Affiliate or associate programs tend to be an overlooked tactic for how to sell ebooks. But you can profit from setting up your own affiliate program to sell ebooks at other web sites or through joining other affiliate programs.
Imagine the leveraging power of having hundreds of web sites selling your ebooks. Ebooks are ideal products for affiliate networks. Match your ebook content to appropriate web sites, offer a percentage of each sale to the web site and your network of partners can quickly grow.
I have used affiliate programs like ClickBank, PayLoadZ and JVZoo as a way to how to sell ebooks. Their systems attract many high traffic web site owners and the process is completely automated.
You can also become an affiliate as a way to earn income. Many of the profitable companies selling books and products online actively seek affiliate partners. Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com have several hundred thousand affiliates. Affiliates who work this full time can earn upwards of thousands of dollars each month.
Increase your own web site profits by joining other affiliate plans and display links or ads to their product on your site. They pay you a commission on every sale. One of the keys to affiliate marketing success is blogging and promoting products or services related to your subject matter and that you use and enjoy yourself.
Going beyond the sale of books, affiliate programs provide an excellent avenue for promoting additional products and services by including links to affiliate products or services in your ebook. You can include hyperlinks embedded with your affiliate code to resources your reader can click straight through to.
Think about related products your readers could use to solve a problem. Set up affiliate links to these related products in your ebooks. Simply join appropriate affiliate programs and place your affiliate links in your content.
How to Sell Ebooks Through Your Own Affiliate Program
Affiliate tracking software like IDevDirect lets you set up your own affiliate program. Consider paying out from 20% to 50% on each sale. Commissions for less than 20% will most likely fail to attract and motivate many associates.
Seek web sites with a related customer base. That is, if you were looking for dealers of your ebooks on angels, you would approach or market to web sites with angel and related themes. For example, potential affiliate web sites for angel ebooks include art or crafts selling angel products, religious sites, gift cards and posters.
With a little imagination, you can probably come up with hundreds of potential affiliate sites. Email the webmasters or site owners announcing your affiliate program. Your message can be brief and friendly while pointing to your web page affiliate FAQ for further details. Offer partnering sites autoresponders with free sample chapters that include their affiliate partner’s link for purchasing the ebook.
Services That Manage Affiliate Programs
Rather than setting up your own management system, it may be easier to use a service provider that automates the entire affiliate management operation. Many software package programs are fairly expensive – from $200 to $750. Even with software to help, you still need to maintain the operation which takes time. An easier solution is to use a service provider who can set up and manage your affiliate program through a web site that automates the tasks of enrolling new members and tracking commissions.
Another how to sell ebooks via affiliate programs idea is to get your books listed on Amazon and BarnesandNoble. Then, approach web sites with related content to yours and encourage them to become affiliates with the online bookstores so that they can profit from recommending your books. Since you are the publisher, all orders eventually have to come from you or your distributors.