An ebook that includes your marketing message and a link to your website is a proven technique in viral marketing. This method uses the multiplication effect to "explode" the distribution of your message by willing participants.

This is the basic principle that was used by Hotmail to get established. When the two founders set up their free email system, all the messages that were sent by subscribers had a text message at the bottom which identified Hotmail as the origin. People who sent emails to their friends advertised the free email site.

Using viral ebooks as a marketing method is cheap. It doesn't take long to set up and it's even quicker if you use rebrandable ebooks that have been written by others. Just use your favorite search engine and do a web search. You will find many rebrandable ebooks that are available on whatever subject you are interested in and that apply to your ebusiness. One method of distributing the ebook is to offer it to visitors in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. If they pass it on to their friends and family it will promote your business for you.

Ebooks are capable of reaching a large audience and are limited only by the enthusiasm of the participants.

Ebooks are fairly easy to create. It's possible to produce your own ebooks by combining articles that you have written or have gotten from public domain sources, such as directories.

A common approach is to use material that has Private Label Rights, including articles and reports that have been written specifically for that purpose, for that niche. Using a portion of a larger work that you have prepared such as the first three chapters of a large Ebook could also be used as a viral ebook.

Avoiding some common e-book mistakes

There are three very common ebook mistakes. Mistakes that can cost you your hard work and time much faster than any other mistake you'll ever make – ones which are easily avoidable and but can be very hard to remedy.

The first of these mistakes is not providing a strong reason to redistribute your ebook – although you'll find that 'free' goes a long way, you'll also find that some people aren't inclined to redistribute free – they won't read the e-book, or just won't find the time to create a way to offer it to others via their affiliate link. So you'll have to offer some form of attractive bonus to the people downloading it to redistribute your e-book. That bonus could be anything from a percentage or ALL of the OTO in your membership area, or the ability to sell the book themselves – or some other valuable items that give them a reason to distribute your book to their lists.

The second of these mistakes is failing to create a buzz – hyping your product before launch is a great way to ensure that people will be clamoring to get it – but at the same time, don't over promise or under deliver. It's important to remember that you'll need to create honest buzz, so that people beat a path to your door to download your content.

The third of these is not finding a joint venture partner or group of people to help you distribute your book – affiliates are great when you've reached critical mass, and pay per click and search engine results won't hold a candle to the amount of promotional traffic a strong joint venture partner will bring you.

And there it is – the three most common mistakes that you can make and the easiest ways to avoid them – avoiding them, though perhaps a bit more time consuming, but well worth it in the long run.