5 Costly Viral Ebook Mistakes (Or, How To Make Viral Ebooks Work For You)
By Jimmy D. Brown

If I had only known, I wouldn’t have made these mistakes.  But I did.

For such a small word, “if” sure does cause a lot of problems, doesn’t it?

“If I had not turned off the alarm clock, I wouldn’t have overslept.”

“If I had paid attention to what my wife said, I would have not shrunk my 100% cotton shirt three sizes too small.”

“If I would have taken the time to fuel up, my car wouldn’t have run out of gas out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“If I had charged up the battery on my mobile phone, then I would be able to call AAA to bring me some gas out here in the middle of nowhere!”

See what I mean?

“If” is such a tiny word.

But it’s like dynamite.  It packs a lot of punch.

For me, as I teach (and learn myself!) about viral eBooks, the phrase is this:

“If I had only known, I wouldn’t have made these mistakes.”

You see, I made MANY costly mistakes in my early viral eBooks.  Mistakes that are *literally* costing me thousands of dollars in profits right now.

And there is nothing I can do to change them.

Once you set a viral eBook into motion, it’s impossible to get it back and make corrections to things ya screwed up on.

Man, if I could go back into time and change some things.

I have learned the hard way some things you DON’T want to do with viral ebooks.

That’s what we’re going to take a look at here.

I’ve made ‘em all.

You don’t have to.

Don’t do this…

1. Never use any link inside the content that you can’t control.

I learned the hard way that you should always use redirect links from your own domain when putting any kind of link inside your ebook.

For example:  most people insert their affiliate link for an affiliate offer inside the ebook that they have put together.  The one that was given to them by the affiliate program owner.

Instead, you want to link to a page at your site that refreshes and redirects the visitor to your assigned affiliate link.  Something like this… http://www.yourdomain.com/brainstorm.html
This is important so you can CHANGE the link anytime you want to in the future.

For example:  If I decided to no longer use ClickBank to handle my affiliate program and went with a different affiliate tracking link, what happens to the thousands of copies of your viral eBook that are in place with that old affiliate link in there?

They become obsolete, unusable and unprofitable.

Or, suppose you are linking to a dating service that goes out of business?  What now?
Your links are toast.  They are worthless to you.

With a redirect link you can easily adjust the target page and send the traffic to a different dating service, or to a page at your site. With a redirect link the changes are made at YOUR SITE, which you remain in control of regardless of what happens with the products and services that you linked to.

Even if you change hosts or servers, you still remain in control.

You don’t have to make changes to all of those eBooks — which would be impossible to do — you simply make a 2 minute change at your site.

I can’t tell you how many dead links are in some of my earlier ebooks that continue to give me headaches as people email me saying, “Jimmy, you’ve got a dead link here … can you give the correct link?”

It creates a lot of extra work in answering emails and certainly is throwing away potential profit for the countless people who never bother to ask for an updated link.
So, never use any link inside the content that you can’t control.

Always use redirect links.

2. Another thing is you want to avoid using dated information by providing too specific details.

Affiliate program A may not be offering that free 30 day trial offer very much longer.

The price for admission to that special site may not always be $29.95.

That site that was “just released last week” may have become an all-time classic by the time Bob reads your viral ebook two years after it was released.

You want to make certain that you stay away from information that is too specific that can easily become irrelevant.

Again, I get emails all the time griping about inconsistent prices because I put a price for the Profits Vault membership into one of my early viral ebooks and that price is no longer valid.

Hasn’t been for almost two years.

I’ve even gotten ugly emails accusing me of fraud and false advertising, with threats to turn me in to the attorney general and all kinds of nonsense.

So, be careful that you don’t date your viral ebook if you can avoid it.

3. Another no-no is to never put any information into your ebook that you don’t want all over the world.

These things travel folks and they can be global in a matter of days and certainly over time you can easily have a worldwide audience.

I made the mistake of putting my cell phone number in one of my earlier ebooks because everyone claimed that if I didn’t have my contact information in there,  no one would buy from me… which is nonsense I might add.

Anyway, I started getting all kinds of calls at all hours of the day.

What was 3:00 in the afternoon in the Philippines was 3:00 in the morning where I live.

So, it was a nuisance.

Kind of a funny story came out of it.

I disconnected that number, of course, and got a new one.  That was almost 2 years ago.

Well, about a month or so ago I had a lady email me and she was hopping mad.

Apparently, she had ordered a cellular phone and got my old number… and folks were still calling!

She told me that she was getting calls from England and all over looking for me and they were running her cellular bill up with charges.

She wanted me to do something about it and all I could do was tell her “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do”

With viral marketing, it’s pretty much unstoppable, which is why it is so effective.  It keeps spreading and it’s hard to stop the growth once it gets going.

So, never put anything into your ebook that you don’t want the world to know and  use.

4.  Another thing is this … always have your carriers do the branding.

You want to automate the process as much as possible.

Again, I learned the hard way.

Early on, before there were all of these branding tools available, I hand customized each ebook.

And as they began to spread, the customization requests grew to be way too much for me to handle.  I was spending most of my day putting together these customized viral ebooks for each new person that requested a copy.

That had to change and so now I use branding tools and branding instructions.  I give them to anyone who wants to customize the ebook and I let THEM do the work.

Keeps me out of the loop completely.
So, unless you have some specific reason to do it yourself, place that responsibility onto the ones who want to distribute the viral ebooks.

