How to Use Smart Links To Increase Your Amazon Sales By guest @Themarioblog

By Rachel Thompson | #NaNoProMo

May 22
How to Use Smart Links To Increase Your Amazon Sales By guest @Themarioblog via @BadRedheadMedia and @NaNoProMo

As an author, you now have the opportunity for people from all over the world to buy and read your work. Depending on your audience, it’s totally feasible that 20-25% of all your Amazon sales can come from outside of the US. And that’s without even publishing your work in another language. Turns out lots of people speak English in Great Britain, Canada, Australia and even places like Germany. These days Amazon makes it easy to publish your book internationally. Setting up your book to be available in more than just Amazon US is a one-time effort that can pay back in spades over time.

But, that’s the easy part.

The hard part is promoting your book to readers all over the world. You only have so much time and while you certainly might believe in staying active on social media, you definitely don’t have the time to be creating tweets with links to your book, on a country by country basis.

What you need is one tweet, with one link that drives people to the right book page on Amazon (or any other store for that matter) in their country. That way you can just keep doing what you’re doing — sharing your work — but making it easy for folks to find and buy your books wherever they may live.

Over the years, authors have used Genius Link to better market their books through intelligent links. We work with some of the world’s most recognized authors and publishing houses, and after seeing how our author clients take advantage of our technology, we’d like to share some of the most useful strategies you get with the world’s smartest links to better market your books.

We’ll show you how to use our platform to squeeze out more revenues from every link you share. And while we’re a paid tool ($2 per 1,000 clicks – which should easily pay for itself), we also built Booklinker, a free software solution to authors like you that has fewer features but should do a lot of what you need. So keep that in the back of your mind.

Let’s dive in.

Amazon is Global—Make Sure Your Links Are Too

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

Genius Link’s global Amazon links are the easiest way to ensure that your readers get to the easiest place to purchase when you’re promoting your book in the world’s largest online bookstore. If you have any kind of international audience you will want to pay attention.

Many authors are unaware of the full scope of the global Amazon ecosystem. Amazon is more than just one store— it’s actually 14 different storefronts across the globe! If you’re posting Amazon links for your readers to click on and purchase your books, it’s imperative to know that amazon.com isn’t the Amazon store for everyone. Readers in the UK are more likely to purchase at amazon.co.uk, readers in Germany at Amazon.de, and readers in Canada at Amazon.ca (you get the picture).

Amazon Has 14 Different Global Storefronts

Genius Link offers authors an incredibly easy way to make sure that every reader gets to your book in the right Amazon store for their geography whenever they click on one of your Amazon book links. Simply drop an Amazon link into our link creator tool, and voila! Our technology will “auto-magically” find your book in all of the different Amazon stores across the globe, and direct each reader to their “local” Amazon store whenever they click.

Genius Link’s “auto-magic” global links also work for iBooks. Similar to Amazon, iBooks is many different country and region-specific storefronts across the globe. If you’re using promotional iBooks links to market your books, you can ensure that every reader gets to a store they can actually purchase by using Genius Link’s technology.

Simply drop in an iBooks link into the geni.us link creator tool, and again we take care of the rest! Anyone who clicks on that link will be directed to their local iBooks store.

Whatever You Do, Become an Amazon Associate

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

Perhaps one of the easiest ways for authors to get even more benefit out of your existing marketing efforts is to take advantage of the Amazon Associates program. If you’re linking your readers to Amazon to purchase your books, Amazon will pay you a referral commission if they purchase after clicking one of your links— even if it’s to your own book!

Amazon built the Associates Program to encourage online publishers to link people to Amazon to purchase products. As an author sending your readers to Amazon, you’re in a great position to take advantage of this! Don’t worry, it doesn’t cost your readers any additional money. Amazon simply pays you a small percentage of their cut of the purchase price (typically 4-8 percent) just for sending them there. You even earn commissions for anything purchased within 24 hours of someone clicking on your link. That means if someone clicks on your book link, then decides to buy a $1,000 flat screen television, you get a commission for that too!

If you’re already linking your readers to Amazon, use the Associates Program. Seriously. It’s free money.

Another benefit of using the Associates program is that it provides incredibly valuable sales tracking information. You can actually see if people are purchasing your books after clicking on these links. In other words, you can tell when your marketing efforts are working and when they’re not delivering.

OK, now I’ve sold you on the Amazon Associates program. So where does Genius Link fit into all of this?

We’ll Auto Affiliate Every Link for You

Any time you create a global Amazon link with Genius Link, we automatically add your Amazon affiliate tags so you earn commissions on the sales that happen after readers click your links. No need to worry about the link format or adding each your individual Amazon Associates IDs to each link. We take care of that.

No Amazon, No Problem

Do you have a large international audience? If so, you may have a significant amount of readers in countries where there is no Amazon store. As big as Amazon is, there are still many countries where they don’t have total dominance of the online book space.

Good news, Genius Link can help in these situations too! While we have a great tool for automatically making your Amazon links work internationally, we also provide you with the ability to create links with custom destinations for any country through our Advanced Targets feature.

