Sell your Books Online as an Affiliate

Did you know you could earn extra income from your books by becoming an affiliate? Not only would you earn royalties but also commission on sales if someone buys your book through one of your affiliate links on your website.

How to Affiliate to Market your Books

Different affiliate programmes can be found on the internet to serve every demand. Examples are Ebay, Amazon and others. I use Amazon because it is pretty straightforward and it sells all manner of things. The principles are the same: a sale through one of your affiliate links from your own website, blog or estore will earn you a commission. You can sell what you like, but it is a good strategy to have a theme as opposed to random products. Listing contextual products to your website or blog will ensure visitors looking for information offered on your site, will also find a product they want.

This article focuses on how to make extra money from your books by selling as an Amazon affiliate (otherwise known as an Amazon Associate).

How to Earn Money from Books as an Amazon Associate

Browse to Amazon Associates website and become a member by using an email and password. Incidentally, you can become a member of Amazon.com, UK, Canada and Japan. These work separately, so separate accounts will be needed. I stick to .com and .uk. Once you have become a member, you will need to explain what your blog or website is (so make sure it is of good standard with quality content on it) and then wait a few days for Amazon to approve it.

Marketing your Book Through Affiliate Links

Once your website has been approved by Amazon, you can start building affiliate links and estores. On the webpage that features your book, insert an affiliate link to your book from Amazon. Once you could do this direct from Blogger but now you have to sign into your Amazon Associates account and then browse onto the main Amazon website. You will notice a ‘site stripe’ at the top. Find your book on Amazon and then use the site stripe to create your affiliate link by clicking ‘link to this page.’ Your link can be text only, an image or both.’ I use an image only. Copy the html code, which will have your code identifier embedded within. Paste this code onto the html page of your blog post. When you click on ‘compose’, you will see the affiliate link how it will appear. Format the page so that the image is located how you want on your webpage.

How to Make a Product Link of your Book

Now when someone finds your blog post describing your book, and creates enough interest to warrant a purchase, not only will you earn royalties, but also 4% - 6% commission on sales of your book as an affiliate. This might amount to only a few cents or pence per book, but this will soon mount up if your sales are healthy and you get good traffic to your author webpage.

Create an Estore to Sell your Books

Other tools can be used to market your book as an affiliate. You can create your own ebookstore with your books on it. In your Amazon Associates account click on ‘create estore’. This will generate your own url page with your own estore that can be embedded in your website or blog. You can name it, insert your books from Amazon into it and choose the colours. Click to see one of my ebook stores.

In my example, I have inserted my novels on the first page. Click on any produce image and you will find more details about the book, including reviews and pricing.

Extra Income from your Author Blog

You can also place an affiliate search box on your blog if someone simply wants to browse the Amazon site without leaving yours. Anything they purchase through this widget will earn you commission as an affiliate. Simply copy the code for the Amazon widget from the ‘widget’ section of Amazon Associates and paste the html code into a gadget on your blog.

The Amazon Affiliate programme has a range of affiliate links you can put on your website or blog including rotating gadget or all colours and sizes. I prefer to keep it simple.

Make Commission on your Books from Affiliation

By selling your books as an affiliate, you can earn commission on sales as well as royalties if your novels sell through one of your affiliate links on your website or blog. All you need to do is become a member. Amazon Associates is the example used in this article. From there, you can build affiliate links to your books from your blog, create and estore or place a search box on your site.

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Increase Book Sales Online Via the Money Word Matrix

The money word matrix is a little known but great SEO method that could get your book page seen by people looking for a book like yours. But this isn’t simply about finding high traffic keywords and phrases.

Book Marketing with SEO

Briefly, search engine optimization (or SEO) is a means of using keywords to get a webpage discovered by a person looking for information on that webpage. Keywords in this context are basically a search term a person might use before stumbling across your webpage, which in this case might be an author blog. So if I wanted to find a ‘cheap Kindle thriller’, I would Google this search term in order to find such a product. A series of websites containing these search terms would be displayed. This search term is known as a ‘keyword.’ Or ‘key phrase.’ Good use of keyword phrases lies at the centre of getting relevant traffic to your blog or website.

Ways to Make Money Selling Books Online

But search terms you are using might not necessarily be what everybody else is using, which is where the Google Adwords Keyword Tool comes in. Sign in into your Google account and browse to this invaluable SEO resource.

