<div class="page large-header article light soft pid_7557 page-7557"> <div class="background"> </div> <article> <header> <div class="container"> <h1> Wordpress Beacon plugin - creating free e-books from blog posts </h1> <div class="summary"> </div> <p class="byline"></p> </div><!--container--> </header> <section> <div class="container"> <p> I'm going to guide you through how to create your own e-book, and create an example as we go so you can follow along! <br></p><p><em>There's a video at the end so you can see my process from beginning to end.</em></p><h2>We're going to start with creating a Beacon account. </h2><ol><li>Visit <a href="http://beacon.by/welcome">Beacon's site to set up an account</a>. There's a free option, which I'm pretty sure is what I'm using.</li><li>Once you're set up, you'll be brought to your Beacon Dashboard. </li><li>Log in to your WP Dashboard, go to Plugins, Add New, and search for Beacon, and you'll see Beacon Marketing eBooks as the first option. Install and Activate.</li><li>Beacon now appears in the left-hand menu of your WP Dashboard. Click on that, and you should already be logged in to your Beacon account, but if not, log in. </li></ol><h2>Let's create a publication! </h2><ol><li>Click Create an eBook.<span></span></li><li>You'll be taken to a list of your blog posts - you can click as many as you want, or just one. You can also search by keyword, or click a category option to filter ones you want. </li><li>Select the one(s) you want, and click Create eBook.<br><em>I decided to create an eBook with some of my CSS tutorials: <br><br></em><br><img src="/uploads/55d8b7688ed12.png"><span></span></li></ol><h2>Now is the fun part - choosing the layout, colors, and fonts.</h2><p><strong></strong>For each section of the e-book, you will use the tabs on the left to format to your liking. </p><p>You can navigate between sections by clicking on the left and right arrow icons on the right side of the screen. </p><p>HOT TIP: Make sure to save after each you edit each section!<br></p><h2>Here's a breakdown of each tab. <br></h2><p><strong><strong>Pages Tab<br></strong></strong>Here is where you decide what pages are in the e-book. By default, the e-book is built with a cover page, a Table of Contents, and a Call to Action page at the end. Pretty awesome. </p><p>For e-books that are just one blog post, a Table of Contents is not really necessary. But if you have multiple posts, I'd say keep it.</p><p><strong>Content Tab</strong><strong></strong><br>This is where you edit the content on the page. You can format the text, insert/delete images, embed media, etc. </p><p>Here is where you would check to make sure the content doesn't reference commenting at the bottom of the post, and clean up the language a bit so it applies more to an e-book format.</p><p><strong>VERY IMPORTANT TIP: </strong>For each image included in your content, click on the image, click Edit, and either delete or change the title of the image to a caption. It doesn't show when you're creating the e-book, but the image title gets carried over from Wordpress and ends up showing up as a caption under the image itself. So if the image title is "stupidphoto," then that will be the caption in the e-book. <strong></strong><br><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Layout Tab<br></strong>Beacon provides a few fun ways to lay out each section - including with images, various text placement, etc. Play around and see which one suits your content the best. Just remember that you're going for a layout that's easy to read. <strong><br></strong></p><p><strong>Colors Tab + Fonts Tab</strong><br>Fairly explanatory. Choose a color scheme and keep it consistent throughout the e-book. Don't need it looking like a circus of fonts and colors.</p><p><strong>Check out my process for creating an e-book.</strong><br></p><p class="videoWrapper"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nIZxvTd-i38" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p><h2>Publish </h2><p>When your e-book is all set, go ahead and hit Publish - you can still edit after you hit publish, so no need to worry about everything being perfect. </p><p>Once you publish, you'll see a few options. You can download a generated PDF, share on social media, and get the code embed on your blog post. </p><p>I recommend downloading the PDF so you see what it looks like. </p><h2>Embed and Promote</h2><p>Now it's time to use this e-book as an email sign up incentive. There are two main ways to do this. </p><p><strong>Embed<br></strong></p><ol><li><strong></strong>To embed your e-book, click on Beacon in the left menu of your WP Dashboard. <strong></strong></li><li>Click Embed your e-book, and then select which one you want to embed. </li><li>Copy the iframe code and either place in the actual blog post, hidden <a href="http://tiffdotcom.com/how-to-get-more-subscribers-with-an-opt-in-lock/">behind an opt-in lock</a>, or embed it in an email that people will get once they sign up.</li><li>I also suggest including the URL to the e-book, since it doesn't seem that people have the ability to download as a PDF yet, and you want them to have forever access to the e-book. </li><li>The URL is in the iframe code:<br><br><img style="" rel="" alt="" src="/uploads/55d936b070854.png"></li></ol><p><strong>Promote</strong><br>Beacon has a cool widget you can put in your sidebar to use your e-book as incentive to sign up for your email list. I do not have a sidebar on my site, so I only tested it on my footer, and it looked good. </p><p>That's it, folks. That's how you use Beacon plugin to create an e-book from blog posts. Go forth and re-purpose your content!<br></p> </div><!--container--> </section> </article> </div><!-- page-->