Advanced Targets let you specify specific online destinations for readers in different countries. For example, if you have a large readership in Australia, you may want to send readers in Australia to Booktopia, Australia’s largest online bookstore. Similarly, you may want to send readers in The Netherlands to bol.com, or readers in Singapore to opentrolley.com.

The key thing to realize is that Genius Link allows you to optimize your link for the entire world, even beyond countries where Amazon has a storefront.

We’ll Make Sure That the Link Gets to the Right Place, No Matter What Country Someone Lives In

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

Similar to Amazon having many different stores across the globe, they also have many different Associates Programs. Using Genius Link for your Amazon links not only makes sure your readers get to the right store to purchase for their geography, but we also ensure that the right affiliate tags are used for the reader’s local Amazon store. This allows you to earn these referral commissions from the different Amazon storefronts across the globe.

Note: Genius Link also provides automatic affiliation for iBooks links using the iTunes Affiliate Program.

Your Book is Published in a Different Language, too? We Got You

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

If you’re a big enough deal to have your books published in multiple languages, you can further take advantage of Genius Link’s advanced targets to ensure that your readers are sent directly your book in their native translation.

Let Your Reader Decide Where to Buy Your Books

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

If you’d like to provide your readers with an option to purchase a book in their favorite online store (as not everyone loves Amazon), Genius Link’s Choice Pages are a great solution.

Instead of sending your readers directly to a store front to purchase your book, the Choice Pages provides them with an intermediary page that allows them to select to purchase your book in the online retailer of their choosing.

Curious what it looks like in action? Try clicking this link.

Creating these eye-catching and useful landing pages for your books is incredibly simple with Genius Link. Simply add your different destination URLs, click save, and you’re done!

Insights You Can Actually Use

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

Writing a book is hard enough, making sure your promotional book links are performing at the highest level should be easy. Luckily, Genius Link is here to make marketing your book a little easier through intelligent links. All of the useful tools discussed above come with robust tracking tools to help you better understand your audience and focus on the marketing channels that work best.

So to summarize, no matter what, if you’re selling on Amazon, be sure to participate in their affiliate program.

And if you’re selling your book in more than one country (and there is no reason why you shouldn’t), use a smart link management tool that automatically directs the reader to the right product in their country’s Amazon (or other) storefront.

Genius Link is the industry leader, with a very affordable pricing plan that only charges you for clicks served. The investment just about always pays for itself, and then some.

Booklinker is a free tool used by thousands of authors.

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Day 22 Giveaway

The Geniuslink team has generously donated 10 authors $30 in credit (~15,000 clicks) to be used over a six-month time period.  Accompanying the credit, each winner will also receive a free 20-minute onboarding session to help them get set up and running.

Be sure to comment below to enter to win!

Mario Schulzke…

…is the CMO at Geniuslink, where he heads up all growth efforts. Before coming to Geniuslink, Mario was the CMO at the University of Montana and prior spent 10 years running digital strategy divisions for WONGDOODY and R2C Group.

How to Use Smart Links to Increase Your Amazon Sales by guest @themarioblog

Find Mario on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram!

Mario is originally from Germany and when not marketing, he spends every free moment on his bike, in the mountains or in some river somewhere.

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About the Author

Rachel Thompson is the author of newly released BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge: How to energize your book sales in a month - created to help authors market their book. She is also the author of Broken Places (one of IndieReader's "Best of 2015" top books and 2015 Honorable Mention Winner in the San Francisco Book Festival), and the multi award-winning Broken Pieces, as well as two additional humor books, A Walk In The Snark and Mancode: Exposed. She owns BadRedhead Media, creating effective social media and book marketing campaigns for authors. Her articles appear regularly in The Huffington Post,  IndieReader.com, The San Francisco Book Review (BadRedhead Says…), 12Most.com, BookPromotion.com, and Self-Publishers Monthly. Not just an advocate for sexual abuse survivors, Rachel is the creator and founder of the hashtag phenomenon #MondayBlogs and two live Twitter chats: #BookMarketingChat (co-hosted with TheRuralVA, Emilie Rabitoy) and #SexAbuseChat, co-hosted with C. Streetlights and Judith Staff. She hates walks in the rain, running out of coffee, and coconut. She lives in California with her family.

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Leave a Comment:

(21) comments

Jena May 22, 2018

Great article and I really needed to hear about Genius! Last week, a blogger asked me for Genius link which I didn’t have. I went to your site, but I didn’t have much time so I gave up. Then, this morning, “auto-magically” your post appeared! So clear and understandable. Thank you.

Reply
Carolyn Astfalk May 22, 2018

I used Amazon Affiliate links on my site, so the fact that Geniuslink can accommodate that is good news!