In the tool bar, put in words or phrases that relate to your book. In my case, I have written psychological thrillers available as Kindle and print copy. I might put in the following phrases: Kindle thriller, crime ebook or psychological thriller. Being a virtual unknown (at this point), no one is going to use my name to find my thrillers or the title of my books, so this would be of little use to getting my books found.

Your list might resemble the tags readers use to tag a book on Amazon, and the principle is similar, as such tags are used to make books more easily found. But to make your book discoverable on the internet is different to making it discoverable on a publishing platform, such as Amazon.

Google Keywords Tool and Kindle Book Sales

Once you have put your list of words and phrases into the Google’s SEO tool, it will return with keywords people are actually using, as opposed to ones you think they’re using. As well as search volume of each keyword per month, the tool will also list synonyms and alternative terms to your suggestions.

Make a note of all relevant keywords given, preferring the ones with the highest search volume, anything over 1000 per month (I take the global results rather than local). Try more search keywords into the tool to find more keywords. Expand your keyword list until you have a good list of keywords and phrases people are using that relates to your book.

But it doesn’t end there. Now for the money word matrix part.

Earning Money through the Word Matrix

SEO experts will tell you that including a high search volume keyword or phrase in your webpage does not guarantee that it will be found, as lots of other websites could be using the same keywords. Your webpage, as a result will be buried beneath a pile of other webpages using the same keywords as yours. The way around this? Find a keyword that is not often used on the internet. This is what the matrix is all about.

The best way to establish if a keyword phrase is often used in the internet is to enclose the phrase in speech marks in the Google home page and see how many search results come up. This will be displayed in small text below the tool bar. Anything over 10,000 results is pretty high. Below 5000 is OK. 1000 or less is very good. The principle of the money word matrix is that the higher the search volume and the lower the competition, the better the keyword phrase choice would be for promoting your book.

Ideal Keywords for Book Marketing

As well as using highly-searched words with low competition, tag on a few words to short key phrases with high search volume to create lower competition, such as the following:

Thrillers with good reviews, suspense novels set in England, Contemporary novels less than £1, abduction novels set in England, mystery murder books. And so forth. These are known as long tail keywords. The more specific your key phrases are, the more relevant to your website your traffic will be. Remember to do research before committing. Not all long tail keywords have low competition.

Good Use of Keywords on Your Author Blog

Use the strongest keywords in the title of your blog post or article. Dot the other keywords around the page informing about your book, but not too much or the text won’t flow. 6-12 keyword phrases within a 600-1000 word article will suffice. With increased traffic to your author blog describing your book, you can link straight to your books for sale on Amazon or Smashwords, or whatever. I prefer to use an image link.

Increase Sales of Kindle Books

The money word matrix is an invaluable SEO technique for selling your books on your author blog. Using keywords with high search volume (more than 500 per month) and low competition on (less than 2000 or so) will help your author blog rank higher on the net. This means your ebook will be more discoverable by people looking for a book like yours.

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Make the Most out of the Look Inside Feature of Your Ebook

Few things are more offputting to a potential reader than to view the first pages of your ebook online only to see formatting errors, a messed up table of contents and typos. If your book is well-written, more’s the pity if such issues deter the reader. What is the easiest way of creating a great preview for your novel online?

The Best Preview of an Ebook

Book publishing platforms offer the reader the ability to sample the first part of the ebook free; in Amazon, this is around 10%; with Smashwords, this can be anything up to 20%, which is why it is crucial the writer ensures the opening pages of the novel are perfect in every way. Sadly this means not only a compelling opening that is free of typos, but also free of formatting errors. The self-published author must be a techie as well as a wordsmith.

A Great Story Opener

Making the most of your opening chapters is an involved process, and therefore, I have dedicated separate articles to the matter of novel writing with such issues as:

How to begin your novel.
Improving your writing style.
Turn your passive writing into active writing.
How to tighten your novel.

Cleaning Ebook Formatting Errors

So, the plot, narrative and writing style are fabulous. Now to the separate matter of formatting errors which can be caused by a number of things, which might be:

Inserting a table to format your table of contents. Kindles and other book readers do not like tables and will cause all sorts of horrible formatting errors, not visible on your Word document until you see the preview of your novel on a Kindle or online. So avoid them.

