that flows, and convert to PDF. That also helps give exposure to old posts. Keep me updated when your first eBook/ free report is ready:)
BTW, I loved reading your refreshing perspective about happiness as a tool. True but it’s easy to not see it that way because we take it as a ‘given’.
Stella, you amaze me!!! This is GREAT, QUALITY content!!! Create this into an Ebook if you haven’t already!!!! I always grow and learn reading your posts-thank you for working so hard and being so thorough!!!!
Haha rawkinmom – seriously this is the second time that as soon as I leave your blog and return here, I see your comment. Lol.
*Hey, thanks for coming by, reading and commenting; always a pleasure. I’m glad you liked the post and thanks for your advice. I already have it in a PDF for my giveaways to drive traffic and build list.
You know, you also put up those pretty contents and make raw foods colourful and interesting especially for people starting to get into it. Hope you saw my email to you on Yahoo Answers raw food channels?
LOL-great minds think alike!!! 🙂
Thanks for the compliment on my blog too!!!! 🙂
I did see your email and thank you very much!!!
You’re welcome.
Best wishes.
Hi Stella,
You provided some great content here. Very detailed. I just happened to be going over some old posts to spruce them up a bit. Now you have given me a great idea for creating my first e-book. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Steven, thanks for coming by, and especially for leaving me a cool comment. It’s well appreciated.
I’m glad you liked the post and are soon going to take action to whip up your very first eBook, using the steps in the post. I look forward to reading your eBook.
Your review is so far the most detailed and clearly explained one I have read so far on TribePro.
Stella, thanks for this detailed post. Great actionable steps from start to finish.
Hey Sharon, thanks for coming by, and also for leaving me a cool comment. I’m happy you liked the post and found them actionable to implement some tome soon.
Thanks for your spot-on tips for starting engaging conversations with first time acquaintances. This is a very important lesson especially in a world where most conversations are now online via social media, it’s easy to forget how to spark off interesting conversations online.
Great, I’ve been thinking about how to easily do my first ebook as a CTA on my site and I had thought about using some blog material. But you’ve given me the conviction to go for it, so I will, thanks!
Hey Billy, thanks for reading, and I’m glad you found a ‘second voice’ to motivate you to create your own first eBook in the next 24 hours. You’ve got great contents there at your blog; be sure to use top eBook/ PDF and document sharing sites like scribd.com, slideshare.com (and the others) to get your eBook out to more people.
I loved reading the creative process you use to help your readers and clients and their teams focus on the exact actions they need to take to get to clear, actionable steps that will lead them to their desired “end” (goal).
Wow Stella, great post. Lots of good detailed “Actionable” info in there. Last time I tried writing an eBook I worked on it for 2-3 months and then abandoned it because things took a different direction.
Thanks Bill, and thanks for coming over, reading and commenting. Would you be completing your eBooks now – perhaps use a one or two of your related posts and merge them to make a free giveaway eBook/ report.
I wrote my eBooks before launching my blog, else I don’t know how I would have focused to get any out on time.
You really have me thinking abotu that now. I had already been thinking of taking that one and breaking it up into mini reports. Now I’m thinking of taking some of my other older works and revamping them as well.
Things that make you go HMMM….
That’s it Bill – exactly the method that this post teaches, for blogs with a couple of posts to be able to merge related posts to create an eBook/ free report fast. You can take your most popular posts. About splitting a big eBook/ report into smaller reports – that method is what I did with some of my big reports/ eBooks (using them for list building drive), although I’m not done with the split (done a few) and even use some as the base for a few early posts.
I’d love to hear how this turns oout for you, as you go hmm…:)
Girl, we are fast becoming best blog friends! I absolutely LOVE your very detailed posts!
I am in the process of creating some ebooks and surely need a strategy! The main thing for me is a promotion strategy since I’ll be creating books for sale…
btw: I love the Referral Engine! I bought it last year and it’s a staple in my business book library 🙂
Lol, welcome (back) Kesha. Yea, BBFF lol. Thanks for your compliments – it’s most appreciated.
eBooks for sale is also one of my planned monetization strategies for the near future.
Jimy D. Brown is someone I know that has made money from eBooks and I’d trust his ‘how tos’ on that. I’ve tested some of his teachings and they work. You may want to read his ‘small reports fortune’ free report http://bit.ly/smallreportsfortune. Have you read this guide from Copyblogger on the subject of how to promote eBooks [copyblogger.com/create-ebooks-that-sell]?
I’m glad to know that you loved reading the ‘referral engine’.
BTW, I shared (face-tweeted, LOl) your recent post because it touched on a topics I have sentiments for:)
Stella, this is a fantastic post! (And I have to say, timely as well :)) I’m focusing on creating an ebook in the next month, so I love your step by step tips. This will definitely make my work easier!
Dani
Thank you Dani, for coming by and for commenting.
Depending on the amount of free time you have and the purpose you want to use eBook for, you may want to use any of the two methods discussed in the post – the one for bloggers who already have significant numbers of blog contents (which is faster) and the one for those who are just starting out writing contents.
BTW, you’ve got a great blog and cool contents.
Thanks Stella! I think I have some old posts that generated some buzz that I can go back and tweak a bit. Now I have a to do list for the project, thanks to you! 🙂
Dani
Hey Dani:
You’re right – your blog has a humongous amount of posts (all great contents) you have built over time. That strategy to find a couple of related posts in a single theme would be your best bet to quickly knock together a free giveaway report in only 1 day.
I look forward to reading your eBook – do keep me informed.
BTW, I was totally in love with your blog; you must be a super-mom to be able to come up with such creative posts in different areas (main categories).
Hey DiTesco:
Thanks for coming by by blog again. I appreciate that big time.
Yes, you are right about old posts getting lost in the sea of newer ones, hence “denying” the readers the opportunity to find answers on their most pressing answers in the contents.
It’s also a way to drive traffic to your ever-green topics. And I like what you added there – increase list size.
What promotion strategies, apart from your blog, would you be using to promote the compiled eBooks you are working on, based on your old post series? Care to share?
Solid tips here Stella and the first method is something that I am working on rght now to see how it goes. Old post sometimes, even pillar articles” tend to get lost in the middle of fresh ones sometimes and this could be a good way to not only promote old posts but within the process get more exposure and why not increase your list 🙂 Thanks!
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