If you do, take a look at your stats in your Author’s Area. Under Author Tools, “View My Article Reports” and make a note of your top performing articles.

The articles that have the most views, clicks, comments, etc. are obviously topics that people are interested in.

Now take those articles (providing they’re all related) and bundle them together to create a short report.

Expand on each article to make it unique by adding:

• photos
• screenshots
• a case study
• a worksheet
• a resource list
• an interview

Beef it up with valuable content and badda bing! You have a short report. You can do this all in one day.

Now profit from that sucka!

Can you wait 5 days?

Sure, some quick cash would be nice, but wouldn’t a steadily increasing paycheck be even better?

How about writing a small report, and setting up a short ecourse to promote it?

This post will tell you how so listen up! (This post is also full of free goodies, FYI.)

This method is easy. Yeah, I said easy. It requires work and some of your time, but it doesn’t require a degree to get it right.

This method will also generate as much income as you want it to. The more you promote it, test it and tweak it, the more money it will make. The more you repeat this method, the more your income will grow.

So let’s begin.

Summary:

1. Write a short report
2. Promote that short report with an ecourse (If you think ecourses are old school and overdone, think again!)
3. Build your list

So three steps.

Let’s dive into step 1 – Writing a short report.

If you already have a website in a certain niche, then chances are you already have an idea or two for a short report topic. If not, it’s brainstorming time! Here are a few ways you can drum up some ideas:

• Dig through your website statistics and find out what people are searching for to reach your site. Any “how to” key phrases should provide some ideas. Pay attention to this information because it tells you EXACTLY what your readers are looking for.
• Poll or survey your readers. You can set up a form on your website or send out a request to your email list. Preferably both. If you don’t already have a list, get one!
• Hang around in related forums and find out what people are talking about. This works every time.

Now that you have an idea, you need to make sure it’s a profitable one. The “how to” and “tips” reports are usually winners. People are always wanting to know how to do stuff. They want tips to help them become more successful at whatever they’re doing.

For example:

“How To Create a Profitable Ecourse in 3 Hours”

or

“Copywriting Tips That Will Double Your Sales”

or

“7 Things You Must Do to Save Hundreds On Your Next Vehicle Purchase”

Just make sure that the title of your short report isn’t so far fetched that it’s unbelievable. It has to be compelling, but not ridiculously over the top.

Now write the report!

You can write it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. If you can’t hire someone and you can’t write worth a shit, trade services with someone who can.

Writing a short report doesn’t have to be a huge deal. I can sometimes sit down with my ancient laptop and whip one up in an hour. If what I’m writing about requires a lot of research, it can take days. There are also a crapload of short reports sitting on my hard drive that were started but never finished.

Don’t be like me.

Finish what you start!

Create an outline then fill in the blank spots. And read this book. It’s free and it’s good. If your head isn’t spewing out awesome ideas by the time you’re done it, I will eat my own shorts.

When your report is finished, you need to figure out a price. Each market is different, and you may be surprised at what price point works best, so this is definitely something to test. If it’s fairly short – 5 to 10 pages – start out with $7 and test from there.

Ok, on to step 2 – Writing an ecourse.

Typically, ecourses – or email mini-courses – are about 7 days long. Or 7 issues. They don’t HAVE to be though. They can be as long or short as you want. There is no “right” answer, but you have to take your readers into consideration.

If you send out an ecourse about gardening, your readers may want some longer, more detailed messages. If you’re targeting internet marketers who are already inundated with emails, you may want to keep them short and sweet, and no more than 7 in a row.

Decide on your topic for each email, then write about it! It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and it doesn’t have to be an award-winning masterpiece. But you do need to make it really good. Make it informative, useful, interesting, entertaining. Make it worth the time it took for your readers to sign up and read it.

If you already have a lot of content for your topic, consider re-purposing it for your ecourse. Break up some articles into smaller lessons for each email, or rewrite them and add a few more exclusive tips or info. You can even add some interviews, worksheets, resource lists, videos, audio, etc. to add to the value of your ecourse.

(I wrote up a more detailed report about creating profitable ecourses for my subscribers. Signup with the form to the right at the top and you’ll have instant access after you confirm your subscription.)

Throw your newly created ecourse into an autoresponder and send the test emails to yourself to read over. Better yet, send them to someone who will proofread them for you. When everything is looking good, it’s on to….

Step 3 – Building your list.

Now this is a gigantic topic and I could write about it for days, but instead, I’m going to point you to some awesome resources that talk about building lists much better than I could.

List Marketing Tips – This is a free 20 page report that is chock full of tips that will not only help you promote your list, but profit from it as you build it.