Hidden formatting instructions. Saving your enovel onto Word 2007 (the latest version) can often cause formatting errors. Ensure your novel is saved on the older Word 2003, but before doing so, expunge hidden formatting symbols that could stowaway into the older Word by copying and pasting onto Wordpad. Wordpad will strip the document to its bare elements. Paste it onto Word 2003 only once this is done.

Once you have cleaned up your document and saved it as Word 2003, ensure the entire document is formatted under ‘normal’. Select ‘all’ by pressing ctrl and A at the same time. Navigate to ‘styles’ (to the right of your screen) and click on ‘normal.’ You can now reformat your document to how you want it to look. Don’t use fancy fonts and lots of sizes, keep to Times New Roman or Tahoma and limit to points 12 and 14. I would use point 12 for the main body of text, as Amazon’s Look Inside Feature will display your book in larger fonts first-off, convenient for the poor-sighted. Bold and italics are fine.

Formatting a Table of Contents

The prematter, I try to keep simple and to a minimum, as I want the reader to get to chapter 1 as soon as possible. Always insert the book cover on the first page. Compress the picture to make the file smaller. I will then display the copyright details as small print (points 8 or 9), as no one will want to read it anyway. A short dedication might follow. The table of contents comes next, and this is crucial.

UPDATE: after reading this article, learn how to make your contents go live on Kindle readers.

Create a TOC for your Ebook

As previously mentioned, inserting a table will mess up your formatting for sure and this will drive readers away. However, if you have more than 20 chapters or so, putting them in a long list can be unsightly. Instead, I centre my chapters and display two on one row. No table is inserted, it is just down to line spacing; one between chapter and number; two between each chapter. Putting two chapters on one row saves on lines and it looks visually more appealing. See the following example:

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 5 Chapter 6

Inserting hyperlinks to your chapters in the contents page can easily be done by linking the chapters to the page concerned. Follow these steps:

Inserting Links to Your Table of Contents

1. Navigate to the page where your chapter is located (say chapter 1 is on page 9). Place the curser at the beginning of the chapter heading.
2. Click ‘insert bookmark.’ A bookmark box will open. Name your bookmark. For ease, use the same name as the chapter itself. Don’t use spaces. For instance, ‘chapter1.’ Close the box.
3. Navigate to the table of contents and highlight the words ‘chapter 1.’
4. Right click on the mouse to hyperlink and click on ‘insert in this document.’
5. The bookmark box will open again. Highlight the bookmark name (chapter1) and press OK.
6. Test the link by clicking on it and see if it takes you to the page concerned (page 9).

These links will work on the online book previewer as well as the Kindle reader.

Note: if you update the first few chapters of your ebook, the 'look inside' feature will not show these amendments immedialely. Wait a few days and they should catch up.

The Best Ebook Previewer

The first part of your ebook is the most crucial in generating sales for the self-published author. This not only means being a great wordsmith, but also understanding how ebooks format on various Kindle readers. I keep the pre-matter simple and to a minimum. Avoid formatting errors on the ebook by steering clear of tables and Word 2007. Use simple fonts and minimal point sizes. Time New Roman point 12 is easy to read first-off when previewed on Amazon’s Look Inside Feature. A great novel perfectly formatted will increase the likelihood of books sales.

Now learn how to create a NXS File by converting your book into an Epub that will make the contents go live on the Kindle.

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How can Selling my Ebook for Free Make Me Money?

The self published writer can sell ebooks for free on online publishing companies to increase downloads. But how can this sales strategy help the writer make more money from ebooks in the long run?

Make Cash from Free Ebooks

Unless you are on Amazon’s KDP Select (explained briefly in a moment and fully in a separate article), you cannot sell your ebook for less than 99c (around 70p) on Amazon’s Kindle bookstore. The only way around this is to price your book for less (or free) on another sales channel. Amazon will then adjust the price of your ebook on their store to match. However, this process can take anything up to a few weeks which can be a clunky process.

Online Marketing Tools for Writers

You can price your novels what you like on other epublishing platforms. However, my personal experience has shown that Amazon cannot be matched when it comes to ebook sales. So if you want to price your books for free to get lots of downloads, KDP Amazon is the place to do it.

