Selling books (and more) on your site

By Craig Goldwyn, visibility.tv

Did you know you can sell books on your website, and you don't have to stock inventory or ship? You can even sell videos, software, wine glasses, cameras, CDs, DVDs, and more.

Amazon.com has an excellent "Associates Program" that you should consider. They will pay you 15% for books sold made after people click on a link to them from your site. Those of you who teach classes can post your recommended reading lists on your sites and link to Amazon this way. So many millions of people already have accounts at Amazon that they will find it easy to order at their famously low prices.

To see how it works, go to my site http://craiggoldwyn.com/links/books.html. Feel free to click on the links and you will be flipped to Amazon.

Getting started

• Go to Amazon.com, scroll down, and on the left under "Special Features", click on "Associates". Sign up. It is free.
• They assign you an Associates code name that you give to me. Do not give me your password.
• Then find the books you want to recommend.
• Copy the url of the page for each book and the name and paste them into an email to me.
• Write a review or recommendation and paste it into the email.
• Capture the picture of the cover (see box at left) and attach it to the email.
• I will then create a page for Books on your site, list the books with their covers and your review, and create a link to the page on Amazon with your link embedded in the url.

That's all there is to it. The same process works for software, cameras, housewares, etc. You can even login and see how many people clicked your Amazon links, what has been sold, and what has been returned. They send you a check quarterly (or you can take your commission in the form of gift certificates).

If the customer continues to browse during and purchases additional items during that same session, then the referral fee for those additional qualifying items is 5% of the sale price. Music CDs, DVDs, videos, and gifts earn a referral fee of 5%. Referral fees for products other than books, music, videos and DVDs are limited to a maximum of 10 dollars per item. They do not pay referral fees for gift certificates, out-of-print items, Amazon Auctions items and products sold by third parties (for example, drugstore.com and z-shops merchants).

By the way, other companies have affiliate programs like Amazon's. Here's a few: barnesandnoble.com, Half.com, eBay.com, and Art.com among them. If you want to become an affiliate with a site, I can help build the page for you.

Let me know if you want more info.