The future of the e-book

Have you ever wondered how to create a great free gift to provide potential customers without spending a dollar? What about creating something that you can sell and make a passive income? Interested…Read on!

With the Internet being such a busy place, consumers not spending as much and customer service being more important than ever…small business all need that (LOW/NO COST) “Extra” to maximise their appeal. Now, what can you do that is low/no cost, will appeal to your potential customers (or target market for the sake of some jargon)?

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How about produce an e-book? You can sell this or offer it as a freebie to all new and/or potential customers.

Some of you may be asking, “What is an e-book?” Well, it is basically a digital copy of something that can otherwise be printed as a book. E.g. A pdf document with information can be referred to as an e-book.

An e-book can be simply emailed to potential customers for free. This acts as free gift that cost you nothing but your time. If you wanted to get more technical, your e-book can be set-up on your website to be automatically emailed out to those who want it. You can even set-up payment options so that you can sell your e-book online. 

Now, how do we create an e-book? Most of us would have the software to simply “type up” an e-book. The easiest way I have found is type it up in Microsoft Word (or similar) then convert it to a pdf using pdf-conversion-software. My favourite is doPdf (www.dopdf.com and it is FREE).

It is now just a matter of coming up with something worth writing about. Below are some random examples of how you can approach creating an e-book.

-         Do it yourself instructions (e.g. How to check your car oil or How to make a soup)

-         An evaluation survey to help someone personally or in business (e.g. What type of manager are you?)

-         A checklist (e.g. What to consider when buying a school bag)

-         A self-help style publication (e.g. How to be happier)

-         Research style publication (e.g. The health benefits of owning a pet)

The aim of an e-book is to help increase your credibility in your industry/field as well as offer something different to your competitors.