This series comes from my experience selling my own ebook, Tell Your Time. (See all the posts in the How to Write an Ebook series here.)
If you're like me, affiliates will play a huge role in your sales. I highly recommend an affiliate program. Sure, you won't get to keep as much money per sale, but your reach will be much wider. Selling is the hardest part in the process in my opinion, so if I can enlist the help of others to promote my ebook, all the better. I'm happy to share the profits in exchange for the support.
What exactly is an affiliate?
It occurred to me that I keep talking about affiliates and some of you might appreciate a basic explanation of what an affiliate is and does. Basically, an affiliate is someone who likes your ebook (or product) and wants to tell others about it. They sign up as an affiliate and after doing so, receive a unique affiliate link which they use when mentioning (promoting) your ebook. If someone clicks through that link and purchases the ebook, the affiliate receives whatever commission you have set. Make sense?
Create a post or page where affiliates can sign up.
In addition to your sales page which we talked about last time, you've got to have a place where someone can sign up to become an affiliate of your ebook. I created an affiliate sign-up page which is easily accessible on my site. (I have also provided a link to the affiliate sign-up page at the bottom of my sales page.)
Make the affiliate sign-up process enticing.
Why should someone sign up to be an affiliate for you? What's in it for them? Remember, they're putting their name behind your product, so they'll want to make sure it's worth it. On my affiliate sign-up page, I highlight my 50% affiliate commission in an effort to underscore that I want my affiliate program to be a (literal) win-win.
Make the affiliate sign-up process easy.
I also provide clear instructions explaining how to use their affiliate code and how they can put it on their site. I also provide my email address on the page in case they have questions or need help.
Make buttons and banners.
If you take a look at my affiliate sign-up page, you'll see that I provide graphics my affiliates can use when promoting Tell Your Time. You can either make these graphics yourself (check out How to Create a Blog Button — it's the same process) or you can have someone do it for you. Joy did mine and depending on the designer, I'd say they will run you anywhere from $10 to $75 each. Tip: Whether you make them yourself or hire someone else to do them for you, I do recommend you stick to standard ad sizes.
Set your affiliate share on E-junkie.
By this point, you have probably settled on how much your affiliates will get (maybe when you decided on pricing for your ebook?). Now's the time to put this information in your E-junkie account so everyone gets their proper commission. There's nothing difficult about it at all.
To set your affiliate commission for all the digital products you have on E-junkie, follow the steps below. (If you sell multiple products via E-junkie and they have different affiliate rates, scroll down to "How to set up affiliate commissions on individual products" below.)
1. Login to your E-junkie account.
2. Make sure you're in the "Seller" tab and go to your "Seller Admin" page (if not there already).
3. Click "Edit Affiliate Program Settings" on the right side under "Manage Your Seller Account" like so:
4. Once there, you'll fill in:
- The commission you will pay affiliates (a percentage).
- The URL of your sales page.
- The URL of the page on which you explain how one can sign up for your affiliate program.
- (I keep the "List affiliate program in E-junkie Marketplace" because…why not?)
- Next, copy the code in the orange box and paste it into your "Sign up as an affiliate" page you created above. The default anchor text for that link is "Join our Affiliate Program!". If you want it to say something else (for example, mine says "Join the affiliate program now"), you can edit the text which is underlined in blue below. (Be very careful not to edit any other part of the code!)
- Click "Submit".
How to set up affiliate commissions on individual products.
If you have multiple products in E-junkie and they have different affiliate commissions among them, you'll need to set each one separately. You can do that by clicking the "Setup product specific affiliate programs" as seen below. Then, just follow the prompts.
That's it! Now you're ready to accept affiliates. Next time we'll talk about how to take good care of them. 
Other posts in this series
- How to Write an Ebook
- How to Write an Ebook: Why It's a Good Idea
- How to Write an Ebook: Choose a Sellable Topic
- How to Write an Ebook: Preparing to Write
- How to Write an Ebook: Writing Tips from a Non-Writer
- How to Write an Ebook: Editing and Naming
- How to Write an Ebook: Formatting
- How to Write an Ebook: Setting Up Accounts
- How to Write an Ebook: Pricing
- How to Write an Ebook: Distribution
- How to Write an Ebook: Creating a Sales Page (or Site)
- How to Write an Ebook: Preparing for Affiliates
- How to Write an Ebook: Taking care of your affiliates
- How to Write an Ebook: Paying your affiliates
- How to Make Your Ebook Available on Kindle & Nook
Here at BloggingWithAmy you'll find tips, tools & tutorials about blogging and websites. In plain English. Want to 
Thank you so much for writing this series! I'm toying with the idea of creating my own–I'm not sure if it'll come to fruition, but I'm writing and we'll see where it goes. Either way I've gained tons of useful info from your blog–so glad I found it!
