• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

Using Amazon's Affiliate Program to Increase Your Income From Your Books

danr62

Sage
I was reading Ben's thread about the release of his new book when I realized that he wasn't using an affiliate link when linking to his book. At first, I thought it might be against the rules to use affiliate links on this forum, so I checked out his blog. Nope, no affiliate links there either.

In, my opinion, this is a bit of a waste. Amazon's affiliate program is easy to get into. You just need a website. A free blog somewhere will do the trick. I'm not sure if they review sites before approving them, but I do remember that I didn't have any hassle when I applied. The website is here:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

Amazon allows you to link to any of their products with an affiliate link, and earn a comission on anything that is sold through that link. This includes your own books, even though you are already earning a royalty. The comissions are tiered, earning anywhere from 4% to 8.5% of all items shipped based on volume. Some product categories are locked at specific rates, and these can change from time to time. For instance, when Amazon launched myhabit.com, the rates were 15%, probably to get affiliates interested in promoting it. Now, myhabit comissions are locked at 8%.

Now, you might be wondering why this matters if you aren't promoting myhabit or anything other than books. The cool part of Amazon's program is that they cookie the visitors computer for 24 hours and let you earn the comission on anything sold through your affiliate link in that time, even if it's for something completely different from what you are promoting. So, if you link to your book and they decide to buy a stereo while they're there, congratulations.

Lets assume you build a brand name and a decent sized following for your books. Maybe you have a series and your fans are eagerly awaiting your next release. So, you publish the book, price it at 4.99, tweet it, Facebook it, G+ it, blog it, post it here on MS. You do whatever you can to let your fans know your new book is out. Let's imagine you sell 3131 copies directly through your links (along with any extra sales that come from within Amazon itself). 3131 just happens to the threshhold for earning 8.5% comissions. Lets take a look at some numbers:

Roylty without affiliate links: 3131 X $4.99 X .7 = about $10,935. Woohoo!
Comission with affiliate links: 3131 X $4.99 X .085 = about $1,328.
Comission + royalty = about $12,263. Awesome!

Of course, selling 3131 books in a month isn't likely for most of us, even for a new book launch. It's even less likely that you'll sell 3131 books directly through your own links. Still, if you aren't using affiliate links, you're leaving some money on the table, even if it's a small amount.

There's also the possibility of selling other stuff while they're visiting Amazon. In fact, it happens often, because Amazon is so good cross promoting their products with recommendations and the like. I've sold a Kindle Fire, elevator shoes, children's play furniture, MP3s, pet ear cleanser, and a bunch of other random stuff that I never promoted.

Let's say you sell just 100 copies of a book through your affiliate link, which puts you at 6.5% comissions:

$349.30 royalties plus $32.43 = $381.73

Not much but at this level you are almost certain to have a few extra random items in there as well. Many of them will probably be other books. Maybe a Kindle Fire or two so people can read those books. It's a little extra money. It helps.
 

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
Unfortunately, using affiliate links to Amazon can have a downside as well.

When you link to books or other products using Amazon affiliate links, Google will sometimes punish your site in the search rankings. I've experimented with this in the past, and have found it to be wildly inconsistent and often random on Google's part. But yeah, they will punish you at times.
 

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
Also, I must clarify that affiliate links may not be posted on our forum. Please do not link to your own books using affiliate links.

A forum with lots of affiliate links may be categorized by Google as a "low quality site," and runs the risk of being banned from the search results. This may sound unlikely, but I know other site owners who have experienced just this.

Thank you for understanding.
 

danr62

Sage
Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't seen anything in the rules about affiliate links, so I wasn't sure.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Black Dragon wrote the following:

Also, I must clarify that affiliate links may not be posted on our forum. Please do not link to your own books using affiliate links.

Is it okay to link to a blog where you link to affiliate links?

I haven't added affiliate links to my blog yet, but I'm considering it. If I do, would I need to remove the link in my signature to my blog? (That's not the way I'm interpreting the above comment, but I figured it would be best to ask and make sure.)

Also, I fear that I do not completely understand the downside. Can someone with more knowledge of the situation offer their advice on whether using the affiliate program is a good idea or not as far as my blog's overall exposure goes?

Frankly, my blog doesn't get that many hits from search engines in the first place, so I'm not sure being downgraded on Google is a big deal. On the other hand, I can't imagine many people actually clicking the links and buying stuff, so the upside is probably negligible.

I appreciate any guidance.

Thanks!
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Is it okay to link to a blog where you link to affiliate links?

Black Dragon's primary concern with affiliate links is their impact on Mythic Scribe's position on Google. A large number of affiliate links can be weighted against a site in Google's algorithms.

I'm fairly sure that Google wouldn't hold it against Mythic Scribes if you posted those links in your blog.

Do you keep track of where your traffic comes from? SEO considerations extend beyond Google. If you've a wordpress blog, Wordpress will have its own search features and algorithms that might or might not be affected. You should get a good idea of where your traffic is coming from, where you want it to come from, and how to optimize your blog from those locations. Google may or may not be a consideration, but it may or may not be the only one that cares. You should look into it.

There's also a pretty good chance Wordpress blog searches, and those for any other communities you might want to join, are outsourced to Google. You can put a "Search this site/community" Google box pretty much anywhere.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
Black Dragon's primary concern with affiliate links is their impact on Mythic Scribe's position on Google. A large number of affiliate links can be weighted against a site in Google's algorithms.

I'm fairly sure that Google wouldn't hold it against Mythic Scribes if you posted those links in your blog.

Do you keep track of where your traffic comes from? SEO considerations extend beyond Google. If you've a wordpress blog, Wordpress will have its own search features and algorithms that might or might not be affected. You should get a good idea of where your traffic is coming from, where you want it to come from, and how to optimize your blog from those locations. Google may or may not be a consideration, but it may or may not be the only one that cares. You should look into it.

There's also a pretty good chance Wordpress blog searches, and those for any other communities you might want to join, are outsourced to Google. You can put a "Search this site/community" Google box pretty much anywhere.

Good point.

I use WordPress, and, frankly, I'm a little confused about where some of my hits come from. It tells me plainly when someone searches Google for it or clicks a link from Mythic Scribes. The rest, I'm not so sure. I could be from the WordPress main site or from people who have bookmarked my site.

Also confusing: I've been getting a lot of "Likes." However, I'm not sure where these come from. I've gotten one for a daily post before the stats showed I had any hits. Maybe it can be liked from some sort of WordPress main page without it being a hit?
 

ALB2012

Maester
Thanks. If I ever get a website I might look into this. I spend far too much time on the interweb as it is:)
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Also confusing: I've been getting a lot of "Likes." However, I'm not sure where these come from. I've gotten one for a daily post before the stats showed I had any hits. Maybe it can be liked from some sort of WordPress main page without it being a hit?

I opened a blog on wordpress to look over the features, opened a bunch of "test" posts, and left it alone. A week later I got two likes. I had called the blog "Cliffjumper" after one of my characters, and one of the likes was from a blog about extreme sports. Go figure. The other is a writer, so I assume they found it from my articles on Mythic Scribes, maybe from the Gravatar profile, but I'm not sure.

I haven't gotten anything in the months since then, so I assume that all the test posts ranked it higher up in some kind of "most active new blog this week" list.
 
Top