Getting Paid While Giving Away Free Books (It Can Be Done!)

Most authors I've met have done some kind of discount or giveaway on their work. People love a bargain, and there's no better way to get your book into someone's hands than just letting them go download one for a price anyone can afford. However, having done a few giveaways myself, there is no escaping the feeling of mild depression that settles in as you watch your numbers climb, and start mentally doing the math for all the royalties you could have earned if those free downloads had been paying customers instead.

700 downloads over two days... yeah, I was doing the math...

While I can't hand you a magic wand that gives you instant success, there is a bit of a trick you can tuck up your sleeve to make some money the next time you have a giveaway on one of your titles. What's even better is that you can do this for your own giveaways, your friends' giveaways, or just books by authors you like that you think more people should know about.

All You Need is an Affiliate Account

I talked about this back in If You're An Author, You Really Need An Affiliate Marketing Account, but I'll summarize it for all the folks who are just joining us. When you have an affiliate marketing account for a website like Amazon, it lets you create special links that tag traffic that comes through your shares. Then when people make a purchase, you get a portion of that sale because you're the one who drove that individual to the website. In short, if you sold something, the website you have your account with gives you a finder's fee for helping close the sale.

How does that help if they downloaded something for free?

What makes affiliate marketing so "sneaky" is that once you've tagged someone, it doesn't matter what they buy once they get on the site. So I could put out a link to buy my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, for example, and anyone who goes through that link to Amazon gets tagged with my information. But say they don't buy a copy of my book... instead, they decide to finally get that sweet pair of Doc Marten's boots they've been looking at. As long as they're earmarked as coming through one of my links, I still get the credit for that purchase.

No matter how big or how small the item someone buys is, as long as they got to the site through one of your links, you're the one who gets the credit for it. The difficult part is, of course, getting someone to click-through and start shopping.

That's where the free stuff comes in.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I recently wrote a review on my gaming blog titled Consent in Gaming (If You Haven't Downloaded This Book Yet, You Really Should). The post was a review of the recently released gaming supplement titled Consent in Gaming, which was free to download off of Drive Thru RPG. Even though the supplement itself was free, the link was still tagged with my affiliate ID. So if any of the thousands of people who read my review clicked-through to take a look at the supplement, or maybe to download a copy for themselves, I had myself locked in as the person who got them to walk in the door (so to speak). All they had to do was buy something else while they were on the site, and I'd get credit for that purchase.

10 Percent of The Time, It Works Every Time

The advantage of this strategy is that people love free stuff, and the bigger your giveaway gets, the more chances you have to nab some runoff earnings... even if you're giving away free stuff. Of course, the flip side of this is that there are going to be a lot of people who just show up for the free book, download it, then go about their day.

The thing to remember here is that if you just gave away a book the old-fashioned way, there was no chance you could turn a profit off that transaction unless someone read it, liked it, and came back for more. This way there's at least a chance that if you caught someone in the middle of a shopping spree that you could get yourself a new fan in addition to earning some credit for the gaming PC, video card, and motorized wheelchair they were also buying on that particular day.

And, as a closing note, I should state that affiliate earnings come from the website, not from the customers. You're not raising the price and skimming off of the customer; this is a finder's fee being paid to you by the business for increasing their sales. Just in case that wasn't crystal clear.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Break Up Your Soap Box (By Promoting Fellow Authors' Work)

If you've wandered out into the wastes of the social media wilderness, then you already know exactly how tough it can be to actually sell your books. It's as if the moment someone realizes you're talking about your own work, they turn their eyes away and keep on scrolling. What's worse, though, is when moderators get on your case for promoting your own work too much (especially when the definition of "too much" can vary wildly, depending on which group you happen to be in).

Hey, you promoted your blog last month! Banned!

If you've been looking for a way to diversify your posts, endear yourself to your fellow authors, and keep your income going steady, then I have a piece of advice for you. Are you listening? Good, because this is a success secret that can help you out quite a lot.