Awesome! I'm so glad you're hangin' out.
Great series! I finished chapter one last night. While writing I am also building relationships. I have a goal of building 2 GOOD relationships a week and keeping them. with a launch date of I don't know yet I have to figure that out yet.
If you have any other tips or tricks feel free to share
I think that's a great idea — to break it down into a very specific, measurable (SMART) goal.
I am lost…. lol …. i think I have to much book and now the question is 3 small books or 1 big book. eghh
Ha! "I am lost…" I feel like that on a regular basis. As I always say, one of the best things about blogging (and working online) is that it's so forgiving. Just wing it.
Just wing it… lol – ya i have been doing that since I started.
Hi, I just wanted to say, Thank You! I have been going through every site to find someone who explains how to write an ebook. And everywhere I look is awful! Then I found your site. I have read every single page so far, and this is fantastic! I write for Hubpages, and so many people have been telling me to write an ebook about a certain topic. But I had no idea how to do it, then I found your site. This is bookmarked and very useful, thank you Nell
So glad you stopped by and found it helpful. Thanks for taking a minute to let me know!
Amy,
Thank you for explaining e-junkie. I think that global setting they have for affiliates might be a problem if you have multiple products with different percent commissions. I did set up my page for my affiliates but want to also set up a higher commission for some people in my field. I believe that it is possible to do this for specific jv deals but am not positive. If you know if it's true, I'd love to know!
Deb
Yes, you're right—you can set up different commissions for different products but it sounds like maybe you just want to increase the commission on the same product for a few people? Is that correct? You can do that too. To do that, go to the "View/Edit Affiliates" link under Manage Affiliates (it's in the bottom left of your Seller Admin screen. Once you click "View/Edit Affiliates" your list of affiliates will come up. For each, there is a field where you can add an extra percentage. Hope that helps!
Thank you Amy for sharing your journey! The information you provided was very informative and easy to follow. I am super excited about publishing my ebook!
Thanks again!
You're welcome. All the best on your ebook! Woohoo!
I think that if you are selling multiple ebooks it would be good in your directions to tell the new affiliate to make sure they are choosing the correct book when they get their code. I wanted to promote Sarah Mae's How To Write An Ebook and I didn't get that I kept using the code to 31 days to clean when I tested the button – I finally realized there was a drop down box to choose the right code. This may be way obvious to others, but hopefully it will help at least one fuzzy-brained person like myself.
Also, do test the button yourself to make sure you did the code right and are linking to the right site.
Hi Amy,
I know this post is nearly a year old, but I'm just about to publish my first ebook and this was really helpful! I had never really given much though to creating an affiliate program for the book. We'll see how it goes. Also, thanks for walking us though E-Junkie! Traci
You're welcome Traci. All the best!
Hey! Thanks for this guide on creating an E book. I play a pretty popular online mmorpg called runescape and there are tons of free guides on the various skills and quests in the games, but they all seem to be spread out on various sites and locations. My idea was to rewrite all these guides and put them into one convenient location (my ebook), but make it a relatively cheap price for all the guides at once. I was wondering though, since there are about 20+ odd skills and very few people are interested in them all at once. Should I offer the individual guides for about $1.99 per skill ? The individual idea would take me about a day to 2 days to write.. ?
I have been soaking up every word of this series. Thanks Amy! I have a question and the answer may be obvious, but . . . if an affiliate has a button for your ebook in their sidebar, where is it taking the reader to? If it takes them right to e-junkie so the affiliate gets credit, but then where is the sales page/pitch …or to your sales page, but then how is the affiliate getting credit for product purchased. I must be missing something (and it isn't even super late yet!).
You should create what is called a "hop link" with e-junkie which is essentially a sales page that anyone lands on when they click an affiliate link. So, the reader clicks on the affiliate's link which takes them to your sales page (hop link) which contains the "Add to Cart" button which takes them to the payment screen. The affiliate's link is tracked throughout the process. I hope that makes sense!
Makes perfect sense. Thanks! On most sales pages I see, they also mention that the ebook is available on Kindle and Nook (which makes complete sense to advertise that too since the reader may prefer that). But then the affiliate has advertised for you but will not get a payment because the reader has left e-junkie. Is that correct? …short of the affiliate adding their own posted link to the ebook on amazon and getting a commission from them. Do you tell your affiliates to list to amazon too or just direct to e-junkie?