Just about everyone would like to make a few extra bucks, and authors would always like to sell more books. Luckily, there’s an easy and painless way for our author clients here at Clockpunk Studios to do both at the same time!
If you’re a veteran of the Internet, then chances are you’re already at least passingly familiar with affiliate programs, even if you may not know it. Maybe you’ve been to the website of your favorite author and clicked on a link that took you to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but with the author’s name somewhere in the URL. That was an “affiliate link.”
So how do affiliate programs work, and why are they a good thing for authors? Basically, an affiliate program is a revenue-sharing system, whereby a retailer (like Amazon, or Barnes & Noble) pays you a small percentage for every time someone buys a product. In order to track when people buy products through your website, the programs use special affiliate links that track incoming traffic.
Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the most wide-spread and most popular on the Internet, especially for authors, so we’ll use it as an example. Let’s say you’re an Amazon affiliate. You can then set up special links from your website to Amazon.com—for each of your books, say, or when you mention books by other authors—and every time someone buys a book by clicking on one of those links, you get a percentage of the sale from Amazon. Now, you can see why this would be such a good deal, especially for authors and publishers, who send a lot of traffic to bookselling websites. Nor are bookselling websites the only places that offer potentially lucrative affiliate programs that our clients can take advantage of.
So, the next question is, how can Clockpunk Studios help?
Clockpunk Studios offers our clients a special plugin that makes adding affiliate links to your site a snap—and not just for Amazon, either. Our plugin will allow you to add affiliate links for lots of major retailers. If your site doesn’t already have this feature, let us know, and we can add it to your site package for a minimal fee. Not already a client of Clockpunk Studios? The ability to quickly and easily add affiliate links is just one of the many perks that we bring to the table. Since we specialize in building websites for authors and publishers, we’ve got a wide range of options available to make your website more effective, and your life easier.
Whether you’re an existing client who’d like to add affiliate links to your site, or a new client who’s thinking of starting a new website or converting your existing website to Clockpunk Studios, contact us today. We can get the ball rolling so that you can start selling more books and making more money as soon as possible!