Reply
Jessica C. Joiner May 22, 2018

Thank you for this blog. This is a very helpful service I have actually never heard of before! I will have to look into this right away 🙂

Reply
Alexandria May 22, 2018

If you use Amazon affiliate links for your books alone, and you earn royalties on your books anyway, do you have to tell people that you earn more money if they click on one of your books from your website? I’m not sure why one would become an affiliate for your own books. Did I miss something?

Reply
    Rachel Thompson May 22, 2018

    Hi Alexandria — well, you can use your Amazon Associates account to link to ANYTHING — your own books, books you mention in a blog post, or movies or shows people can buy on Amazon (which I KNOW you do a lot as you review a number of shows on your site). So let’s say you review Outlander Season 3 on blu-ray, for example, and you link to it on Amazon from your site — anyone who purchases it earns you affiliate monies.

    As to your question: You can add *affiliate link* to your post for full disclosure, or just add it somewhere on your site. The reason why you want to have affiliate links for your own books is you earn royalties AND the affiliate monies also.

    It’s never too late to sign up for GeniusLink or plain old Amazon Associates (or both — do what Mario suggests in the post) and then go back and change all your links in previous posts — There’s probably a plug-in or meta-code that will do that for you (I’m NOT a coder but I imagine you can search that up). x

    Reply
Dana Lemaster May 22, 2018

Rachel and Mario, thanks so much for this post. I became aware of the different Amazons through film forums. There were times when I’d say,”This film is available on Amazon”, only to have members from Canada and the UK correct me. Thanks for explaining how an author can expand horizons (and, with any luck, opportunities for sales).

Reply
Mario May 22, 2018

Thank you for allowing me to contribute to this series. It was fun to craft this. If anyone should have any questions about increasing your international affiliate commissions, please feel free to reach out. I am happy to help.

Reply
    Rachel Thompson May 22, 2018

    Hi Mario! Thank you SO much for this incredibly insightful and helpful post. And thanks for KJ Waters for introducing us!

    I do see questions coming in so definitely, please check in to answer them when you have a moment (my commenting system got jacked up with the latest social warfare update, so if you can just leave comments (reply isn’t working, dammit), that’d be great). Sorry for the hassle. x

    Reply
Tamsen May 22, 2018

What helpful (and practical) tip/app. I also had no idea about the associates program…

Reply
Lexi May 22, 2018

Really useful. Drives me nuts when I get redirected to the wrong Amazon. I never knew it was possible to fix.

Reply
Lisa A. Listwa May 22, 2018

Awesome giveaway and great info I did not know about before today. Thanks for this post!

Reply
D.Avery May 24, 2018

Wait a GDPR minute. This was interesting and intriguing and informative and if one were to become an Amazon Associate wouldn’t that mean one has monetized their site and therefore would have to deal with all this GDPR business?

Reply
    Rachel Thompson May 27, 2018

    Hi D. Not sure if anyone answered this — but you’d need to deal with it anyway TBH. If you read through the GDPR guidelines, if you have any kind of opt-in (aka, a newsletter or free download or follow my blog sign-up button), you must be GDPR compliant. Sigh.

    It doesn’t cost anything to become compliant. Might as well get ‘er done.

    Reply
Lissa Johnston May 25, 2018

Thx for this. I set up an Amazon Affiliates account years ago but abandoned it when I switched to self-hosting and WordPress a couple of years ago. At that time I couldn’t figure out how to set up a storefront on WP that looked halfway decent, so I just dropped the whole idea. Time has passed; their interface has improved; and now I’m busy adding links retroactively. Progress!

Reply
Kelly Wilson May 25, 2018

I haven’t heard of booklinker or Genius Link, so these will be fun to explore! I am happy to say that I’m already signed up and linked up with Amazon Affiliates (whew!). Thanks for the info!

Reply
Nicky Moxey May 26, 2018

Sounds interesting.

Reply
Mario Schulzke May 27, 2018

Alexandria, if you also join the affiliate program, you get to earn royalties plus commissions. This comes out of Amazon’s cut.

Reply
Mario May 27, 2018

D.Avery, true, but that’s not something you need to be too worried about. Disclose that it’s an affiliate link and that’s what matters most in your case. Right now there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding GDPR, but it should all become more clear with time. Do make sure that you work with businesses and software companies (like Amazon, like us) that are making changes to comply with these new rules.

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Corey July 17, 2018

Thanks for the great article. Enjoyed it a lot!

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Sarah May 24, 2019

I stumbled across this post at just the right time. We’re about to publish our first book on Amazon and I’ve started setting up my affiliate accounts. At this point I realised there must be a solution to the global market conundrum, did some searching, and ta daa! Found this. Is your offer still going? That could be exactly what we’re looking for. Thanks for this really useful article!

Reply
    Rachel Thompson May 24, 2019

    Hi Sarah,

    no, unfortunately, this is a post from 2018. However, if you visit GeniusLinks, they are amazing AND affordable. Also, I’m offering MANY giveaways this month only from spectacular experts in the publishing world. Simply read the badredheadmedia.com/nanopromo posts the rest of this month and comment to enter to win. That’s it!

    Good luck.

    Reply
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