Since the launch of KDP Select, the writer can put the price of their ebooks for free on ‘special promo days,’ of up to a maximum of 5 days per 90 – a more straightforward process. Briefly KDP Select is an Amazon programme that enables the writer to earn additional income by including ebooks on Kindle’s Lending Library. Kindle owners who are ‘Prime Members’ (who have paid a small annual fee) can borrow an ebook for free (one at a time) without a return date. However, the writer still earns a lending fee, which amounts to a share of Amazon Kindle’s pot of money.

But how on earth does selling an ebook for free help the writer?

When to Sell your Ebooks for Free

If fact, there are many advantages to putting your book out for free on epublishing platforms. Firstly, free ebooks often results in lots of downloads. Lots of downloads results in higher rankings on the Amazon bookstore, more likely customer reviews, recommendations, tweets and back links to your book. Free promotion days of your ebooks can be the ideal marketing tool to getting your book noticed.

Free Downloads of your Ebook

Before offering your book for free, some factors need to be put into the equation.

If you enroll into KDP Select, you cannot sell your ebook anywhere else; Amazon has exclusivity of your book, so think carefully before enrolling.

Think about the time of year. Are more downloads likely on some times than others? The Christmas period (from my experience) has shown some of the best sales in the year. This might be due to lots of Kindles in Christmas stockings, or the dark, dreary nights. Summer can also be a good time, as beach reads are sought after. If a good time of year is due, plan your free promo days for then. Give plenty of notice on your author blog, Facebook page or Twitter. Make sure everybody who is likely to read your book aware of your book(s) promo date(s).

Think about which book you intend to offer for free. A novel that has failed to yield sales regardless of previous strategies has little to lose by being included in free book offers that could attract a new readership.

Consider offering the first book of a series (or one with a sequel) free. Lots of free downloads are likely to generate sales of the subsequent books in the series. This could entice more readers to read you book series and perhaps even start a fan base.

Selling short stories for free might be a good way of enticing the reader to sample your work. Who knows, it could result in the purchase of a full-length novel? A short story (generally) takes less time and planning than a novel. Including a short story on the free marketplace is a great way of hooking a new readership with less effort.

The 5 free promo days per 90 need not be spent at once. Consider spreading them out. If few downloads materialse after a day or so, pause the promotion and re-launch later that month.

The Best way to Make Ebook Sales

You can still offer your ebooks for free for as long as you like on other epublishing websites, such as Smashwords. This might suit the writer who wishes to extend the free offer. If the book is included with the Premium Catalogue, the free book will seep into other e-pbublishing platforms Smashwords ship to, including Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple and Itunes. As previously mentioned, Amazon will match this free offer without the writer having to join Amazon Select to do so.

When Not to Offer your Book for Free

Think again about offering your book for free if your book has yielded good sales generally. Make sure the free offer yields returns in some way, such as a promotion tool for a book series; it would seem pointless to offer your book for free if sales of your book are bringing in healthy royalties.

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How Can I Use KDP Select to Generate Sales of My Books?

The indie writer can now distribute ebooks through a lending library, where Prime Members can borrow your books for free on Amazon. Each ‘loan’ earns the writer a share in Amazon’s pot of money. But how can the writer make the most of Kindle’s lending library?

Exclusive Ebook Publishing Platform to Make Money from Home

Writers can earn a new source of royalties by enrolling with Amazon’s KDP Select, which works like a library, as customers who are Prime Members (Kindle owners who have paid a small annual fee to borrow books for free) can upload your book without paying for it. However, the writer still earns money from ebooks loaned, as the scheme works like the libraries’ Public Lending Right (or PLR). Every ebook borrowed, earns the writer a share of money from Amazon’s pot (KDP Select Fund). Writers can view the performance of their ebooks enrolled in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). And now an update, a new Amazon selling tool, the Kindle countdown deal (explained in a separate article.)

Books enrolled in KDP Select are still for sale in the normal way, as customers who are not Prime Members can still purchase it. However, depending upon the size of the pot and the total number of loans, the share per loan could earn the writer more than ordinary royalties. Prime Members can only borrow one book at a time, but there are no due dates, so he/she can take as long as needed to read your book.

