So you’ve built your website, optimized all of your keywords, created great content, and studied all the traffic-building techniques until you are blind from staying up until two in the morning. You’ve read the ebooks, bought the packages, set up autosurf programs, and even tried safelists, but the traffic you get is not rush hour. It’s a trickle. Let me suggest something.

What if there was already a website set up where millions of customers could see your ad every day? What if the only thing you had to worry about to get traffic was to create a great headline and keyword loaded ad? I am dreaming, you say. But then again Ebay provides this platform. Although Ebay no longer allows you to gather subscribers from your ad or add a link to other products you have for sale from your website, you can still promote either or both from your auction. It just takes a little bit of viral thinking. Let me explain.

A computer virus spreads from file to file until it infects your whole hard drive. An idea virus spreads from person to person until everyone, I’m exaggerating here, knows about it.

You say you have an great ebook that provides great info and will bring more customers to your site You just want to give away, but you can’t pay people to take it off your hands. Set up and auction on Ebay and sell 100 copies for a buck or even a cent, if you want. I guarantee that you will get more downloads a week this way as long as you write a great headline and ad. But this is not what I mean by a virus.

Now for an even better plan. Sell the rebranding package for your ebook at Ebay, but give the book away for free from a link directly from the auction. Giving your customers a chance to rebrand your book will allow them to associate their names with the great content you have provided. Hey, each one may even a better marketer than you are and get your book out to ten times as many people. Those who want to rebrand the book will come back and purchase the package and spread the ebook around for you. Those that don’t will still have your ebook on their computer. But there’s more.

To take this one step further, offer resale rights to the rebranding package. Give your customers a chance to make their money back and spread the word by spreading your ebook even further. Not only do you give your customers a chance to promote themselves along with your content. You also give them chance to make some cash.

What do you need to do before you get started? Create the ebook, of course. And the best to do this: write what you know. Provide insights into subjects that other authors seem to float right over. There is nothing new under the sun, except for your own personal experience and that may be all you need to create the perfect ebook for your niche. Remember you are doing this for promotion, either for your site, for another product you have for sale, or to build your list. Give your customers a taste of what they will get when they click that link that you are promoting.

The second best way: collect articles from article announce groups that relate to your site and compile them. Make sure you credit their sources and write their authors to let them know you are creating the book. Who knows, each author may want a copy to distribute themselves. Then write an introduction.

The title of the book is one of the most important things. It must describe its contents and also stand out. You have to create a title that will be remembered. After all, once you get this virus started, your name, your site, and your ebook will become synonymous, which is a good thing unless the title of your book is too generic. Then the effects of the virus you worked to create will evaporate.

Viruses are just waiting for you to create them. You just have to think like one. And how do you that? Start with “I am on 50% of the computers in the free world” and work your way backward. Of course, this goal is a dream, but the audience that Ebay provides is a step in the right direction.

For more info on Idea Viruses, checkout “Unleashing the Idea Virus” by Seth Godin and learn the history of every great viral marketing plan from Hotmail on up.

Stephan Miller

http://www.stephanmiller.com