Want Free Content Publishing? Yes YUDU

It’s an age-old business dilemma: You’ve got to spend money to make money, but you also need to keep costs under control. Marketing materials especially can put a bite in the budget, what with the price of printing and postage. But YUDU Media has an alternative way to get your message out into the world. They call it YUDU Publishing Freedom.

Freedom is an on-demand publishing tool that lets you turn a PDF file into a live, Flash-based Web page within minutes. If, for example, you want to create a marketing brochure, you design the brochure and convert the file to a PDF. Next, sign on to YUDU Freedom, and upload the file. YUDU converts the PDF into what it calls a digital edition and generates a link that you can then publish on your Web site or e-mail to customers.

With YUDU Freedom, small business owners can now create compelling content and have it up online in a matter of minutes,” said Richard Stephenson, YUDU’s CEO. “They can put the links on their Web sites, but YUDU hosts the content on its servers.” The result is a Flash-based document that looks like a booklet, and you turn the pages by clicking on the lower-right hand corner of each page. The digital editions you create can even contain images, audio, video and, of course, links back to your company’s Web site.

Stephenson said that customers can use YUDU Freedom to create digital editions with up to 16 pages each at no charge. The service, he said, is ideal for creating brochures, catalogs, home improvement guides, how-tos, parts manuals and more. If you need to produce materials that go over the 16-page limit, you can step up to YUDU’s fee-based services, YUDU Pro and YUDU Express.

YUDU Freedom gives small businesses an advantage, said Stephenson, in that they can now deliver professional content on the Web and/or distribute it quickly and affordably to their customer base. “This helps them get their message out more quickly. They can tell current and potential customers, ‘Look here, it’s online,’ and they can reduce their mailing and shipping costs,” he said.

YUDU Meets the Home Improvement Zone
Since 1991, David Yates has built and sold more than $100 million dollars worth of homes in Dallas and Houston, Texas. Currently, he builds showcase homes and spends his weekends hosting a three-hour syndicated radio program called The Home Improvement Zone. An entrepreneur at heart, he expanded his efforts to include a Web site and a monthly magazine.

Yates partners with various real estate and home building publications and vendors along with the state of Texas to provide product guides and renewable energy guides on the site. He uses YUDU Freedom to add value to the site and to help visually explain concepts he talks about on his radio show.

“We’ll talk about an issue on the show, like tank-less water heaters or liquid insulation,” he said. “These concepts are sometimes hard to convey on the radio, so we make brochures and post them on the Web site as a vehicle to explain the products.” One of the brochures on his site talks about a particular type of home insulation.

Yates also uses YUDU Freedom to create custom brochures for each showcase home he builds. “We’ll make a four-color magazine that includes sponsor ads, and this can literally take hundreds of documents to produce. There’s no way we could afford a 16-page, four-color document and mail it out for free on our own. With YUDU, we can.”

Within those magazines, Yates includes audio links and links to other related Web sites. “The only downside, if you can call it that,” said Yates, “is the YUDO logo that appears when you load the magazine. But it’s well worth it considering the price.”