Free places to publish a white paper
by Gordon Graham, That White Paper Guy
Written a white paper and want to get the word out about it?
Of course, you already put it on your website, e-mailed your prospects, told your sales force and notified your channel partners. Right?
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Now, for another $5,000–$10,000+ you can promote it through a service like TechTarget or KnowledgeStorm that will generate many downloads and pass all those leads on to you. But what if you don't have that kind of budget? |
Despite the recession, there are still lots of sites where you can post a white paper for no cost.
Here are the ones we know about, in alphabetical order.
Note that BNet, TechRepublic and Ziff Davis are now all owned by the same corporation, CBS Interactive. But so far, they're all still offering a freebie option.
♦ BNet.com
This site—whose name stands for "business net"—is intended to help executives solve business problems.
Click on "Library" in the top menu and you'll see listings organized by job function (engineering, finance, HR, marketing) and by industry (construction, government, manufacturing, retail and so on).
That structure makes this a great site for any business-benefits white paper. You can submit a white paper free. Just scroll down to "Submit a paper" on the right side.
Or you can pay $3,900 a month to gain what they say will be 10 times the exposure and resulting response.
This site claims 300 different topic areas for white papers from technology vendors for IT pros. The site's name is certainly right on.
You can spend to promote your white paper here, along with big vendors like IBM and SAP. In fact, there are more than 600 tech vendors now using the site.
Happily, it offers a free option as well.
To get started, click under "List your papers" on the right side of the home page.
♦ Technology Evaluation Centers
This site has been around for years, so it's a good bet.
A basic posting of a white paper or case study is free (registration required). You can also spend $2,000 to $5,000 on additional promotions.
Plus, it has some plain-speaking advice on white papers that we couldn't resist reprinting.
"White papers should contain useful information to aid prospective buyers as they go forward in their software evaluation," it recommends.
"To be a truly effective marketing and sales tool, a white paper should promote credibility; it should approach a problem with objective analysis, uncovering numerous approaches to a problem.
"It should then present a strong argument for the solution presented, allowing the reader to decide based on the information given."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Here's another site where you can spend a lot of money, or get a basic posting of a white paper for no charge. That's an amazing deal, considering the reach of this site.
TechRepublic claims to hold the Web's biggest collection of technical white papers, webcasts and case studies, numbering more than 55,000 today.
For the exposure this site can bring to your white paper, it's a must.
To post your white paper, scroll down to "Submit a paper" on the right side.
This site has a big publisher's name associated with it, but you can still register and post white papers here for no charge.
Your paper will be indexed under one of the 500 (?!) categories set up by the editors. And it will be searchable across the entire network of Ziff Davis sites, all the way from CIOInsight.com to Publish.com.
To post your white paper, scroll way down to "Submit white papers" in the bottom menu.
Of course, there are lots of related promotions you can pay for, but you can get started for free. Don't miss this one.
Buyer beware: Web-based offers change without notice. We visited all these sites to check these details in early 2011. But be prepared to confirm the details yourself before using any of these services.
An earlier version of this article on SoftwareCEO.com was © Computing Technology Industry Association, Inc.
This version was completely updated in early 2011 and is copyright © 2011 by Gordon Graham.