Every time you promote your own work, make sure you promote someone else's work after it to break up the flow.

Everyone Loves a Team Player

I did this a while back over on my other blog with the post 5 Phenomenal Authors Whose Work You Should Check Out, and every time someone on my friends' list puts out a new book I try to spread the links around in some of my usual groups, subreddits, and feeds.

Speaking of which, if you haven't checked out either The Nine or The Fall by Tracy Townsend, you are doing yourself a disservice. Alchemy, mystery, and all the intrigue you could ask for awaits!

What are you waiting for? Go get one!

Part of the reason I do this is because authors are a small community, and we need to help each other out. Part of it is because I don't want me feeds to get overly predictable or stagnant, so I try to diversify what I link and the offerings I make. And part of it is because whether someone buys a copy of one of my books, or another author's book entirely, at the end of the day I still make money from it.

More on how that works in If You're An Author, You Really Need an Affiliate Marketing Account, for those who are wondering how to make money by selling someone else's books.

One of the major reasons that self-promotion gets shouted down or ignored on social media is that people see it as an invasion of their community. They're all here to talk about the latest sci-fi and fantasy books, but here you are looking to profit off their love of the genre. Even if the book you're offering is great, and members of this group would genuinely enjoy it, they turn a blind eye to you because you're viewed as an outsider just trying to make a buck off of them.

If you diversify your feed, though, you'll notice this problem starts to go away.

When stuff isn't linked directly to you, people see your posts as expressing a genuine love and recommendation for a thing. And if you attach a conversation starter to the link you're sharing, well, that has the potential to get all sorts of people interested in what you're talking about. And the more comments you leave to keep the conversation going, the more the community (moderators and fellow members alike) see it as you joining in the conversation. Even if your motives are really to help boost someone else's signal.

Then, when it's time to talk about something you've been working on, you're likely to get a lot more positive interaction with the community. Even if all you've been doing is drawing attention to stuff you're hoping to sell copies of, this technique still works as long as your name isn't actually on those other books you're low-key hawking.

Also, make sure you check out Use Text Posts and Comments To Avoid Getting Your Self-Promotion Labeled as Spam if you're looking for additional tips.

Whose Signal Are You Going to Boost?

The other lovely thing is that authors pay attention to people who boost their signals. Even if it's just someone you know casually, or whose acquaintance you made at a con one time, they'll take notice if you cause a traffic spike for them. That can earn you a lot of friends in a hurry, which can come in handy if you need folks to help you get the word out about a new project.

Speaking of which, leave a comment if you boost my signal on Crier's Knife!

My thanks in advance!

It's a triple-win strategy. Group moderators are happy that you're contributing to the overall discussion, you'll earn some goodwill from fellow group members, and other authors will feel you've done them a solid. And, best of all, you can keep your traffic going day in and day out, without worrying about whether you're flying too close to the sun.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

If You're An Author, You Really Need An Affiliate Marketing Account

Making money as an author isn't easy. Whether you're a self-publishing pen monkey or someone who has a big publisher backing their release, it can sometimes feel like pure, blind, dumb luck is the only thing that decides how big your paycheck is in any given month. With that said, imagine if you got paid twice twice for every book you sold. How awesome would that be?

Well, you can... if you've got an affiliate account, that is.

Two for me, one for Amazon, two for me...

If you're a long-time reader then you might remember I talked about affiliate marketing forever and a day ago in my post How To Make Money On Your Blog With Affiliate Marketing. It's been a while since then, though, so I thought I'd update my advice with a few additional pointers I left out way back when.

What Is Affiliate Marketing, And How Does It Work?

The short version is that an affiliate marketer is kind of like a freelance salesperson. You go to a website like Amazon, Drive Thru RPG, Smashwords, etc., and then you apply for a position. If the company approves you, then you now have the ability to make special links that track which customers you brought to the site, and which make sure you earn a fee for your successful sales.

