Offering a free report on your Web site is a great way to get more prospects. However, after you’ve spent lots of time writing the report, designing it, and putting together a campaign to promote it, it’s easy to overlook one simple thing that can make a huge difference in how many people ask for your report.

Ask for as little information as possible; if you want it to go viral, don’t put any barriers at all. Just include your contact information at the end and encourage people to pass it on.

If you’re interested in building your list, just ask for name and email address. You’ll find that conversion rates will jump considerably. A friend just put up a report asking for 10 fields (name, company, street, city, state, country, postal code, etc.). I didn’t want to fill all that in, and I know the guy!