How You Can Make Money Promoting My Ebooks (and other people’s too)

A few people have stumbled across my site by searching for “best way to promote other people’s ebooks” or “how to make money reviewing books on a blog” so I’m guessing there’s some interest in the area. Since I’ve been making money through affiliate programs since 2003, I know a thing or two (maybe even three) about this.

This post will talk about making money promoting ebooks as an Amazon and/or Smashwords affiliate. You can review fiction or non-fiction. I’ll use my novels as an example (I offer a 75% commission at Smashwords) since I’d be tickled if you promoted them, but you can use these tactics to promote anyone’s ebooks.

Before you get excited about getting rich doing this, let me emphasize that doing well as an affiliate marketer is contingent on having a respectable number of daily visitors to your blog. See my link building tips post for ways to increase traffic.

Also, earnings from typical kindle/ipad/nook/etc ebooks in the $1-$10 range aren’t going to make you a lot of money per sale. Of course there are exceptions, but the majority of us aren’t going to make a living promoting affiliate links on our book blogs. That said, I don’t think it’s highly fanciful to think you could reach a point where you’re making a couple hundred extra bucks a month from your blogging hobby.

Okay, let’s get on with things….

What is an affiliate program?

I covered this in Three Ways to Make Extra Money with Your Author Blog, so just a quick explanation here:

Affiliate marketing is like working on commission: you use special links to promote books at Amazon, Smashwords, etc., and if someone clicks on one and ends up buying the book you make a percentage of the price.

You can sign up at the Amazon Affiliate Program and/or at the Smashwords Affiliate Program.

Smashwords pays higher commissions (sometimes much higher if the author has chosen to set it that way), but Amazon has far more offerings, not to mention brand trust. Either way, you’re not going to make a ton of money selling ebooks, but there’s no reason why you can’t make some extra spending cash. Here’s a look at some of my recent affiliate sales at Amazon:

How to make money promoting ebooks at Smashwords

Smashwords makes it super easy. Once you sign up, simply go to the page of the ebook you want to promote. My two novels are here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/31003 (Emperor’s Edge)
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37257 (Encrypted)

Once you find an ebook you want to promote, scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll see a box with a link in it. That’s your affiliate link, so just copy it and use it on your site.

The Smashwords default is 11%, but I’m not the only author offering more…

How to find authors with high affiliate payouts at Smashwords

1. Go to your Affiliate Marketer Management page
2. Click on “browse participating books and get linking code”
3. Sort by “Best Bonus”

From there, you can browse to find promising ebooks to promote. You’ll probably have better luck selling those with reviews, but Smashwords is a much smaller community than Amazon, so there are a lot of books without reviews. That doesn’t necessarily mean the ebook won’t sell, especially a lower priced one.

How to make affiliate links at Amazon

With Amazon, you log into your dashboard, then search for books by their title or ASIN/ISBN. You can grab text links, image links, or try their fancy widgets. While there’s nothing to say you can’t try playing with the different ways of showing links, text links embedded in the content of your blog posts will work best. (People are good at ignoring banners sprinkled about sites, but text links in the post are right in the path of their eyes.)

Should you promote more expensive ebooks so you can make a higher commission?

Yes and no.

How’s that for confusing? Higher priced ebooks obviously mean a larger payout per sale, but they’re harder to move too. People think nothing of downloading a $0.99 ebook, and even $2.99 ebooks are a pretty easy sell, but things tend to slow down above the $4-$5 price point unless you’re promoting an established author the visitor has already read (and liked).

You can often get away with higher-priced ebooks if you’re promoting non-fiction (you can see in my picture above that the two best payouts for that particular period came from computer books). There’s a lot of antagonism toward fiction ebooks priced higher than paperbacks though. For a popular author, you might be able to make money promoting those books. For lesser known types, you should probably target those with lower priced ebooks.