So, as a for instance, I might suggest that you go pick up a copy of my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife over on Amazon. If you clicked that link, and you bought a copy of my novel, then I'd get paid twice for that one transaction. Once for my royalties (which is a couple of bucks), and once for selling something through an affiliate link (about .20 or so for selling something that costs as much as my book does).

Help a brother out, will ya?

As an addition to your marketing strategy, this is a solid way to capitalize on your own new releases and to get a little more mileage out of your monthly earnings. I explained as much in my previous blog on the subject. However, there are a few other things that I didn't emphasize at the time that I feel I should hammer a bit more firmly on now.

You Just Have To Sell Something

When a customer clicks through one of your links to buy something, their traffic is digitally earmarked as being your doing. That means that any activity a customer has once they've got your mark on them still earns you credit... whether they bought the thing you were advertising, or something else entirely!

Wait a minute, how does THAT work?!

Let's use another example to illustrate this point. Say that a client wanted to get a copy of the short story collection From A Cat's View, because they're a fan of cats and thought the idea of a neo-noir story with a Maine Coon protagonist sounded like a hoot. Especially since that story was written by yours truly!

Now as long as that person clicked through my affiliate link, I get credit for anything they buy as long as my earmark lasts. So maybe they buy a copy of that book, or maybe they don't. But let's say that, after they clicked that link, they decide to make a few other purchases. That new video game that came out, for instance. Or that handy kitchen appliance they've had their eye on for a bit. Maybe they're just buying a bunch of books or ebooks today, and my link caught their attention. No matter how much or how little they get, I still get the credit for it.

As an example, when I put up the blog post Need Cheap Minis? SCS Has You Covered! my goal was to get people who play tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons to check out the low-cost miniature toys for use as map minis. Someone who clicked that link also bought a $600 wheelchair while they were on that trip, which meant I got a nice, fat credit for an item I wasn't even advertising!

You Get A Little Time To Make Your Sale, Too

The other thing to remember when you're an affiliate marketer is that you don't have to make your sale on that first click; companies let that earmark last on the account for a certain period of time. That way you still get credit for being the person who initially drove the traffic, even if the person who clicked had to wait until they had some spare money before they made their purchase.

How much time do you have?

The amount of time your traffic is good for varies by program. If you're an Amazon affiliate, for instance, you typically get 24 hours worth of credit; if your traffic hasn't made a purchase in that period of time, then you're out of luck and you'll need to get them to re-click your link somehow. The only exception to this is if they put something in their shopping cart for later, in which case you'll get several weeks of time while your customers decide whether or not to make that purchase. If you take One Bookshelf on the other hand (the company that owns Drive Thru RPG, Storyteller's Vault, DMs Guild, and many other sites) then your traffic marks are good for up to five days for people to make a purchase. That means you could post a link on Monday, and have someone make purchases on Friday and still get credit for them!

Planting Land Mines

The best way to make sure you nab as much affiliate credit as you can is, of course, to make sure you share your links in as many (appropriate) places as you can. You can easily fit them into your blogs, probably, and you can use them when you're doing social media coverage about your latest releases. But you should think bigger than that!

As an example, when you make posts boosting your fellow creator's signals (like I did with my post 5 Phenomenal Authors Whose Work You Should Check Out last year over on Improved Initiative), remember to include your affiliate links. This helps out other people, and gives you the chance for some earnings as well. If you have a game you like, or you come across something cool you want to share, tag it. Most importantly, if you've got a big backlog of articles and blog posts, go through and add in your affiliate links. Especially in the ones that get the most traffic.

Just bury these on the path, arm the firing pin, and book it!

I call this practice burying land mines, because that's the logic behind these affiliate links. When you create a mine field, you know that not every mine you put down there is going to get stepped on... but some of them will. The key is to identify the most likely places for traffic, and to put a big, fat link right in the middle of it so you can suck up as much traffic as possible. However, that doesn't mean you should ignore less-popular or niche content, either. They might not see as much traffic, but it takes maybe 45 seconds to create a link and put it in your text.

