Affiliates - Extra Income

How Amazon Associates Works

When you sign up for Amazon Associates, you’re paid 4 to 10 percent commission for sales you refer to Amazon using your affiliate links (the URLs that include your unique tracking code). The exact percentage depends on the types of products sold and your sales volume for the month.

Of course, you can earn commissions by linking to any product on Amazon (more on that in a moment), but as an author your first goal is to squeeze more profit from your book sales. Every time you promote your books on your website or blog, make sure to use your affiliate links.

Here’s an example for traditionally published authors. Suppose the cover price of your book is $19.95, and Amazon is currently charging $14.95 (their price often changes and its generally below list price). When a visitor clicks the link on your blog and buys a copy from Amazon, you’ll get at least 59 cents (4 percent) as a commission — in addition to whatever the royalty is from your publisher.

Self-published? If your ebook sells for $5.99 in the Kindle store, you’re probably already earning a royalty of $4.19 (Amazon pays up to 70 percent), which is great. But why not also get an extra 24 cents by linking to your book with your affiliate code to earn a 4 percent commission? And if you sell enough books, you can do even better.

For example, if you sell more than six items through your referral links in a month, your commission goes up to 6 percent. Notice I said “items,” because the people who buy your books will also buy other things while shopping on Amazon, and you earn a commission on those sales as long as they occur within 24 hours (or longer if the visitor adds an item to her shopping cart and returns to pay later).

How much money can you earn?

I receive a royalty of $1.50 from my publisher for each book I sell, so if I also get a 77-cent affiliate commission (6 percent when Amazon sells my book for $12.95), that’s a 51 percent boost in revenue per book. I don’t sell 100 copies weekly like I did back when the book first came out, and most sales now aren’t through my links, so that extra revenue has dropped to less than 10 dollars each month.

On the other hand, after replacing regular links with my affiliate links years ago, I haven’t had to spend one extra minute to keep making that extra money.

Will you join Amazon Associates?

The program offers a way to boost your income from book sales. More than ever writers have to be marketers anyhow, so why not add affiliate marketing to your plan? You’ll at least make more money from your own books, and perhaps profit from recommending other books and products as well.