Authors - Are You Making Affiliate Income Selling Books Yet?

Have you signed up for the affiliate programs offered by Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and more? If you haven't or you don't even know what an affiliate program is, well, you're leaving money on the table as an author and I want to help you fix that situation right now. So this video is for you. Hi there, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers. We're a full service self publishing platform helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book with an awesome team of professionals guiding you every step of the way. We've covered affiliate income as a way to make more money as an author. I'll link to one of those money making videos at the end, but this video is dedicated to the affiliate option of that list. To be clear, affiliate revenue in general isn't big money activity, but it can provide a nice steady stream of spending money if you set it up right from the start. Every major book retailer, that's Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Apple Books and Kobo has an affiliate program in place. You can. You don't have to promote other people's books with your link either. You can promote your book using your link if you want. It's totally allowed. And as a bonus, if someone heads to one of those stores to buy your book and ends up filling their shopping cart with other stuff, you get paid on those items too. The website places a small cookie on the reader's device so they track the sales for at least 24 hours too. I'm gonna make a confession to you cause I'm telling you to do this, but I also don't do it cause I'm paranoid about Amazon removing reviews and just making making life difficult. So I don't sell my book through an Amazon affiliate link. Now if I was selling a bunch of products on my website, say a video studio setup kit, and one of the links on my site took you to a book on this subject. That would be way more comfortable for me than just selling my book. But Amazon has a lot of rules and I'll share them all in a second. But here's a sample. You can't use an Amazon affiliate link in a universal book link program like the one from Books to Read. Or you can get your account taken away if you use an Amazon affiliate link in the back of your books. You can guess what. You can also get your account taken away if you use an Amazon affiliate link in a newsletter. Say it with me. You can get your account taken away. I already feel like Amazon knows too much already and they're a pain. But when I was in Canada I did use their affiliate program to sell my first book and man was it nice. Especially in the holiday season when people were spending hundreds. Because I would be getting a nice little bonus of $100 or so per month just for selling my book to people and cashing in on some of the extra stuff they were buying. To qualify for the Amazon program, you must have a website to direct them. You should list every place where you might use the affiliate link. Like all your social media platforms. I mentioned this already, but let me reiterate that Amazon does not allow you to post your affiliate link in newsletters. There are redirect links that get created in those email providers and they don't always deliver, but Amazon just forbids it. Instead, put a link to your website and then have the links from there go to the affiliate link. It's an extra click, but it'll stop you from getting your account taken away. So let's walk through how to Sign up for an Affiliate Program Go to Apple Books. Here you go. They have their Apple Services Performance Partner program. You have to apply, but the process is straightforward. Check it out. So choose author or publisher and then add in the information on your book or books and where you plan to promote and then wait for their approval. Google Play has a place to sign up to. I'm not signed up with them, but the link will be down in the description for you below along with the other links. Kobo has a cool program and promises a 14 day cookie. So if someone comes back to their site and as many as 14 days later and they buy an E reader for a few hundred bucks, you will make 10% on that sale along with 5% from the purchase of any ebook they buy. So that is a real nice bonus. Their signup process is a bit more rigorous and they ask for more information up front. You can see all that right here on the screen. If you're a Canadian or in a country where Kobo devices are popular, then I highly recommend you get on this promotional program and start promoting that Kobo affiliate link. You get the picture? I'll put the links for the Amazon signup, the Barnes and Noble and all these other ones I've mentioned down below for you in the description. Oh for Barnes and Noble. By the way, they use an affiliate program called cj so it's a little weird at first, but just follow the instructions. Please, please, please take special note of each of the sites and their terms and conditions. Don't just scroll right through and click Accept because you really do need to read and confirm what is allowed and not allowed because each of them have nuances. Amazon has most of the rules, but there are restrictions that some of the other ones have. However, most of the other platforms allow you affiliate links in your ebooks and of course you're allowed to use those affiliate links on your website, social media, and even with your universal book link and in advertisements and more. That said, things change. So don't count on this video as being the up to date version of what you need to know when you watch it. Always, always read the terms of service so you know what you can and can't do and what information you're giving the programs to use at their leisure. Now, because we're talking affiliate links, let me touch on the extra revenue you can enjoy by seeking out affiliate revenue from your favorite and most recommended products and services. For us at Book Launchers, this is absolutely publisher Rocket. Our affiliate link is book launchers.com Rocket. We also recommend ConvertKit to authors for building their platform. Our affiliate link for that is book launchers.com convert and while book Launchers does not have an affiliate program to give you to share, we do have a program where you can refer people to us and if they sign up we will send you money. Or if you're a client, we give you an extra month of service. Now everyone at Book Launchers has to go through an interview process. You might as well just send us an email and introduce your friend or family member directly to us and then we'll know who did it. Now here let me show you how to look for affiliate programs for most products and some services. Now let's say I want to become an affiliate for something I talk about a lot or something that I'm going to be doing upcoming videos on like story origin. So if you're Interested in how StoryOrigin will help you with beta readers or other cool services, make sure you're subscribed to the channel the notifications on because those are coming up. But let me show you how I would check for an affiliate program. I'll go to the website, I look at the top menu first and then I scroll to the bottom and and look for it there. I didn't find anything here, but interestingly storyorigin does it a little differently. Their affiliate link is inside. So once you log in and you're a client, you can also sign up for their affiliate program inside. But if there was no affiliate program and I didn't know it was inside of the client portal I would just go to the contact page and contact the site and ask them if they have an affiliate program. I would let them know, hey, here's who I am, here's what I'm going to use it for and why I love their product and that I'm interested in being an affiliate for their software because I'm a fan and I'm planning to shoot some videos coming up and then just wait for a response. Other sites have it very clearly laid out at the bottom, and it's really straightforward. Let's use Publisher Rocket, because I know it's a great example. So just scroll right down onto the bottom and right there you see, even in bold, in larger font, it says affiliate. So all you have to do is click on it, fill out the form, read the requirements, and off you go. So just think about what you recommend or what you love and is related to your book and what you do and see if maybe you can make a little money talking about the stuff that you probably already talk about because you love. Okay, now you know how to make a little extra spending cash as you promote your book after you comment below and subscribe to that channel. Let's get you that video on how to make more money as an author right here. And of course, the latest and greatest from the channel. Happy viewing. Of course. Say hi when you get there.