- This is Steven, (pop sound)
he's a time follower here of this channel,
and he's promoting his book over on Twitter.
Now he's done everything right, for the most part.
He's attached some images, he's put some context,
and then, he added an amazon.com link.
And there is where he has the problem.
And that is where a lot of authors have a problem.
(alarm beeps)
It is where authors share a region-specific link
to their book with the expectations that anyone outside
that region is just gonna search up their book,
and hopefully purchase it.
Today, we're gonna talk about why you aren't selling
more books and an easy way to fix it.
Let's start it out with The Disconnect first.
A lot of instances, people will send their readers
over to a region specific link
and that's pretty good for that region. (ding)
But what about readers outside of that region?
So in an instance like where Steven
shared an amazon.com link, if someone's in Canada,
they're not gonna be able to buy the book.
Therefore they've been saddled with the burden
of having to find his book on the Canadian marketplace.
You want to remove that extra friction
from your potential reader.
And by removing that, you need to give them a link
that's gonna send them directly to the store
in which they can buy it at.
And the reality, is it is really easy to do this.
It's what we call a universal book link.
All you would do is you would provide a link
that someone would click on
and that it would automatically send them over
to the store that they can buy it at.
So that means that if someone's in the UK,
they click on that, they'll go to the UK,
if someone's in Canada, they will go over to.ca,
and so on and so forth.
So today I'm gonna show you two ways
on how to create universal book links.
And stick around to the very end,
because the last one is my preferred way,
and probably the way that creates a lot less friction.
Let's start out with number one: Books2Read.
Now, Books2Read is actually run and owned by the fine folks
over at Draft 2 Digital.
They're the aggregate publisher,
and they are really awesome about giving free tools
like Books2Read and Books2Read's pretty fantastic (ding)
in that you don't have to spend any money
to utilize this service.
Essentially, all you gotta do is go set up an account,
it's completely free, at books2read.com.
You're gonna paste a link to your book
inside the search window.
Click "make my universal link."
Now give it a few moments, and you'll have a universal link
anyone can use from anywhere,
to access any region from where they use it.
When you share the link,
the customer goes to this landing page.
Then they have the choice to pick their preferred store.
If it's just Amazon, there'll be redirected
to their specific region.
Now, do you want to make more money?
I know you do.
Now, you could do this through affiliate marketing.
Now you're probably saying affiliate marketing?
Okay, essentially what it is is you have a product, brand,
or service that you can promote.
And when you send and refer traffic over there
and someone makes a purchase,
you get a percentage of the sale.
So the nice thing is, you're already gonna be making money
for the book royalties when someone purchases it.
Now, you're also gonna make an additional percentage,
which is not gonna cannibalize any of your royalties,
so you're just getting more money.
Now, if you become part of the Amazon associates program,
you can then take and add your store ID to Books2Read.
Simply go to "affiliate codes,"
then click "manage my affiliate codes."
Then enter your Amazon associates ID.
Now just share it everywhere.
(record scratch)
- Can I share it through email? (blinking sounds)
- Well, technically you can so long
as you don't have the affiliate code affixed
to the very end of it.
Now if you want to keep the affiliate code,
you can probably promote it over on your website,
but otherwise you're gonna need to strip the affiliate code
in any email.
- But I don't have a website,
and technically I don't have email set up either.
(crowd signs)
- Well, that's okay,
you can just go ahead and share it on social media then.
- I know they don't have social media either.
(crowd groans)
- So you're telling me, you don't have a website,
(dramatic noise)
you don't have email, and you don't have social media?
(blinking noise)
Dude, that's okay, don't sweat it.
In fact, I've got you covered
with something called Author Brand Kits. (kid cheers)
You know, I recommend building a brand to sell more books.
Now there's a service that handles that all for you.
Check out Author Brand Kits.
They take care of everything from your website,
to custom email, to social media and beyond,
visit our sponsored link at DaleLinks.com/ABK
to get 25% off for a limited time on your Author Brand Kit.
Number two: Genius Links.
This service creates a lot less friction than the last one,
because with Books2Read, it's great, it's free.
You're getting what you paid for on that one,
but the issue is the customer has to click the link
and then they come to a landing page
to which they have to click another link.
And so there's gonna be a bit of attrition.
There's gonna be some drop off.
You want to remove that drop off.
One of the best ways is to just create the universal link
that someone can click on
and go right to the region and purchase the book.
And that's where Genius Links comes into play,
they are a universal link building service.
Now they run about five bucks per month.
Now it's not too terrible, but if you think about that,
you sell a handful of books,
and you get some affiliate sales from that,
you'll be able to pay for that.
We'll talk about that in a future video.
Now you're probably saying, but hang on a second,
you said I could do affiliate sales through Books2Read.
Yeah, yeah, sort of, but the problem is
you'll only get affiliate earnings
for the purchases of your books
and maybe some little errant things that were thrown
into the shopping cart.
But the nice thing with Genius Links,
let's say that you have merchandise
or that you have another book that you want to share
with someone else, or maybe there's a service
like Kindle Unlimited that you would like to promote.
You can go ahead and use Genius Links when you promote that
out to your following.
First of all, go to my referral link,
at DaleLinks.com/genius,
You get a 14 day free trial, (kid cheering)
and after that's five bucks per month, which isn't too bad.
You'll need to add all appropriate
Amazon Associates Programs regions.
Now it's going to be a time consuming process,
I promise you, I think I spent about four hours
going across all the various regions,
but it pays off in due time.
And again, I'll talk about that a future video.
Now don't worry, it's not required that you go
and apply for all these different programs.
If for some reason you just want to get the program
in the UK, Canada, Germany, then fine.
Just go ahead and do that.
It's just another way to just stack
just a little bit more value
and of course make your investment back
with that $5 per month.
Now here's how you set up a link through Genius Links.
You're gonna paste your book link
in the new box on the right, then click new,
give Genius a moment to search all relevant stores
for your book.
If it's all good, scroll down, and click save.
Now, copy the link and share away.
Now, anytime that you have an affiliate marketing link
of some sort,
it's a good idea to fully disclose that with some people.
Something like a hashtag ad on Twitter,
or if you're on a website, you just simply say,
this is an Amazon link.
So that way people know, and you're not fooling them
into going over and getting a link.
It's just part of TPS of most affiliate marketing programs.
Would you like to see why I prefer Genius Links?
If you go inside the description down below,
you actually can get yourself
a 60 day free Kindle Unlimited trial
by clicking that Genius Link, it's pretty cool, right?
And speaking of Kindle unlimited,
I did a full review of that.
And you want to go ahead and take a look at
it in this very next video right here,
where I talk about the pros and cons of Kindle Unlimited.
And if you've already seen that video,
or you're not interested,
you can only take a look at this one.
'Cause YouTube recommend you go take a look at it.
I'll see you there.