Triple Opt-In Requests – Another free 20 page report with tips that will help you increase your optins without increasing traffic. (One thing that I did to increase my own optins was to add an arrow with the optin form. Something bright and eye-catching will do the trick.)

Basically, create a really great ecourse that people will want to sign up for, then promote the frick outta that there link!

• twitter it
• put it on every page of your site
• put it in forum signatures
• blog about it frequently
• include it in your email signature
• submit articles to article directories with the link in your author bio
• create a free report to entice people and make it viral
• contact other site owners and offer them a large cut of your profits if they help you promote it
• etc.

If it takes you 2 days to write the report itself, another 2 days to create the ecourse, and 1 day to set it all up (autoresponder, optin page, etc.) then you can start profiting from it in 5 days from now.

Rinse and repeat once a month (or whenever you have the energy for it) and you’ll be creating a profitable little empire for yourself.

And don’t just sit there thinking about doing it, just friggin’ DO IT! I know you can!

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Make Money By Giving Away Special Reports

A lot of internet marketers create special reports in their niche to sell to their customers or to use as incentives to sign up for their newsletter.

However, there are ways to profit from special reports without selling them or requiring your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter first. In this article we’ll talk about three different methods of making money from special reports by giving them away for free.

Affiliate Marketing

No matter what your niche is, or your target audience, chances are there are numerous affiliate programs that you can promote to your readers.

If you don’t already promote affiliate products or services, it’s easy to find them by searching through affiliate websites like Clickbank or Commission Junction. You can also do a Google search for your keywords along with “affiliate”.

For example, if your website or blog is about beauty tips, you could do a search for “cosmetics+affiliate” and come up with lots of programs that offer their products through an affiliate program.

Now it’s time to write a short report – about 15 pages or less – with some beauty tips and advice. Choose a good quality product to promote and link to it strategically throughout your special report. Make sure that you’re providing great content that is useful to your reader, but find a program that complements the information you’re giving them.

Here’s another example. You can write a special report about how using a detox diet can cure acne. List the benefits of using a detox diet and how it works, then link to an ebook with your affiliate link that teaches people how to cure acne with a detoxification diet. You give your readers the “what” and “why”, the affiliate program gives them the “how”.

Click here for more ways to make money with affiliate marketing.

Promoting Your Own Products

While affiliate products can generate a substantial income, there’s nothing like having your own products to promote. You receive all the profits, plus you can create your own affiliate program and have people promote your product for you.

Writing a special report about your products is a great way to get the word out about them. Let’s go with the “beauty” niche again as an example.

You’ve either written an ebook with your own beauty secrets or you’ve purchased the resale rights to one. Now you want people to know about it, so write a short report listing a few of your best beauty tips.

Include lots of details and pictures. Maybe you’ve got some advice on how to create the “smokey eye” look using eye shadow. Now link to your ebook and tell your reader that there are even more great beauty secrets in it that aren’t mentioned in the free special report.

Promoting Your Services

You may not have your own product, but you might offer services like graphic design or consulting. Writing and distributing a special report is the perfect way to show that you’re an expert in your field.

With your special report, you can show your readers that you have extensive knowledge about the services you offer. You can also list the benefits they would receive if they used your services, and don’t forget the disadvantages of NOT using your services.

Let’s use copywriting as an example. We’ll assume you have great copywriting skills and you offer your skills to clients for a nominal fee. Explain in your short report how copywriting can increase sales by improving conversion rates.

Now mention how a poorly written sales page can generate a lot of traffic but few sales. This works for not only internet marketers but brick and mortar businesses as well. Any time someone writes an advertisement for a newspaper, radio or TV ad, they’re using copywriting skills.

If their ad isn’t converting well, they’re losing out on sales which means their wallets won’t be as fat. We’d all like to have fat wallets, and paying for your copywriting skills will help us achieve that. Your special report will send that point home.

Profiting From Special Reports Doesn’t Have To Mean Selling Them

If you get creative, there are lots of ways for you to make money from giving away special reports. By not selling them or making your readers give you their email address, you’re increasing the chances that your special report will go viral. You’ll reach potential customers and clients that you normally wouldn’t reach which means more business for you.

But did you know that you can be raking in some decent cash by creating your own special reports?

Special reports are generally short PDF or audio files that are tightly focused on one topic. They’re great for building an email list, generating traffic to your website, and promoting and selling your own products or affiliate products.

You don’t need to be an award-winning author to create special reports. You can create them even if you despise writing. Just make a recording of yourself or you interviewing someone, and have it transcribed into text format. Simple right?

There are lots of ways you can go about creating and marketing your special reports, and I’ve got all that information for you in one handy, idea-packed special report. Go figure hey? You’ll also find out how to profit from your own special reports and how to turn it into passive income. You can learn more about creating and profiting from special reports here.