Buying Ebooks for Free

KDP Select also has a range of marketing tools via the Promotions Manager tool, for writers wishing to promote their books to a wider audience. Each book that is in the Kindle’s Lending Library can be offered for free for up to 5 days per 90 days (to all customers, not just Prime Members), as well as inclusion in Kindle countdown deals. Note, however, giveaway days and countdown deals cannot be used within the same KDP Select period (lasting 90 days), only one or the other.

But how does giving your book away free help the indie writer make money? Before signing up for KDP Select, the writer needs to be made aware of a few things and also to use the scheme’s features to optimize sales and make more money from ebook sales.

When Not to Go for KDP Select

A clause in the KDP Select contract states that a book enrolled in the programme must not be available digitally anywhere else (and this includes Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Itunes, your own blog/website or any other similar ebook platform.) And once the writer enrolls, you cannot make your ebook available anywhere else but on Amazon. (This clause applies only to ebooks, not the hard copy) So think carefully before enrolling.

How to Make KDP Select Sell More Ebooks

If you have ebooks performing well on non-Amazon platforms such as Smashwords, then perhaps it might not be wise to go for KDP Select. Also, if you have books containing colour images, such as children’s picture books, art books or how-to books, for example, then think again before enrolling them onto KDP Select, as other readers, (such as the Nook) might display your content better. Although Kindle Fires have sold well, the majority of Kindle owners have the black and white variety, which will not display colour content. This is bound to affect the ratio of colour book sales between colour readers and non-colour readers.

How Selling your Ebook for Free can Make you Money

Unless you put your book on Smashwords for free and Amazon matches it, you cannot put your book for a lower price on Amazon than 99c. It is a clunky process that sometimes takes weeks to take effect. However, enrolling onto KDP Select means you can offer your book for free immediately on ‘free promo days,’ up to 5 per 90 days. Free books often means lots of downloads, lots of reads, more chances of customer reviews, recommendations and tweets.

Better Search Results of your Book

Bear in mind, that your book will also appear on other search results as offering it for free will include your book on sites alerting customers of free book offers. More reviews might come about as well as higher profile of your book across the web.

Putting your ebook for free might sound like madness at first, but if you have written episodic novels, offering the first one for free on promo days might generate sales of the sequel(s). Another advantage of selling your ebook free is if you have a particular book that does not perform very well, you could create a new readership. There is little to lose by offering the novel for free if it gets some downloads and reads. Having participated in free giveaways, have generated several customer reviews.

When to Sell Ebooks Exclusively on Amazon

KDP Select is might not be the best marketing strategy for every ebook, as once you opt into KDP Select, you cannot sell your ebook anywhere else on the Internet for the 90 day period. This might not be wise if the ebook(s) are selling well on other epublishing platforms. But offering your ebook for free on special promo days is a great way of generating a bucketload of downloads if this is desired, for instance, to generate customer reviews or sales of sequels. Furthermore, there is little to lose if the ebook has not performed well after every other marketing strategy at the writer’s disposal.

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My Novel Has Died a Death

Writing a novel conjures romantic Austenesque notions of tapping away on a word processor with a sure-sell blockbuster where the words simply flow from the keyboard like silk. Even the declaration, ‘I’m going to write a novel’ sounds thrilling. However, halfway through the project, you feel you are wading in mud. Writer’s block strikes you down, even on the first page. What are the secrets to writing a novel without losing the will?

Don’t Write a Novel Like This

Fiction writing sound grand, exciting, but the reality is different. From personal experience I have learned some dos and don’ts of novel writing that has kept me focused and may help you keep to a deadline, or even to complete a novel during National Novel Writing Month.

Don’t discuss your novel with anyone else. Some writers have ‘writing buddies.’ This might be helpful for some, but I think a creative idea is like a battery. If you share your creative fervour with anyone, that creative energy is being spent. You could get carried away with discussing your idea and when it comes to putting pen to paper, your may find your energy has been depleted; your pen falls still. Bluntly put, keep your creative ideas to yourself.

Sleeping on Your Novel

The alpha or dream state can do wonders for the novel. If you hit a brick wall with a plot or technical problem, don’t force it or novel-writing could become a chore. Get away from it. Sleep on it, let your ideas drift or divert the mind. Work on another aspect of your novel if a deadline is due. You may be surprised to find your subconscious has been working on the problem without your knowledge, yielding an unexpected solution. A problem can be overcome with lateral thinking presenting ‘what ifs.’ Keep a notebook handy for when this moment occurs.