Toss it in there, and see what happens.

Most importantly, remember that affiliate links can be put anywhere. On a forum post, in a blog entry, on social media pages, tucked into the description pages of YouTube videos, and the list goes on and on. Spread your links around, and you'll notice your earnings increase. Maybe not enough to make up for not hitting bestseller status, but as the economists say, every little bit helps.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

How to Make Money on Your Blog With Affiliate Marketing

The secret to making money as a writer is simple; you have to sell something. If you write fiction you need to publish books people will pay money for. If you run a website, magazine, or newspaper then you need to charge readers a subscription fee for the content you create. If you have a big following you might even create a Patreon page (more about those here) so that people can donate to you as an artist. You can even put ads on your blog, as I have here at The Literary Mercenary, so that when your viewers click an ad you get a small fee for being an effective advertiser.

Or you could just sell products directly by becoming an affiliate marketer.

What The Hell is an Affiliate Marketer?

If you've never heard of affiliate marketing let me break it down for you. Companies like Amazon or Smashwords want to sell products. Because these companies cannot do all of their own marketing they ask affiliate marketers to help out. These marketers try to sell products by going to forums, running blogs, and just generally spreading the good word about products they like. After a sales pitch or a good review an affiliate marketer leaves a link. People who click that link will be taken to a page where they can buy the product, and the affiliate marketer gets a small cut of every product he or she sells.

Simple, right?

Wat?

Al right, let's try an example. Let's say I wanted to try and sell more copies of the anthology Shadows of a Fading World, which has my short story "Paths of Iron and Blood" in it. I would tell my readers the anthology is an astonishingly solid collection of post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery stories, and that the contributors channel the skill of the masters while still creating unique stories that will hold readers captivated. I would make sure readers knew Amazing Stories thought this collection was top-notch work, and link them to the review here.

After I'd given my pitch and told them all the great stuff about the book I'd show the reader the cover, and provide them a buy link like this one:

Buy your copy of Shadows of a Fading World today!

And Then Money?

That's the idea. If you make your pitch for whatever it is you're selling and people follow your link to buy it, then you're entitled to your cut. If you only sell a few copies then you'll probably only get about 4% of what you're selling (in the case of this anthology that's about $0.16 per copy you sell), but the more you sell the bigger the percentage you get paid.

And if you're selling your own books then you get paid twice; an affiliate marketing cut and a royalty check. That's what we call a win-win.

Isn't That Kind of Unethical?

Let me remind you that this is the main picture I use to represent my blog.

Does this scream "Paragon of Virtue" to you?

Kidding aside, marketing is kind of a cut-throat endeavor. It's your job to stand up on a platform, shout until you get people's attention, earn their trust, and then persuade them to buy something. Even if you have a quality product you really believe in, and everything you tell your readers is perfectly true the fact remains that your goal is to persuade them to buy something so you can earn a commission.

It should also be noted that even if you lie through your teeth and get people to buy a product that's total shit you still get paid.

It's All A Numbers Game

If you're an author with a blog chances are good you're always trying to sell books. You'll try to mention your books in every other entry, and sometimes you'll dedicate entire entries to your creative process to entice readers with your latest release. You might even put in a link taking them directly to a sales page in the hopes they'll buy a copy. If you're already putting in that much effort then why not get paid twice for it?

There's no rule that says you have to become an affiliate marketer. Just as there's no rule that says you have to accept donations, put ads on your blog, or set up a Patreon account. But if you're serious about making money from your blog and selling more books then you might want to give it some serious thought. If you want to become an Amazon affiliate then check out this link, and if you're more interested in Smashwords marketing then stop by this link.


Thank you as always for dropping by The Literary Mercenary. If you'd like to support me then please feel free to click the "Shakespeare Gotta Get Paid, Son!" button to make a donation, or drop by my Patreon page to become a patron today. An extra thank you for all those who purchase a copy of Shadows of a Fading World, and I hope you have as much fun in the reading as I had in the writing!