Have you heard of Frank Sousa and Mike Morgan's Viral Cash Cow? It's a way of making it easier for people to rebrand your PDF ebooks, so that they can give it away to other people. And this will drive traffic to your site because of the magic of viral marketing. Or does it, really?

Here's the usual approach to brandable or brandible PDFs:

1. Write your document in MS Word or OpenOffice, and put special tags before and after your clickable links.

2. Convert that document into PDF.

3. Convert that PDF into a brandable PDF using software such as Sean Kelly's ViralPDF.

4. Allow people to download your brandable PDF plus the branding software (or a file the combines the PDF and the brander), and show them how to brand your PDF.

5. Hope, pray real hard, do a rain dance, make an offering, squirm, fidget, stay awake the whole night, wonder, and plead to the air around you that those people will actually spread your PDF around.

You know... that those people will (after they've branded your PDF with their affiliate links) take the time to upload the PDF to their webserver, and will create some kind of download page to make it easier for their readers to download the PDF, and will make it a point to promote that download page.

Lots of steps, right? Do you think they'll actually do all that?

Here's a simple test: How many people have you seen offering PDFs that have been branded with their affiliate links?

Anyway, here's what Viral Cash Cow does differently: It does away with Step # 3 above.

People no longer have to run some kind of software. They simply fill up a form on your webserver, and your copy of VCC does the branding online and later presents your visitor with a downloadable PDF.

That's basically it: Step 3 done online. (I wonder when Sean Kelly will release the webserver edition of ViralPDF.)

So, are brandable PDFs the viral marketing magic pill or silver bullet? You'll probably still have to do your rain dance if you want a torrent of traffic to go to your site.

There are quite a few people who are optimistic about the VCC affiliate program, though. These are the folks who have registered different domain name variations of ViralCashCow.com, which means you'll have some stiff competition in the field of affiliate marketing.

But if you are willing to produce useful or provocative PDF ebooks with a generous sprinkling of brandable affiliate links, and if you don't mind waiting for those super affiliates who will take the time to brand and spread your PDF, then Viral Cash Cow might be the tool for you.

Here's quick test: Create a PDF file that has good content and which contains aff links. In your PDF, provide a link that will show the readers how they can re-brand your PDF.

That page might be as simple as a blog entry which invites people to leave a comment if they wish to brand your PDF. From there, you'll have a better idea of the demand for your brandable ebook.

In case you get a fair number of comments (i.e., 5 comments), send them an already branded version of your PDF. That's right, do the work for them. Send them the PDF with their aff links built into it.

Then wait and see if they will upload their versions online.

And if they do, congratulations to you! Perhaps you can consider a career in Affiliate Management, because you are able to motivate 20% of affiliates to spread a PDF around.

So, will I get a copy of Viral Cash Cow? Let me first see at least a passable performance when it comes to virally marketing PDFs, then I'll consider getting VCC (assuming they offer a secure PDF version of it).

For the moment, however, I'm still waiting for a few drops of rain.

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"Viral Cash Cow"
First Posted: October 11, 2007 | Filed in: Marketing

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