Authors and Affiliate Programs
This is a special guest post by Karen Baney. In this post, she speaks of using affiliate programs to benefit us.
Why should authors sign up for affiliate programs with their distributors? After all, we get a royalty on the sales.
Well, many of the distributors, like Amazon and most recently Barnes & Noble, encourage authors and publishers to sign up for an affiliate account. Once signed up, authors can change all of the links for their books to the special affiliate link. This allows authors to receive a small commission for each book sold, which is above and beyond the royalty an author receives on the sale.
For example, I signed up as an Amazon affiliate. Since I changed all of my links to affiliate links, I get a small percentage for any of my books that are purchased when a user clicks on the link from my website, Twitter, or Facebook. Also, if a customer purchases other items on the same order or within a certain time frame, I get a small percentage of the sales for those items as well. All I had to do was sign up on Amazon, post a disclaimer at the bottom of my site that I’m an affiliate, and change all my links.
Do I make a ton of money this way? No, but it is nice to get a little back for my marketing efforts.
Amazon isn’t the only book distributor that uses an affiliate program. Smashwords has one. Also, I just recently received an email from Barnes & Noble that they have an affiliate program available through Link Share. When I signed up for Barnes & Noble’s, I found that Kobo has an affiliate program through Link Share too.
Here’s the links for more information about these affiliate programs:
- Amazon - https://affiliate-program.
amazon.com/ - Barnes & Noble - http://affiliates.
barnesandnoble.com/ - Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/
account/affiliate - Kobo - http://www.kobobooks.com/
affiliates
Each affiliate program works differently and has different requirements, so please be sure to read the terms and conditions for any program you sign up for.
Regardless, changing out links in your author marketing efforts to affiliate links is a great way to generate some additional income. Just remember not to go overboard on your author website. It’s about promoting your books, not becoming a huge advertising board for everyone else.
Have you signed up for an affiliate program? Share your experience or ask questions in the comments below.
Self-published author, Karen Baney, enjoys sharing information to help authors learn about the Business of Writing. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from Arizona State University and has worked in various business related career fields for the past 20 years. She writes Christian Historical Fiction and Contemporary Romance novels. For more information about Karen or her books, visit http://www.karenbaney.com or her Amazon Page.
Have you signed up for an affiliate program? Any other questions or comments? Share your experience or ask questions in the comments below.
Joshua – thanks so much for hosting me on your blog today. If any of your readers have questions, I’d love to answer them.
I appreciated your willingness to post here! Thank you for this wonderful post.
Great post. I’ve been part of Amazon’s affiliate program for a few years now. You can see them all over my blog. However, I never thought of doing it with Barnes and Nobles or any of the others. I will have to check it out. Thanks Joshua and Karen.
[...] on http://www.joshuabedford.com Please spread the word:TwitterFacebookPinterestEmailPrintStumbleUponDiggTumblrRedditLike [...]
[...] 4. Make sure links for all distributors are available on your website. Sometimes it’s not realistic to list every link for every distributor in a message or blog post, but you can make sure that your website has the most information possible. I like to include direct links to books for each distributor in multiple locations on my website. It’s a good idea to use affiliate links. (If you’re not familiar with distributor affiliate programs, see my guest post on the subject at Joshua Bedford’s site.) [...]
[...] 4. Make sure links for all distributors are available on your website. Sometimes it’s not realistic to list every link for every distributor in a message or blog post, but you can make sure that your website has the most information possible. I like to include direct links to books for each distributor in multiple locations on my website. It’s a good idea to use affiliate links. (If you’re not familiar with distributor affiliate programs, see my guest post on the subject at Joshua Bedford’s site.) [...]