Change The World With Words

If there’s one piece of advice I wish I’d listened to a little earlier in my writing career it’s the advice to create multiple income streams. It’s great to get paid to write. It never fails to make me happy when I see that ‘You’ve Got Money” email from Paypal or get a check in the mail for an article or story I’ve written. But once you’ve got your writing career underway, there are other opportunities to start generating income that’s linked to your writing but not a direct result of it.

I consider ‘direct’ writing income to be a payment that is made to me in return for a piece of writing I’ve produced. This could be an article for a magazine, website content or PR material for a corporate client, or a short story for an anthology, magazine or contest.

But once I set up my own blog I realized I also had an opportunity to create another income stream, AND help my readers and subscribers at the same time. By offering my readers high quality writing related products I can put writers in touch with great writing resources and create some extra income via commissions. This is generally known as affiliate marketing, and unfortunately, it doesn’t have the best reputation.

Too many affiliate marketers are aggressive, in-your-face sales people. They email you every five minutes with new offers or cold call you during dinner or network with you online and then bombard you on Twitter and Facebook with sales pitches.

Good marketers are subtle, valuable providers of useful high-quality products, and they always offer a lot more than a sales pitch.

My tips for writers who want to create an affiliate marketing income stream.

The product comes first.

Always promote something you love, don’t look for something to promote. So whenever you read a book or ebook (or take a course) and you think it will be of use to your readers, check if it has an affiliate program, and if it does sign up. Then you can mention the product or service to your readers and include an affiliate link. You can (and should) spread the word about anything that you think might be of interest to your readers. If there’s no affiliate program, go ahead and talk about it anyway, but if there is one, it’s perfectly OK to take a cut of the profits.

Disclose

I have a simple disclosure page here at CTWWW. You should always let readers know if you’re earning commissions from sales you make. If you’re recommending or endorsing a product, you can be on shaky legal ground if you don’t disclose this fact. See FTC guidelines for online advertisers here.

Marketing is about finding an audience, not selling a product.

I like the J A Konrath quote:

 “Selling isn’t about forcing people to buy something they don’t want; it’s about finding the people who are interested in your product.”

So find an audience of people who are trying to do what you’re trying to do (for example, make money from writing, or self-publish a book) and when you find a product that helps you, you know that it will probably help your readers too. (Or it may not. I decided early on to try and find products that offer a money back guarantee so that if a reader buys something through me that’s not a good fit, they should always be able to get a refund.) The trick of successful marketing is to find potential customers for what you have to sell. Believe it or not, that’s a whole lot easier than trying to sell to people who don’t want or need your product.

Serve your readers (all of them)

You’re a writer, first and foremost, and people read your articles, blog posts and social media streams because they’re interested in what you have to say. Always bear that in mind.

Some of your readers are at a stage in their writing career where they’re ready to spend money on a course, ebook or other product. Others aren’t. I try really hard to serve both. That’s why I like to offer my readers freebies, and I like to work with affiliate programs that are willing to do that too. I picked up a lot of advice from websites, blogs, free newsletters and free ebooks before I started investing money in my writing career. I like to serve readers who are at that stage by offering lots of free advice, as well as highlighting high quality paid products for those who want to take their writing further by investing in themselves and their writing.

I wrote about my two favorite affiliate programs for writers and authors in a previous post. Find out why I use them and why I think they offer a great service to both affiliates and buyers, right here.

This year I’m partnering with a couple of cool organisations to bring you some useful resources for writers and authors. Some of them are free, some of them aren’t. If you’re at a stage in your writing career where you want to start investing in yourself, you can choose to buy through me and support this site at the same time (see what that means here).

If you’re not, that’s fine too. All articles here at Change The World With Words are free and always will be. (I also get a real kick out of sharing other free resources I find, and I seem to find a lot – maybe it’s Karma sending me free writing goodies because I always pay them forwards. Feel free to subscribe if you want to know about new free writing resources as I find them.)

If you’re a writer looking for affiliate programs to join in order to offer your readers valuable resources and create an extra income stream for yourself, I recommend these programs.

In 2012 I’ll be working with an organisation called My Help Hub.

Why?

They have really high quality products for writers, mainly ebooks and online courses, that cover different types of writing and other skills related to writing and getting your work published.

Their paid products are reasonably priced, often come with bonuses and offer a money-back guarantee.

They have a good mix of products that will appeal to different readers (we’re an eclectic mix here at CTWWW), from The Wealthy Writer online course to their Writer’s Block CD to the Novel in a Month course. Perhaps my favourite E-product purchased last year was their excellent How To Write A Children’s Book.

Like me, they like to be generous. They offer a huge selection of free resources for writers through Writers Giveaway, that you can start downloading right now if you want (click here).

If you’re a writer with your own blog or site and you’d like to partner with My Help Hub to offer some of their products to your readers and followers, check out their affiliate program here.

I’ll also be working with the lovely Shelley Hitz from Self-Publishing-Coach.com.

Why?

Shelley also offers great products, albeit in a narrower range. Most of her products are aimed at helping writers develop specific skills in the area of self-publishing and book marketing, though her book marketing and promotion resources are also excellent for traditionally published authors looking to build their brand and sell more books.

These products are very affordable. Shelley is known for over-delivering and offering far more (including bonuses) than you would expect for the price she charges.

The range of products covers almost everything new and aspiring authors need to know (and lots of things more experienced authors should know but don’t). Products include Ebook Publishing Success, Get Your Kindle Ebook Done, and Twitter 101 For Authors.

Shelley also loves a freebie. You can pick up over 200 free tools for authors over at her site Self-Publishing-Coach.com or download a couple of her free reports, Book Marketing on a Shoestring Budget: YouTube Strategies for Authors and Book Marketing on a Shoestring Budget: Guest Blogging for Success right here at CTWWW.
 

If you’re looking to invest in yourself in 2012, please consider some of the products mentioned above or listed on the resources page (or check out the reading list and online book store for good-value books about writing and publishing). And if not, go ahead and download the freebies mentioned above.

If you haven’t already seen our Win an iPad2 or Kindle Fire contest, you might want to check it out. You’ll need something to read your new Ebooks and online course materials on:)