The most powerful word in the marketing dictionary is made up of just four letters: F-R-E-E. It doesn't matter what kind of product or service you're promoting, if you can use the word FREE in your advertising and marketing, then your response rates will shoot up. People like FREE stuff. In fact, many people simply can't resist the word FREE! The problem is, you can't use the word FREE unless you actually have something FREE to give, for example:

• Click Here To Download The FREE Demo!
• Contact Us For A Price Quotation - It's FREE!
• Take The FREE Tour Of The Member's Area
• Order Now And Get ***** For FREE!
• Subscribe To Our FREE Newsletter!

These are all effective ways of introducing the magic word. However, the best FREE idea of all is the FREE ebook. It doesn't matter what kind of product or service you sell, you can use FREE ebooks as a promotional tool to carry your advertising AND build your reputation. By creating an ebook that is related to your product or service, and by giving that ebook away for FREE, you achieve three things in one go:

1. You give yourself a legitimate reason to use the word FREE in your advertising and promotion.
2. You generate FREE publicity for yourself by promoting your product or service from inside your FREE ebook
3. You build your credibility by making your book useful and relevant to your target market.

To get the most out of this great FREE promotional tool, keep these points in mind:

• The ebook must be more than just a blatant ad for your product or service. This could damage your reputation rather than enhance it. Keep your self-promotion present without being 'in your face'.
• The content of your book must be useful and relevant to your target market. There's no point in giving away a FREE ebook that contains Internet marketing articles written by other people, if you're promoting guitar lessons. You'd be much better off doing a bit of research online and creating a short ebook on the history of guitar playing. After all, the primary aim of the FREE ebook is to build your reputation in the eyes of potential customers.
• Encourage other webmasters/e-zine publishers to freely distribute your book to their visitors/readers. Be sure to state this clearly inside the book and anywhere you make the book available for download.
• Offer to create customized versions of the ebook for those webmasters who want it. For example, you could place an ad for the webmaster's site on the cover page. This will encourage him/her to work harder at giving it away, thus spreading your message to more people.
• Promote your FREE ebook by listing it on shareware sites and in ebook directories as well as on your own website and e-zine.

So, get busy. Ask yourself what it is that your target market is interested in. Make a book that feeds that interest and then start giving it away!