Book Selling on Amazon
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Book Selling on Amazon: Maximizing Your Return
The average self publisher has his/her book selling on Amazon but isn't entirely happy about it!
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Many don't like how much money Amazon takes off the top. But an informal poll of authors on this site reveals that 9 out of 14 with Amazon links on their site aren't even taking advantage of the Amazon Associates program!
As webmaster of this site, I'm shocked. I'm making 6% off your book sales from this site that you aren't making when you sell from your site!
Book selling on Amazon
I'm sure it's not news to you that Amazon is the biggest online bookseller. What you may not know is that their Associates program was pretty much the first internet affiliate program.
Translation: Amazon pays webmasters what amounts to a commission if a website sends traffic to Amazon and that traffic makes a purchase.
Let's say you have your book selling on Amazon for $15, and you don't sell that many of them. As an Associate you'd be at Amazon's lowest compensation level, 4%. (All details are current as I write this, August 16, 2008.)
So by not being an Associate, you just let Amazon keep 60 cents that could have been yours for no effort at all. Big deal, you say?
Well, let's say your visitor buys the Kindle (electronic) version of your book for just 6 bucks. 36 cents for you. But hey: they buy the Kindle too.
Oops. You just left $14.72 on the table. And because you weren't an Associate, you didn't even know what other purchases your customer made as a result of your link.
Or maybe that visitor buys a $1500 wide-screen tv selling on Amazon. Or the book your book was paired with. (Think "Customers who bought this also bought..." Or the shoes they considered on their last visit that Amazon now informs them have gone down in price. Or a gift card for cousin Teddy's bar mitzvah.
Elsewhere on this site...
a self published author explains why your online book marketing time might be best spent increasing your Amazon presence. He even challenges the notion that you make more money selling from your website than from selling on Amazon. Consider:
- Amazon is where people are already shopping for books. Logically, it's the smart place to be most visible.
- Buyers are more likely to purchase from Amazon than from some author they don't know. They feel safer!
And consider this horrifying scenario...
A buyer clicks from your site to Amazon, but then chooses to buy a used version of your book from a 3rd party seller, rather than the new one you're selling on Amazon. If you're not an Associate, you get nothing. If you become one, now at least you get 4% of the used price, and you didn't even have to pay to have another book printed!
How to get started
If you're administering your own site, creating Amazon Associates links will be a breeze. If someone else is doing it for you, well...
Book selling on Amazon will be a breeze for them! Go to the Amazon Associates "Join" page. The program is explained, and of course there's some legalese to snore through. One bummer: Buying from Amazon through your own links is a no-no.
Do know this: you have to apply to be an Associate. I suppose it's possible to be rejected, but my sites have always been easily approved. And being an Associate costs nothing.
Once you're approved, the excitement begins. Amazon's link building pages (where the code for your links is generated) are a wonderment! In addition to text links, you can create image links and search boxes. Beyond that you can post slide shows, carousels, recommended product boxes and all sorts of wondrous things. My advice?...
Keep it simple. If all the options get you excited, use them to get you thinking. You see...
1) Text links can be more effective than image links. The latter seem like ads. The former seem like recommendations.
2) Conversions (getting the sale) are relatively rare. In the last year, I've had just under 6500 clicks from my two main sites (here's the other - Best Children's Books - Find, Read or Write) to Amazon. My selling on Amazon consisted of 440 items. That's about 1 sale for every 17 clicks. And remember...
Only a tiny percentage of impressions (number of times an ad is viewed) result in clicks. My pages have probably been viewed a little less than half a million times in that year. 440 sales/500,000 impressions equals...
Not too much! Probably one sale for every 1000 page views. Maybe even less.
Moral of the story
Selling on Amazon as an Associate isn't likely to make you rich, but it CAN AND WILL increase your margins on your Amazon sales if you're not already using it. Your selling potential is a function of your traffic. Want to double your sales? Double your traffic.
I have unintentionally sold everything from CDs and DVDs to can openers and camera lenses on Amazon in the past year. These were things folks bought after linking to Amazon from my sites - I didn't create direct links to any of those products. (Those sales always put a smile on my face. "Honey, I just sold a tent!")
Because I sell more than 7 items per month I'm always at least on Amazon's 6% commission tier. (Though certain items can commission more or less, and Amazon often runs specials for their Associates.)
Thinking outside the box on traffic AND Amazon links
Let's say your book consists of racecar photographs, like Joe's does. (Joe was one of the five authors in the author poll who IS an Amazon Associate.) In addition to links to your books, you might also link to NASCAR and Formula One products. And tire polish.
After all, the people who surf their way to your site are likely to be interested in those things.
Know that website traffic is proportional to the extent to which your site is a good source of information on a particular, popularly searched subject.
If your site is only a source of information on you and your book, it's not likely to be well trafficked. But if, for instance, it were a good source of information on your book and other books like your book...
Well, you could reap two benefits. Firstly, you could find search engines linking to your page where you list all the romance novels - like yours - that you know of that are set on the coast of the Carolinas. When searchers seek information on Carolina Romance (or Coastal Romance), they'll be likely to find you. And if you link to Amazon from that page, you can make money when those searchers buy your book...
...and/or someone else's!
(Does it seem counterintuitive to mention another author's book on your site? Read my newsletter article on why generosity might be just what your site needs.)
Become an Amazon Associate. If you're book selling on Amazon, it's silly not to.
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