Novel Writing Timetable

It is true that the creative process is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. This means getting a little disciplined, but in a way that works best for you. Get possessive about your writing time. Some writers work in a particular corner, room or shed, or a particular time of day. Procrastination is the enemy of the novel writer so the following are no-nos: Computers, radio chat-shows, TVs, telephones, curtain-twitching, worrying and dozing off. It matters little if you manage to eke only a paragraph in an hour or a chapter in half-an-hour. Progress is progress.

Don’t Over Plan your Story

Over-planning your novel in my view kills the life out of it. I may know what happens next, but not always how. Getting there with open questions can be fun or exciting. Leave some blanks in your novel to keep the writing organic. Remember to engage all five senses in your action scenes to keep the writing alive, this means sights, smells and emotions. This will help transport you into the novel where everything else falls away.

Make Key Scenes Excruciating

Why not inject something extra into your key scenes? Of course, conflict is a given, but what about embarrassment, terror, misunderstandings? Why not include a pathological liar, a narcisst or obsessive in your character list? Injecting something precarious into your novel will make it more fun and exciting to write. You may anticipate writing a scene with relish rather than languor.

A character in my blog novel, Nora has an aversion to alcohol, yet is daughter to one who lives down the pub. In this scene, she makes a rare appearance in her mother's pub, the Hatchet Inn and an inner conflict is set up. Notice how uncomfortable the character feels walking into a place that most would find welcoming. She tries to step into her mother's shoes, she tries to understand. Inner conflicts such as this makes scenes more interesting to write.

Give the Novel a Life

Cut stereotypes, clichés and anything humdrum. This includes the studious librarian, discourse about the weather or a lost lottery ticket. Cut the deadwood and the life in the novel will be released. By getting down to the essentials, the novel will also be easier to manage. I like to have as few characters in my novel as possible (why include numerous characters to keep up with?) Similarly, cut redundant scenes or combine two into one. A streamlined novel is one more likely to be completed.

Care About Your Characters

I don’t mean like your characters. Care about what happens to them. This will equally apply to villains as heroes. A novel without believable characters is like a novel without a pulse. If you find your characters are getting wooden, complete a character questionnaire, inject a little of yourself into them. Empathise with their emotions and your novel will soon have a life of its own. A character-driven story is your ultimate aim.

Secrets to Completing the Novel

A novel that withers and dies in mid-completion can be revived with some writing strategies. Don’t discuss your novel with anyone whilst it is in progress. Let it be your secret. Make your characters believable and interesting. Empathise with them. Cut the deadwood and anything clichéd about the plot. Inject something precarious into your novel to make it exciting to write. And finally, get a little disciplined about your writing time. With these strategies, you could realistically complete a novel by your own personal deadline.

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How to Sell Books Through Google Adwords

The self-published writer could get better sales of novels through the use of Google Adwords. With tactical use of keywords and ad placements on SERPS pages and websites, your books could be seen after relevant search words have been placed in the Google bar. In other words, your product becomes visible to one who is looking for a product like yours. But how does Adwords work for the author?

Using Keywords to Increase Book Sales and Downloads with Adwords

The writer would be wise to use every sales strategy available to increase sales of books; Google’s Adwords is one such method. To clarify, Adwords are small ad boxes exhibiting blue links advertising services or products. These Adwords can be seen to the right of SERPS pages (search engine results page) after a search term has been put into the Google toolbar.

These small ad links will also appear on relevant websites and blogs. So if someone was browsing on an ebook store for a cheap kindle thriller, he/she might see a list of relevant adverts on that website. See screenshot to view an Adword advertising Kindle art books on a SERPS page. As you can see, the search term used in the tool bar was ‘oil painting books.’ These words triggered this Adword. Such an advert could also show up on a website on oil painting.

How to Sign up for Adwords to Sell Online Books

In order to create your own Adwords campaign for your ebooks, you will need to sign up for an Adwords account with Google. You will need to put some funds into your account to pay for ad clicks first. This is the cost to you each time someone clicks upon your Adword advert.

