Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

5 Tips for Quickly Creating Your First PDF Report

September 21, 2009 | Blogging, Marketing

It is pretty common knowledge that offering a free PDF report is a great way to build up an email list and enhance your overall authority in your market.

The prospect of creating such a report is, for some, daunting.

Bloggers are told they need to write quality posts and do it often. You’ve got to be in social media. Making videos. How are you supposed to have time to write an in-depth report, too?

The important thing to remember is that this is not a reason to avoid it. The very fact that most bloggers are too lazy to pull it off means that you’re going to stand out for the simple fact that you did it and had it to offer.

So, how can you speed it up? How can you take the significance off the idea of writing a free report, make it simple and get it done?

Here are some quick tips:

  1. Think of it like a blog post. A PDF report isn’t a term paper. You’re not going to be graded on it by some English teacher with spectacles and a red pen. Just be informal and be conversational.
  2. Outline it first. This gives the document flow and ensures you don’t wander off point.
  3. Speak It. Pull out a voice recorder and just talk off the cuff. I would recommend strongly that you have an outline to guide you. And the skill in doing this will develop over time. The idea, though, is to just speak it. It takes FAR less time. Then, you pay somebody to transcribe it for you. You would be surprised at the final length and overall presentation of the report when you get it back.
  4. Don’t self-judge as you write. Don’t get into a figure-figure of whether what you’re writing is good enough. You’re your own worse critic and I highly doubt anybody else will think bad things about your report. So, knock off the critique and just let it flow. Don’t even worry about the grammatical correctness at this point. You’ll fix that later.
  5. Avoid distractions. I sometimes have my best production when I am flying somewhere by myself. I’ll sit there, knowing I’m in the air for a few hours, and just get into a groove with my report. I’ll even make a game with myself to see how many pages I can produce by the time they make me put my laptop away. It is great work time, though. No Internet. Just writing.

Find something which works and do it. But, don’t let the idea of it being a daunting task stop you from offering high-value content like PDF reports to your readers. You’re the one making it into a daunting task, nobody else is. So, knock it off!

Now, go write something.

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  • I was one of the bloggers who overloaded the task of creating a free report as daunting. Thanks for the encouragement as well. Any suggestions as to how to put it together once the content is made, i.e. pdf creation software?
  • Great Reports..Free reports or e books are a great incentive to get people to sign up for your mailing list.
  • Thanks for encouragement there,im really planning to put up my own pdf reports and nice to read your post here
  • I don't see anything wrong with collecting a bunch of articles from the article directories, contacting the authors for permission, and publishing them as an ebook as long as they are good articles and provide value. 4-6 is enough, you write a summary for each, an intro and a close off and it's done.

    Alternatively you can use the articles as an idea source for your own chapters. Either way works and is way faster than being totally creative.

    Copywriting is called that because it is copy writing. Not plagiarism that's just copy/paste and provides no new content or slant.
  • You also can put together an ebook from your blog posts. This is the fastest way to put together an ebook.
  • I have never thought of voice recording a document or post first. This weekend I'm going to try that and will let you and my readers know how it goes. Great idea, David!
  • Working on one now and you're right, too critical of our own work. Now that you've mentioned it, I recall reading quite a few that were not "perfect", but delivered really solid content.

    Thanks for doing this post :-)
  • Thanks for the kick in the ass I need it on this one!

    This has been on my to do list way to long close to 2 months but I didn't want to be just another pile of crap. Last week I finally really sat down and shut everything off and only opened notepad so I wouldn't be distracted by formatting and look and feel.

    Came up with the outline and knocked out a couple sections. I think the speak it and record advice it good. I going to do that tonight since I do have a nice outline now of what I want to cover.

    You recommend any transcription services and how about how much does that avarage?

    Great Stuff as always!
  • It is not the writing of the report I find difficult. It is getting the darn design right so it doesn't look like a pile of manure.
  • A Free report is definitely a must have if you have a blog and are trying to build a list. The money really is in the list. It allows you to nurture relationships with your subscribers and that's really what it's all about.

    It took me a while to make my own Free Report, but when I did, I was able to get a good number of people to subscribe to my list in exchange for getting the free report. Now I get people subscribing to my Mailing List every single day. It was definitely worth the effort that I put into it.

    Another suggestion I would add is the following - It's ok to get help. If it really does seem like a daunting task, hire someone to do part or all of it. Or maybe you have a friend or colleague who is familiar with the topic you are writing about that can help. That can make it easier.
  • Marvin68
    Thanks for the kick in the butt! I've been putting this kind of thing off for too long and for just this reason. You Rock!
  • Thanks for the encouragement!

    I just released my first (free) travel eBook this morning and it feels great! It was a lot easier than I expected, and I was able to use Google Documents to create and convert it to PDF format.
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