So how can you give an eBook away and still make money?

Simple

It can have the ability to increase the number of visitors to your website by using it as a viral marketing tool. Giving away something will always draw more people to your website than if you had nothing.

The more people you have visiting your site the more business you will accumulate. Giving away your eBook can work as a great viral marketing tool to bring business to your website.

Secondly, giving away your eBook can help generate leads to increase the number of people on your list or improve your database. Use the free eBook as an incentive for people to sign up for your list or provide you information for your database.

Today people are often overwhelmed with the amount of email they get on a daily basis and are now less likely to just give away their name and email address. People have grown to be very protective of their personal information, particularly who and where we are giving away our name and email address.

To get people to give you their name and email address you really have to go above and beyond what is usually offered. If they have to give you their email address to get a product that is of value to them, they will. Your eBook can be that product of value and can work as incentive to give their email to you.

Here's one quick side tip that I want to give you, based on that strategy. If you're setting up a website and you have a form where people can fill in their name and email address then they press submit, often times I see people give the download for that particular eBook on the next page.

The problem with that is somebody can give you a bogus name and a bogus E-mail address that doesn't lead anywhere, and they get the reward for doing that.

Personally, I would never do that. I'm all about being transparent, straight up and a honest business man. You gain respect from people by giving it.

So how I do that is I have a thank you page where it says, "Thank you. The information for where you can download the free eBook has been sent directly to the email address you provided."

Now the people who gave a real email and name will get rewarded for their honesty. An auto responder will send them an email immediately which will have a link where they can go and download the eBook.

Although you may look like your building up a database with a lot of names and email, if half of them are leading to false emails it is useless. You should really think about this concept because it won't do you any good building up a database that is full of bogus information. You want to be sure you have set up measures to weed out people who would leave false information so your database and your business is protected.

Back to using an eBook. Another suggestion as to how to use an eBook is as a reward for people who fill out a survey for you. Research is very important and many people use the survey method to gain information. Again, unless there is some sort of reward at the end many people will be reluctant to do it.

Asking your market is the best way to find out what new products or service they want, or how they feel about a new product you may have launched. One of my mentors, Alex Mandossian, has taught me so much in regards to marketing and he is known to use Ask Campaigns. Basically, this is when you learn what your market wants just by asking them.

A quick example. Alex does all kinds of high-level teleseminars with some of the biggest names in business. Particularly, he's done them with Brian Tracy, Vic Conant of Nightingale Conant, he's done them with Harv Eker, Mark Victor Hansen, Bob Allen. You can name it. He's done teleseminars with the who's who in business.

Actually, I know that he is working on teleseminars with Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs of Apple and Lance Armstrong to name a few.

He has a definite methodology to it, and the way he conducts his teleseminars is he asks people to submit their most pertinent question to the expert that he is interviewing that evening.

By doing this, he knows exactly what people are wanting to know and he doesn't even have to create any questions himself.

Well my friends, just use the same strategy. By conducting surveys, it provides you all kinds of great market research. And giving people a reward at the end of the survey is a way to pull them through so that they fill out the survey.

When people are usually asked to fill out a survey, you can see what they are thinking. 'Yeah great, another survey, taking more of my time, with nothing for me.' If you give them a reward at the end, it is like providing a light at the end of the tunnel. Providing them a valuable eBook will allow you to conduct market research but for your clients to feel they are getting something from it as well.

The best part is, you now know exactly what your audience wants and you can use this to create a product to generate even more business.

From reading this you can see there are multiple ways you can creatively give something away to genereate more business in the future. Ask yourself how else you could do this.

May ideas come to you when you need them the most!