Having said this, Google occasionally issue a free Adwords coupon worth between £50-£100, which enable the writer to use Adwords for free. Either way, the small expense could be worth it if the customer clicks upon your ad link and makes a purchase worth more than the cost of the click, (for instance if your book is worth £20 and the click cost 20p). A high purchase rate per click is more likely if you write a great Adword that fulfils what the Adwording implies. In other words, don’t promise something that cannot be delivered, or you could end up paying for clicks without a purchase.

Once you have signed up for Adwords, think about how you want to pitch your Adword campaign, which should be informative, enticing and accurate. An example of an Ad campaign by a writer might be: ‘Buy thriller ebooks for £1’. The link to your website/blog selling the ebook will be shown beneath.

Qualify this ad title with a little more information, which might be: ‘Save up to 50% on kindle bookstore,’ or ‘gripping thrillers with good reviews.’ Get to the point and be sparing on words.

Selling Your Books Online with Keywords

Getting your Adwords to show up when it is supposed to could be helped by using Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool, which informs on what search terms people are actually using to find products or information. This tool will also inform on monthly search volume of search terms, whether locally or globally (whichever market you are trying to reach). An author selling ebooks, might want to reach a global market.

In the Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool, put in some relevant words, which might be ‘Kindle thriller, ‘Ebooks,’ ‘cheap fiction,’ etc. The results this tool will bring up may offer keyword suggestions and synonyms you may never have thought of. Make a list of these keyword terms with the highest volume. The word ‘ebook’ for example may have a higher search volume than ‘Kindle book’ or ‘digital book.’ In your Adwords campaign, prefer the keywords with the highest volume. This list of keywords will come in useful not only for your Adword itself, but for getting your ad to display when it should.

Create You Adwords Campaign to Sell Ebooks

Make a list of all suitable keywords and search terms that could be used in your campaign. Try alternative search terms in the Keyword Tool and add to this list.

Think carefully about the wording of your Adwords. This is crucial. Remember to be informative, enticing and accurate. You do not need to use a keyword term to title your Adword; you can use whatever title you like, so long as it fulfils what it promises. Follow this title with a little more information (as previously described).

You will need to link your Adword to a ‘landing page’, the page where the ad links to, which might be your own website, estore or blog. Google has to approve your landing page, so ensure it does not contain affiliate links, spam, viruses or poor content.

Mine was a special case, as I could not sell my ebooks from my blog, but to link my books from Amazon. I could not create an Adwords campaign that linked to a website that was not mine, so my landing page had to work like a ‘bridging page’ (a page that redirects to another website) containing information about my ebooks. A bridging page is not normally approved by Google.

However, if you are selling your ebooks directly from your own website or blog, you will not need to worry about this, but do ensure your landing page is of good quality and meets Google’s standards.

Using Keywords to Make Book Sales

Once you have created your Adword campaign, you will need to type in the list of keywords suggested by the Keyword Tool. This list of keywords will trigger your ad to appear if someone uses those keywords in the Google search bar. Some will have a low search volume, others will have higher. But every keyword will count. You can add more search terms at any time or some of your own.

Getting Your Adwords Approved

Once you have gone through all the steps, you will need to wait for your Adword campaign to be approved which could take a few days or weeks. If you are aiming for a Christmas market, create your campaign well in advance. You can pause your campaign if it gets approved early, and then activate it when required.

How to Read Adwords Reports

Once you are up and running, you will see the following Adword terminology:

• Clicks: The number of times someone has clicked upon your Adwords ad.
• Impressions: The number of times your Adword displays on SERPS or a website/blog.
• Click through rate (or CTR): the ratio of click occurrence compared to ad impressions.
• Cost per click (or CPC). The cost to you each time someone clicks upon your ad.

Making Adwords Sell your Books

Adwords could be a great tool to help sell your books. By signing up for a Google Adwords account, your book advert will show every time someone puts in a search term that relates to what you are selling. You just need to learn about key words and creating a great Adword. Campaign. You can control your budget and pause whenever you like. If a cost per click is less than the profits for your books, you are on to a winner, particularly if you get lots of purchases per click (or high click through rate).

Useful Tips for Writers

How to use keywords
Market your book with Twitter

Improving your writing style

Developing narrative style
Guide to public speaking on books
Organizing your book talk