Getting Amazon Associates book sales from other Web sites

Once your book achieves a modest Amazon Sales Rank, you have clout outside Amazon too. For example, you can pursue affiliate sales on Web sites that feature content related to your book. Many sites are affiliates of Amazon or BarnesAndNoble.com and have a “Bookshelf” page. Here’s an example of a bookshelf page, with affiliate links to books in the column on the right:

If you wrote a book about wine and it was featured here, you’d undoubtedly get extra book sales from visitors who noticed the link to your book on Amazon.

Likewise, the owner of this Web site would be pleased to feature your book here because he or she will be raking in more affiliate commissions on sales of your book. You shouldn’t sit back and hope that the site owner discovers your book on his own and adds it to the Bookshelf page—suggest it yourself. Point out that your book fits perfectly with the content of the site and will generate affiliate revenue for the site based on its Amazon Sales Rank. If your rank is stronger than other books featured on the site, point this out too, giving added incentive for the site to add your book.

How can you find sites like this to feature your book? As an example, we’ll use the imaginary title How to Grow Organic Strawberries:

-- Go to Google’s “Advanced Search” page.

-- In the box labeled with all of the words enter this text, including the quotation marks: “In association with Amazon.com”, bookstore, strawberries

-- Scroll down to the section Domain and change the pull-down window from only to don’t. In the blank on the right, enter Amazon.com

-- Click the gray button on the top right, “Google Search.”

The results will include Amazon affiliate sites with content pertaining to our book keyword “strawberries.”

We might be able to find more relevant sites by tweaking our search. Instead of using only the keyword “strawberries,” we’ll try these combinations:

Organic strawberries
Growing strawberries
Strawberry growing
Organic gardening
Healthy food

Some of the sites you find probably won’t be book-affiliate sites, or they might be inappropriate for other reasons. For the rest, you might contact the Web site owner via e-mail or via telephone from contact information from the site. If there’s no contact information listed, there’s often a Webmaster e-mail address near the bottom of home pages. Sometimes a site’s “advertise with us” link will provide the fastest response—although you won’t be offering to pay for advertising.
A personal note to the Web site owner works best. Explain who you are and why you think the site’s visitors will appreciate learning about your book.

Driving more sales to Amazon through its affiliates will further boost your sales rank and continue the positive feedback loop, with more people discovering your book, and adding more weight for your title in Amazon’s recommendations and search results.