5. One more thing I want to share.  Always launch new browser windows with your links in your ebooks.

Whenever you link to a site within your viral eBook content, always remember to code that link to launch a new browser window when the reader clicks on it. I learned this the hard way.  There are many scripts involved in the order-taking process at online credit card processing sites.

And many of those have caused glitches in the eBook due to the software the eBook was created with and it crashes the eBook, making it impossible to order.

So, what happens is this.

You do your job well.  The content is great.  You’ve got a hungry customer waiting to buy.
They click on a recommended product link.  They arrive at the site still inside your eBook window.  They click on the order link and the entire thing shuts down.  I mean completely shuts down the ebook and website altogether.

And, in some cases, it even crashes the computer. You just lost a customer because two sets of code didn’t like each other.

That has happened to me on MANY different occasions in some of my early ebooks.

Now, all of my links launch new browser windows OUTSIDE of the ebook if you click on a link inside the ebook. All you need to do is insert a simple line of code into your links inside the eBook.  The code looks like this…

Target=”Resource Window”

Now when someone clicks on your link, a new browser window will launch outside of the eBook itself before taking them to the website.  Now, you’re safe. EVERY link in your eBook should have this code.  You can thank me later.

(NOTE: IF you are using a PDF maker for your ebooks, you should be fine with your links.)

Viral eBooks are tremendous tools.  But, there are also some pitfalls associated with them.

I’ve just shared five of the mistakes that I have made.

There is just no way of measuring how much profit I have lost over the years due to those errors.

There wasn’t a manual available to tell me how to do it.  History hadn’t really been recorded at that time to tell me what to stay away from and what to make sure I did in order to protect myself from problems.

So, you’re getting something that I didn’t have.

Aren’t ya happy?

In all seriousness, don’t make the mistakes that I made.

History doesn’t need to repeat itself on this one.

Want to learn a NEW viral ebook strategy that isn’t outdated and overused? Grab a copy of  “How To Get Free Traffic With PLR Reports “ . You’ll learn a great way to get free traffic to any site you choose with free “private label rights” reports.

This happened today, and has happened on a few occasions when dealing with the folks at MaxBlogPress.

My first dealings with them were to get a couple free plugins. Specifically the customizable opt in box plugin and the ad stripe plugin ~ both of which I use on my Internet Marketing Strategy for Beginners site.

When I got these plugins and installed them to make them work I had to opt in to MaxBlogPress’s list. Brilliant. I was a little annoyed but quickly got over it when I started getting their emails and all the valuable information and products they provide.

Because the first emails I read from them were so helpful to me they have earned a place directly in my inbox. You see most of my internet marketing lists skip the in box and go directly to a folder called “IM lists” which I read when I have time (or really never), however, MaxBlogPress, has impressed me and I actually look forward to their emails.

(This is exactly how it is supposed to work, and how I hope my list is working)

Today I received an email from them about  interviews they’ve done with some of the best bloggers around about getting traffic to their sites. I’ve seen these “interviews” before, usually a bunch of fluff with no real information. Normally I wouldn’t have even checked it out, however, because it came from them and they have earned my trust I went and looked. I downloaded the pdf and holy COW!! It was good. Really good.

It was of course a presell for the entire product, which was also brilliant on their part. Because of the great content they gave away for free I’m really interested to see what comes next. I will have my eyes open for the email that comes telling me the new product is launching and I’ll take a look at it.

What’s even more fun than getting the great information was seeing the process in action, done perfectly. It gives me a great place to compare and contrast my process and think about whether the things I do are landing on my readers in the way their process has landed on me.

Here’s the post with the MaxBlogPress traffic download. You can grab it yourself.

As an affiliate marketer think about your sales process and see if your process is working in the same way that theirs worked on me. If you don’t think it is ~ time to tweak!! Here’s a free ebook outlining the 6 step process I’m using to create a sales process that works.

1.  Blog ~ My very favorite way to not only promote my affiliate links but to build trust and community with my target market is on a blog. Whether you decide to use a free blog platform like blogger or host your own using wordpress the level of  flexibility and amount of things you can do from a blog makes it a must have.

2. Building a list  ~ After having a blog this is the best way I know of to promote your affiliate links ~ as well as build trust and community with your subscribers. You have the ability with a list to send your link out to your readers multiple times giving you a better shot at getting a sale than if they just clicked through to the sales page.

3. Squidoo ~ This is a free platform where you can create content that leads to your affiliate sales page. This site does quite well in the search engines if you choose good keywords. You can get a lot of traffic to your sales page. Once you get them ranked you can often times stay on the front page of Google with minimal extra work.

4. Ezine articles ~ Writing articles and placing them in an article directory can get you a lot of quick traffic. Especially if you use the biggest and best directories.  You can not only send traffic straight to your sales page, you can also send traffic to your opt in page or your blog from the same article.  Ezine articles can also be repurposed and used for your newsletter or blog posts. They are seriously a multitasking piece of content.

5. Forums ~ Find a forumt hat is highly relevant to your niche.  Start slowly and begin to let people get to know you there by posting informative posts and information, answering questions and being a generally helpful member of the community. You can have a “signature file” or “sig file” post automatically at the bottom of all your posts in most forums. In your sig file you can send people to your blog or opt in page ~ where you promote your affiliate products. I would not promote products directly here, but it is a great way to get targeted traffic to your links.

Driving traffic is just one piece of the puzzle.  Find out how you can earn affiliate commission checks in just 1-3 hours every week by completing ONE simple assignment. Even without a website, experience or even an idea!