Many indies such as myself sell their ebooks at $2.99 or even $0.99 (though it may not be worth your time to promote a $0.99 ebook at Amazon since the affiliate cut would be so small), which is quite appealing to bargain-hunting readers. If you promote my fantasy novels at Amazon, you’d make $0.20 or so per sale (your earnings percentage there depends on how many items you sell per month), which is still pretty measly, but if you promote my ebooks at Smashwords, you could take home $2+ per sale. Not exactly quit-your-day-job money, but sell five ebooks at that price point in a month and you’d have your web hosting paid for. Or, if you run your blog on a free platform, that’s latte or book-buying money!

The real potential with affiliate income is when your site gets popular and one blog post about one book gets seen by hundreds or thousands of people. Then, even if only one person out of 250 buys the ebook, you’ll earn noticeable income. I don’t know what Stephen Windwalker over at Kindle Nation Daily makes, but I’d be surprised if, between his affiliate sales and the sponsorships he sells to authors, he’s not making a good full-time income.

The best way to promote affiliate links

Book reviews

I’ve touched on this in other posts, but affiliate marketing is tailor-made for people who run review sites. Reviews attract visitors (especially through the search engines) who are already in “buy mode” and are just trying to make up their minds on whether this particular product is right for them.

Affiliate links should be closely related to the content of your blog post (i.e. you won’t sell many books if you’re just throwing the links into a post about your life), and it doesn’t get any closer than a book review.

Lists

If you don’t have time to do a lot of book reviews, creating lists and writing about new releases or cool finds can be a way to keep your posts frequent while still attracting your target audience (ebook buyers).

I’ve made quite a few sales over at Kindle Geeks with my “lists” posts. People enjoy lists and sometimes you’ll get free links to your site if you put together good ones. Here are a few examples of my posts that ended up selling ebooks:

• 99 Cent Space Opera Ebooks for Science Fiction Lovers
• Ebooks to Help You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse
• 99 Cent Steampunk Ebooks for the Kindle

New releases or cool finds

There are also several ebook blogs, especially for the kindle, that have developed large followings simply by posting new releases, bargain ebooks, or cool finds (this is what I attempt to do with my Kindle Geeks site, though you probably have to be a geek to find these books cool!).

It’s your site, and there are no rules as to what you can and can’t do. Just remember to include your affiliate links in all your posts (maybe twice, once at the top and once at the bottom), so visitors won’t miss them!

Do you have to stick to ebooks?

Absolutely not. You don’t even have to stick to books.

The best money I’ve made from Amazon’s affiliate program came from writing about electric fireplaces, plasma televisions, and security cameras (but I was writing about these things on a home and garden blog, so they were a natural fit; writing about security cameras on a book blog might be a stretch for your readers!).

If you run an ebook blog, you might try some affiliate posts highlighting accessories for e-readers (skins, covers, waterproof cases, etc.) or, if you blog about a certain genre, consider posting reviews of DVDs in that genre as well as books.

That said, I’m finding ebooks extremely easy to sell when compared to other products.

People with e-readers seem to love to load them up! Also, it’s very easy for them to make a purchase. Just click and buy. No worrying about entering a shipping address and no backing away from the sale when seeing how much that shipping will cost. Ebooks are the easiest thing I’ve ever sold as an affiliate, no kidding.

A few more tips on making money with affiliate links

• Use pictures in your blog posts — covers help sell books, even ebooks
• Be aware that people who click through to sites via your affiliate links must make their purchases within 24 hours (Amazon) or 48 hours (Smashwords) for you to get credit — a little “pre-selling” can help (a book review does this naturally, but don’t feel your reviews have to be glowing; people trust reviews more when pros and cons are pointed out).
• Know that you get a percentage of all sales a buyer makes during that 24/48-window, so even if you’re just promoting a 99-cent ebook, you could make more than expected if that buyer makes other purchases (You know that picture up above that lists some of my affiliate sales? I didn’t promote 2/3rds of that stuff, including the higher priced computer books.).
• Authors, you should use affiliate links to promote your own ebooks too. Not only do you earn a little extra money, but it’s a way of tracking how many books you sell through your own blog/website.

I better end this blog post before it turns into a novella, but if you have any questions feel free to ask them below.