From the last year I’ve been creating ebooks and experimenting with my blogs. Since I learned the technique about creating viral ebooks with my older blog posts, this has become a successful technique to spread your content and bring on new and interested visitors.

Weeks ago I wrote a guest post for MrJavo.com: How to recycle your article -there I mentioned about creating an ebook as a way to re-use your older blog posts. Ebooks works well because I can create one with a set of similar articles in it and readers can download it and read it. They can read it offline or even on their cell phones and can send it to friends via email.

All ebooks links back to my sites so the more it gets distributed, the more exposure I get. A blogger should give away ebooks for free because you’re not an established writer and no one will pay you for that. Use it as a free resource and you know people loves to get free stuffs! Now let’s see how I created my latest ebook, “A step by step guide for new twitter users”

Step 1

First you need the content and word processor software. I used my article content and images + Microsoft Word as my word processor. Create a new word file and add and edit content. Each of the word pages are the pages of your ebook. I used the first page as the cover.

You can drag and drop your article and images just from your blog. Please note that the blog version and ebook version are different. I removed additional parts from the articles like, “Please leave a comment; this is the 4th part; grab the RSS etc.” Please also remove any internal links and un-necessary links from the ebook version. Remove images and only use it when needed to keep the ebook size small.

Now you can see, I have added a special footer on the bottom of each page,

To do this go to Menu > View > Header and footer of MS word. Now write your header and footer text. I only added footer in my ebook and kept the header blank.

After you create your ebook word file, don’t forget to add your links and credits. I wrote a “Thank you” message at the end of my ebook. Now save your word file and begin Step 2.

Step 2

Now you’ll need a professional PDF writer. There are plenty of ebook makers available but I prefer creating a PDF file because it’s universal. I used Adobe Acrobat 6 professional for this job.

-Ha-Ha! That’s a goofy looking office guy!

Importing

On your PDF panel, create a new PDF file by accessing, Menu > File > Create PDF > From File. Select your word file that you created earlier. Now the software will render the file into a PDF file and the time will depend on the file size. This is the easiest way to render a PDF file. If you create a PDF from a web page or HTML file, then all of the contents will split apart and it will look messy!

After that you’ll see your word file in a PDF look. You’ll see a simple quality loss of your images.

Linking

Now we have to edit those links. Yes, by rendering from a word file, adobe acrobat has created an image and it doesn’t have to ability to read links. Don’t worry, we’ll fix it!

Click on “Advanced Editing” -located at the top right corner and you’ll see a toolbar like that.

Now to add links, click on the “Link tool” and draw a box around your link,

You’ll see the Create Link box. Select “Open a web page” and add the URL. Click “OK“

It’s done but the box is still visible. Double click on the box again and you’ll see “Link Properties“; Select “Invisible Rectangle” as the link type and click “Close” Do the same for each link you want to add and use copy-paste if you want to use the same link in many spots.

Last minute editing

If you want to edit text on the ebook, then selcet the “Touchup tool” from the “Advanced editing” toolbar. Now select any text from your ebook and edit it.

Security and restrictions

You must secure your ebook. I prevent printing, copy and editing for all of my ebooks. If I don’t do that, anyone would print it to create their own hand book or edit it to make it their own. You can restrict the usability with adobe acrobat.

Go to Menu > Document > Security > Restrict opening and editing.

Now on the box you can set a password to read this ebook (Not recommended!) From the “Permissions” set a password, and select “None” as “Printing allowed” and for “Changes allowed”

With that password, anyone on the world can edit and print your ebook. Keep that password in a safe place so that you can sell the printing rights in the future or you can even create a printable version of your ebook!

Save and distribute

After you created and secured your rights, it’s time to save it. Save the file just as you save any other files and start marketing it. You can add the file on your server to let your readers directly download it. I used a third party server called MediaFire which allows me to know the number of downloads. If you know any other cool places to share and submit an ebook, then please tell me about it!

So what are you waiting for? Create your own ebook and bring more viral traffic. Please Grab the RSS feed to get more useful updates like this one.

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