Getting people to your blog or website or signing them up to your email list is tough but a great ebook is often enough to tempt them. Here’s how to create one in one minute!
It is common to see ebooks and PDFs given away in the freebies or resource section of a blog or website, and how many times have you handed over your name and email address in return for an ebook or PDF? Probably many times.
You get the ebook/PDF you want and the website gets your email details so they can put you on their mailing list. It is a fair trade.
You are probably thinking that it is impossible to create an ebook/PDF in one minute. In fact, you might think you would struggle to create one in a day! How is it possible?
The trick is to repurpose the existing content on your blog or website. Have you written any long articles that are 1,500 or even 2,000 or more words long? Those epic articles that seem to go on forever and cover everything in a topic in great detail? If not, you should! They attract a lot of visitors because they are so comprehensive.
A long article like this is perfect for turning into an ebook/PDF file and all you need are the right tools. The resulting file can then be made available as a download or automated using an email service like MailChimp or one of the many others.
Use Safari on the Mac
This is a great tool for turning web pages into PDF files and it does a great job of making a blog post look like an ebook.
Go to any page on your site – a page with a long and comprehensive article is best.
Click the Reader Mode button at the left side of the address box in Safari.
The page is refreshed and all the clutter and junk is removed – no menus, buttons, sidebar, adverts, and other items to distract you. Just the article content.
It may depend on your theme, pop-ups and other items, but it works very well on a wide range of sites. It did a great job on the article in the screenshot.
Now all you need to do is to print the page. Go to the File menu and select Print.
The Print window appears and down near the bottom is a PDF button. Click it and then select Save as PDF. Then go ahead and click the Print button.
You are asked where to save it and then it is written to disk. The resulting PDF file is almost perfect. In fact, it is good enough to use.
Use Chrome on the PC
If you use Chrome for browsing the web, it can sometimes perform the same trick as Safari, but it is done in a different way.
Go to the web page in Chrome and click the three dots in the top right corner to open the menu. Select Print.
Set the destination not to your printer, but to Save as PDF. You may find that the resulting document looks better if the paper size is set to A5. Then just click Save at the top. The result is a pretty good PDF/ebook.
This does not work with every site and every theme. On some sites Chrome seems to strip out all the web clutter, sidebars, adverts and so on. You end up with a great looking PDF file.
On some sites you get what you see and the PDF includes all the ads, menus, buttons, and other unwanted items. Try it and see what happens on your site. If it works, then use it, but if it doesn’t, there is an alternative.
Use Edge browser in Windows
Like Safari on the Mac, Edge in Windows 10 has a Reading Mode that strips out all the unnecessary items from a web page to leave just the text and images of the main content. This can then be saved as a PDF.
Open Edge and go to the web page with the article. Click the Book icon at the right side of the address box.
The result is a nice clean display without the distractions, adverts, sidebars and other web page clutter. This can then be printed to a PDF file.
Click the three dots in the top right corner to display the menu and then click Print. At the top, select Microsoft Print to PDF for the Printer.
You may want to tweak some of the other settings, like margins, the page range, scaling and so on. Just fiddle with the settings until it looks right.
Use Google Docs
This last method produces the best results and it turns web pages into great ebook/PDF documents. It requires a bit more work than the other methods, but the advantage is that you can customise the contents to get the ebook/PDF perfect.
Go to the web page using Chrome (other browsers should work) and click and drag from the top of the article to the bottom – just the text and images of the main content.
Press Ctrl+C (PC) or Cmd+C (Mac) to copy it. You can also right click the selection and copy it.
Go to drive.google.com and create a new document. Click in it and press Ctrl+V to paste in the web page.
The text, images, heading styles and so on, come out almost perfectly. A few tweaks may be needed. For example, if you have ads between paragraphs in the article content you might need to delete them in the document.
If the content area of the web page is clean, the resulting document is clean too.
Now just go to File > Download as and select PDF document (.pdf).
The resulting PDF is perfect because what you see on Google Docs is exactly what you get in the PDF.
This is the slowest method of creating an ebook/PDF document and from web page to PDF file using Google Docs takes three or four minutes. Now you can create freebies and email sign-up gifts from your old web posts.
Original article: 12 points to consider when guest posting to boost traffic
ebook/PDF file: Guest-Post-to-Boost-Traffic (right click & save)
