Power Promote Your eBooks, Part One

Everyone is taking advantage of free eBooks as a promotional tool to drive traffic to their site as well as boost sales (or even as educational tools). Other authors are writing eBooks in a variety of genres ranging from science fiction to romance to "how to" books.

So, after you have created your eBook, how do you go about promoting it? Some ideas include:

  1. Signature Files
  2. Announcement Lists
  3. Ebook Reviews & Interviews
  4. Search Engines
  5. Directories
  6. Download Sites (free ebooks)
  7. Press Releases
  8. Affiliate Programs
  9. Resources (study epublishing)
  10. Web Sites
  11. Awards
  12. Contests
  13. Ebook Clubs
  14. Conferences
  15. Chatrooms
  16. Radio Shows (Online and Offline)
The first thing that you can do to promote your ebook, is offer it to people who you are in contact with via email. Include a mention of your ebook in your signature file (examples here) in your email discussion lists, especially those active groups that are geared towards eBooks such as: Upload your free ebook or excerpt to your site using an FTP program such as CuteFTP at http://www.cuteftp.com or WS_FTP. Then either give it away free to all your visitors to increase your traffic, sell it for extra profits, or give it away as prizes to your ezine subscribers.

Get reviewed... Offer reviewers a free copy in exchange for an eBook Review on their site. Several review sites include:

Create a page specifically for your eBook with appropriate Meta Tags and submit the page to the top search engines and directories.

Search Engines

  • http://www.altavista.com
  • http://www.excite.com
  • http://www.google.com ***
  • http://www.alltheweb.com (Fast)
  • http://www.directhit.com
  • http://www.hotbot.com
  • http://www.lycos.com
  • http://www.northernlight.com
  • http://search.msn.com
  • http://www.netscape.com
  • http://www.nbci.com
  • http://www.webcrawler.com
  • http://www.canada.com
  • http://www.slider.com (plus a free encyclopedia)


    • Have a tough time choosing keywords? Here are 3 sites that reveal the Internet's most popular keywords:

  • http://www.goodkeywords.com
  • http://www.wordspot.com
  • http://www.wordtracker.com

    • Pay Per Click Search Engines

    (PPCs) allow you to pay per visitor visiting your site and can provide a low cost method of promoting your ebook. There are dozens of these types of PPCs available and here is a list to get you started (full list is at http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com)...
  • http://www.Goto.com ****
  • http://www.FindWhat.com ****
  • http://www.Kanoodle.com
  • http://www.Ah-ha.com
  • http://www.Bay9.com
  • http://www.7Search.com
  • http://www.SearchHound.com
  • http://www.ePilot.com
  • http://www.NetFlip.com


    • Pay Per Click Promotion provides targeted traffic from all major search engines with rates as low as $0.07 per click.

    Directories

    Submit your eBook to as many major directories as possible in order to have a positive impact on your link popularity in Search Engines such as Google. First, you should purchase the paid submission for Yahoo! and LookSmart. Then submit your site for free to the Open Directory Project since it provides results for AOL.
  • Yahoo.com (costs $199)
  • Looksmart.com (costs $199)
  • Dmoz.org (Open Directory Project, free)

    • eBook Directories

    Here are a few directories that you can start off with if your eBook is free (also submit to the freebie listing sites too, check out an excellent article called "How to Harness the Power of E-Books" at: http://www.success-doctor.com/article43.htm)
  • http://www.ebooksnbytes.com
  • http://www.free-ebooks.net
  • http://ebooks.searchking.com
  • http://www.ebookdirectory.com
  • http://www.e-bookdirectory.com
  • http://www.mcpromotions.com/e-books.htm
  • http://www.web-source.net/free_ebooks.htm
  • http://writers-bbs.com/inkspot/?forum=ebookpromo
  • http://www.ebookpalace.com
  • http://www.bizinfocenter.com
  • http://www.ebook2000.com/cgibin/links/add.cgi

    • Download Sites

  • http://www.zdnet.com
  • http://www.download.com
  • http://www.upload.com
  • http://www.tucows.com
  • http://www.davecentral.com
  • http://www.shareware.com
  • http://www.jumbo.com


    • Please note that many of the above sites are more for software than eBooks, but you can still submit your free eBooks to them. If you are short of time, you could always try an ebook submit service to submit your free ebooks to over 99 different download sites for you. Check out the next site for many more places that may display your eBooks:
    http://www.euro-share.com/uplinks.asp

    If you sell your eBooks, you can also sell them at the following eBook sites:

  • http://www.booklocker.com
  • http://www.ebooksonthe.net
  • http://www.mypublish.com
  • http://www.ebookmall.com
  • http://www.amazon.com
  • http://www.borders.com
  • http://www.bn.com (Barnes & Noble)


    • Most of these sites charge fees or percentages of your sales and it is just a sample of the virtual bookstores available (see http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/publishers.html for a larger list. Read the fine print on any contract or terms of service since some sites may require their publishing services for lower listing fees.

    Don't forget to create a press release on your new eBook and first submit it to http://www.ebookbroadcast.com. Visit http://www.gebbiepress.com for a list of other media contacts, http://www.onlinenewspapers.com for a list of newspapers online and http://www.newsbureau.com for extensive resources and services for sending your release. Another effective press release service that is worth looking into is InternetWire. You are welcome to refer to an article that I wrote on planning your press releases at http://www.ebookbroadcast.com/resources/ as well as the The Publicity FAQ - questions and answers about getting media coverage found at www.yudkin.com/prfaq.htm.

    You could also create an affiliate program, if your eBook is for sale and there is a brand new service out that will get you set up very easily at: http://www.simpleaffiliate.com/ You could even use Clickbank. Visit http://www.AffiliateEbooks.com for another affiliate program suggestion known as My Affiliate Program.

    A special thanks goes to everyone from the excellent email discussion called AnEbookChat on the many ideas for where to promote your ebooks. Another special thank you goes to Johannes Garrido of KillerClassifieds for his helpful list of sites to submit ebooks to.

    I hope this gives you some ideas on how to promote your eBooks since this electronic medium is very effective! Part Two of this article discusses other methods of promotion including resources, web sites, and awards.

    © 2001 Eva Almeida


    Eva Almeida is the owner of eBooksnBytes.Com and is the publisher of eBooks N' Bytes Informer. Subscribe to her newsletter by sending an email to ebooksnbytes-subscribe@topica.com.