Free E-Books Are an Excellent Way to Draw Traffic

Everyone likes free stuff. One of the best ways to draw interest to your product, and hence your website, is to have a carrot to dangle in front of their noses. E-Books are a great product to use this way. Whether it’s simply a brochure of your products, or a basic introduction to some informative thing you do, people will often feel obliged to check things out further. Even better, if they like what they see, they may pass a copy of the E-Book on to a friend, who in turn will probably react in one of those two ways. As the circulation of this document can be more than exponential, it’s called viral.

The trick in writing the E-Book is, as usual in marketing, to keep them wanting more. Remember, we’re only generating interest. If your business is lessons in some craft or technique, or the selling of non-material services, write only enough about your service to get people interested, but don’t make it an actual giveaway. If, however, you are selling some material goods, a brochure or menu should be more informative, though it may not necessarily list everything.

The goal, of course, is to make the potential client interested enough in your services or merchandise to spend money at your site. Everything about it should lead them into purchasing from your website. If it doesn’t work out that way, that’s fine as well. It’s entirely possible that this person might know someone who is more interested or able to shop at your site.

A secondary goal of free E-Books is to “spread the word.” As part of writing the E-Book, there should be information pointing the potential client back to your website. Put your URL on the front page. Reference it throughout the document. Make sure it’s clear where your potential client can go if they want more information. This way, even if the first person isn’t interested, they may pass it on to someone else, who may not otherwise know where to go. If the information in your E-Book is presented just right, this part of the composition will be vital, as it may pass from one person to five, to 20 and so on more than exponentially…it can spread like a virus.

Within a short period of time, days in all likelihood, your E-Book can reach thousands, even tens of thousands of recipients. If only a fraction of these follow up on your information, how many visitors will your site have? When these people decide to share your E-Book, how many people do you think that would draw? The fact is, the longer it’s in circulation, the more draw it will have.

In summary, the free E-Book can be a useful draw for traffic to your website. If the balances of information vs. intrigue and content vs. referral are well-positioned, the recipients of this E-Book will have learned just enough about what you do to be interested in more information, and will be provided with a direction to go to get more.