There are many kinds of information products. The three most common are ebooks, which are written words in a file that can be read on a computer, audio products, which are generally mp3 audio files which can be listened to on a computer or on any mp3 player like an Ipod and video products, usually some form of mpeg files that can be viewed on your computer.
Of these three information products, the books seem to have the lowest wow factor. I measure wow factor by the price range the three types are generally sold for. Ebooks get a low price, video products get a high price and audio products prices fall somewhere between the two. Based on the perceived value of the three types, videos have the highest wow factor and ebooks have the lowest wow factor.
The low wow factor and their lower perceived value sometimes causes some online marketers to shy away from ebooks in favor of the other mediums. If they do that, they are making a big mistake and risk leaving a tremendous amount of revenue on the table.
The most powerful marketing tool in an internet marketers toolbox is viral marketing. If you can get a good solid viral marketing campaign going, it will dwarf all of your other efforts in driving traffic to your sites and your affiliate sites.
Viral marketing, in a nutshell, is utilizing an information product as a giveaway or as a resell item so that it spreads itself throughout the internet like a virus. What makes it so powerful is the speed with which it can spread and the amount of traffic you can direct back where you want it.
Nothing compares to an ebook for effective viral marketing. Here's why. If you have an audio product that goes viral, that is not a bad thing. If you have a powerful enough message you may be able to persuade many of those listening to it to go to your website. The problem is, an audio product is not clickable. In order for someone to go to a target site, they have to either remember the site url and then type it into their browser, or they will have to write it down and type it in to their browser later.
A video product suffers from a similar shortcoming. A video that goes viral can be very powerful. It could get thousands of views. How do you translate viewing a video to going to a target website? Once again, a video is not clickable. If you are directing your viewer to a website they usually have to type it into their browser like with an audio product. The video does have one advantage over the audio, you can program the video to send the viewer to a specific website upon completion.
If you send your viewer to a site upon completion, that's all you can do. Send them to one site. That's not a bad thing, but it is not as effective as a viral ebook. With an the book, links in it are clickable right from the screen. One click and your reader is at the hyperlinked site. So the reader of the ebook can visit a linked site in an instant.
Even that is not the biggest reason viral ebooks have such an advantage over audio and video. The biggest advantage is, you can have one link, two links, five, ten even 30 links throughout the book. You could be linking to 30 different affiliate campaigns from that one ebook. Your reader can visit one or all of the links. Your reader might buy one or many affiliate products from the links. You have multiple ways to monetize that book through as many links as you can reasonably embed in the book.
If you want to start a viral campaign, your most effective weapon is an ebook. Audio and video has it's advantages in your total marketing strategy, but for your viral campaign ebooks can't be beat.
