Offer Products that Compliment your Book

In my sample homepage, Sue Michaels is the author of a book on public speaking. One of her articles suggests that readers record their voice while reading out loud. Assuming readers take her advice, they might need a mini tape recorder so why shouldn’t she offer one?

Product Reviews

Some book topics can logically support author product reviews. For example, the author of a cookbook could logically post reviews kitchen gadgets. Product reviews are a good way to draw customers from search engines and may result in a high number of sales if your review is favorable.

Steer Clear from Scope Creep

Make sure not to stray too far from your site’s purpose which is to sell and promote your book. Your content should be a way to keep people returning to your site so that they will be exposed to your book. The products you sell on your site should compliment your book. A site can lose it’s momentum if it becomes too general. Many website owners have multiple websites. If you think of a great way to market affiliate products that is off topic from your book, you can always create additional sites to focus on a particular niche and offer related affiliate products.

Benefits

There are many benefits to selling items through affiliate partnerships:

• Carry no inventory
• No shipping or storage fees
• Don’t need a merchant account
• You don’t handle any customer service
• No commitment to any one product

Resources

Amazon and Wal-Mart both have enormous inventories of a wide variety of products. This is a great place to start for general items that compliment the subject of your books and articles.

Amazon’s Associate Program gives you access to thousands of products from virtually any category. Amazon is incredibly simple to use. Just browse the site for products and when you find one you want to add, simply copy the HTML snippet and paste it into your site. For an even easier solution, you can also choose code that will display relevant products based on the content on your page.

Wal-Mart’s Affiliate Program also gives you access to a wide variety of items to offer on your site. When you sign up with Wal-Mart you also become part of Link Share’s affiliate network with hundreds of other affiliate partners. Wal-Mart''s product search feature is a little less intuitive than Amazon''s and returned few results than Amazon. A search for "mini tape recorder" on Wal-Mart''s affiliate site returned 0 results while Amazon returned a page full of products, related in some way to each of the 3 terms with the most relevant topping the list.

Earnings

When you factor in the costs of warehousing, shipping, payment processing, and customer support, the 5%-12% you can earn from commissions is probably what you would make if you were supplying the goods yourself.

Wal-Mart pays commission percentages based on the type of product sold: 12 % commission on apparel, jewelry, and gifts; 6% commission on electronics; and 8% commission on books, home, optical, photo, sports, tires, and toys.

Amazon determines commission percentage based on the number of items sold in a month

There are hundreds of affiliate programs that you can take part in, some with commissions of up to 50%. Check back soon for a complete resource guide to affiliate programs.

Start building your new website today with Easy Website Builder

Three Days to Building a Winning Book Promotion Campaign

A - Drive Traffic
Learn how to move to the top of the search engine rankings by identifying popular searched keywords and crafting SEO optimized headlines and text.

B - Brand yourself
Readers identify with your message when they have a chance to get to know and trust you. Learn ways to enhance your credibility and establish yourself as an industry expert.

C - Attract loyal customers with high quality content
Sell more books by offering enough free information to get people interested, but not so much that you sacrifice sales

D - Interesting, fresh content
Keep readers coming back to your site consistently new and updated content. Learn how to generate lots of great new content without spending countless hours of work with RSS feeds, and articles archives.    

E - Sell your books
Use the product module to add your book to your site in 2 clicks and sell your books right from your site.  If you're selling through Amazon, learn how to set up an affiliate link to your book to generate a greater sales percentage.  

F - Build a mailing list
Keeping a customer is far easier than gaining a new one.  Learn the secrets of building a targeted mailing list to stay in touch with people who already have expressed interest in your book or idea. Find resources for creating and managing a newsletter campaign and learn how to insert forms into Easy Website Builder.

G- Earn Affiliate Profits
Earn additional revenue by offering thousands of high quality products targeted to your site's visitors from a variety of sources.

H - Earn cash for clicks
Use Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher to add an additional stream of revenue. Find resources, information, and tutorials to maximize your profits and learn how to add the code into your Easy Website Builder Software.