Writing a book is hard. Making real money from it is harder. In this episode, I’ll show you how to add affiliate offers to your book so it drives more revenue and creates long-term passive income.
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Links Mentioned in this Episode
The Book on Affiliate Management
Affiliate Marketing for Authors Training
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
Inside the Mind of a Strategic Affiliate Marketer
The Affiliate Book Launch Blueprint
How I Found Affiliates for My Book (And How You Can Too)
The Shocking Truth About My Affiliate Program
How Affiliate Managers Can Get Focused and Stay Focused
Why Every Author Should Be Using Affiliate Marketing
Writing a book is hard. Making real money from it is even harder. In this episode, I’ll show you how to add affiliate offers to your book. So it drives more revenue and creates long term passive income.
If you’re ready to take your affiliate.Program and your business to the next level, well, you’re in the right place. I’m Matt McWilliams, best selling author and four time affiliate manager of the year. And I have built dozens of affiliate programs from the ground up to over. A million dollars a month. I’m here to show you how you. Can do it too.
Let’s get started. So trust me, I know the effort that goes into writing a book. If I knew what went into writing a book before I started writing books, I honestly don’t think I would have done it. You know, there are easier ways to make money. I have now written, I’ve been.
A part of other books. Like I’ve written a chapter that was pretty easy. I like I wrote the chapter, it took me an hour, three sent them a chapter and then it was in.
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The, like the compilation book. Right, that’s, that’s a pretty easy lift for me. But you know, I wrote Turn youn Passions into Profits back that released in 2023. I actually wrote it in, you know, 2021 and 2022. Just released the book on affiliate management. AffiliateManagementBook.com, by the way. depending upon when you’re listening to this, there may still be some pretty awesome bonuses available if you get it right now. but that book just came out. That is even longer than Turn your passions into profits.
It is everything you could possibly imagine. For affiliate management in one book. And that took me, you know, probably 150 hours. I’ve written now four, five, six children’s books. You know, and when I say children’s books, I don’t mean like you know.
Cardboard books with pictures where there’s eight. Words in the book. I’m talking like 35 to 45,000 word books. These are fiction books, that teach principles, lessons. by the way, if you’re interested in, if you have an audience for those, please reach out to me at 260-217-4619 because these books are absolutely.
Going to change the world. these are books that are teaching amazing principles, life principles from other books like how to win friends and influence people. And we’ve got some amazing partners that we’re working with to take their books and turn them into books that 10 to 15 year olds will Read. So there’s those. I’m writing a book right now, also a fiction book. it’s called One Last Round with dad. And, you know, it’s, Yeah, I mean, so I’m writing all these books, right?
And it’s hard, you know, over 100 hours each time writing the book, you say, well, what about A.I. can’t. No, we’re really not there yet. And not if you want a book that is truly going to impact people. And people might be like, well, did you use A.I. in turn your passions into profit? No, because it didn’t exist then. my book came out like a couple of months before ChatGPT came out. What about the book on affiliate management?
Did you use it there? yeah, I used it to, to take a sentence that I could not figure out how to word in a proper way and like, hey, give me five ideas for this. Boom. I really like that one. Well, I kind of like that part of that one plus this one. But as far as writing the book, if you write a book with AI, you can tell that you wrote the book with AI. That is just the reality of it. And I’m not even talking about the obvious things like EM dashes and whatnot. I’m talking about, like, it just doesn’t read right fiction. We are not there. Trust me. I know people who’ve tried their books kind of suck. You know, there still has to be a human element. And so I would say with, like, my fiction books, it’s 90% human, 10% is like, hey, help me brainstorm some ideas to bridge this paragraph. And this paragraph, you know, I’ll.
Give you a great example. The other day, as I was. Writing one last round with that, I think I’m on chapter nine. There’ll be about 24 to 28 chapters in the book.
So I’m about a third of the way through it. And there was this part I was really struggling with, how to handle this flashback. There’s a particular scene where the dad and the son are talking, and I want the son to be taken back to this moment, in the past. And I just could not think of how actually was coming out of the flashback, how to transition from the flashback to back to reality. And AI really helped me with that.
So that’s a great use of AI. And that’s not what this episode is about. This episode is all about the fact. That the reality is that books don’t make a lot of money because you spend 100 plus hours writing it, you edit it, you format it, you get a cover, et cetera, et cetera. It is very expensive.
And so books just don’t make a lot of money. They don’t make nearly enough money in and of themselves to be worth it. Now, we all know that.
Yeah. Does it, does it give you reputability? You know, I think that’s a word authority. Yeah. Does it position you as the expert? Yeah. Is it fun in the sense of like, I don’t. I can’t wait to hold this thing. I’ve never held one of my courses. I can’t hold my course. You know, I can’t hold no product, no problem. I can’t hold fine affiliates now. Like, they’re not tangible.
I get to hold my book and I can’t wait until when I get that first copy, like some probably in October and I unbox it. I’m telling you, it is going to be nothing short of a spiritual experience. But they don’t make a lot of money on their own, so they lead the things. But one of the ways that you can make some money initially, right away is through affiliate offers. And I want to share how to do that in this podcast. So I had a guy, Jonathan Hyde, reach out to me and said, what’s the best way to promote affiliates with a book?
This is such an overlooked area of monetization within books. I almost never see it done. I mean, I can’t even think of a single book that I’ve seen it done in that that wasn’t a client of ours. Our clients do this. The things I’m sharing today, these are the things we share with our clients. They do these things almost nobody else does. And I mean, I’ve read, read or listened to over a hundred books in the past two years. Not a single one of them did this, actually, except for one. There’s one that kind of did it.
Well, now that I think about it, and he’s not a client. So one out of a hundred and I give him like a. He’s like a half out of a hundred, you know. But it’s inevitable if you think about it, that if you’re writing your book, you’re going to mention your favorite tools. I’m reading through the manuscript. I’m on page 117 of 2 think it’s 29288 or 2 98, I don’t remember. I’m on page 117 and already I’ve probably mentioned seven or ten things that are affiliate related, that are affiliate offers, and that’s not just because I’m in affiliate marketing.
These are just the tools. Like I’m mentioning them, in normal conversation. Like I, if I read you the paragraph that I mentioned them in, in a conversation that I’m having with you, it wouldn’t feel unnatural. It would feel unnatural. So you’re going to mention things and I want to share six ways to monetize a book with affiliate offers. The first way is your recommended tools in the book, right? So you’re answering the question, what do you use? What do you use and why? So you’re saying, here’s what I use and why.
So having a page or a couple of pages at the back of the book that covers the tools that you use. And so the key here is, you know, that you reference this throughout the book. I’m doing this with mine. You know, hey, I’ve, you know, I talk about this thing and I say, you know, I’ll give you an example. I talk about, you know, email marketing and I say, you know, my recommended email providers are at the resources section in the back of the book. The key with this is you don’t want to just make a list of products and then have the links.
You want to put some extra effort by not only listing what you use, but, but why you use it, right? So just a, very quick synopsis like I talk about, you know, in my book, I talk about, I mentioned Asana and I just write a very quick thing like, you know, this is the tool that we use. It’s my favorite project management, you know, and task management tool out there. It’s easy to use, makes collaboration and delegation super easy. You can start with the free version which has worked for us for more than a year. Here’s the link. You know, I talk about Slack. You know, this is the tool, the only tool that we use as a team to communicate with each other. So we’ve eliminated, you know, email chains, random text, forgetting to copy someone. It’s, it’s our go to communication tool. Right. Again, you can get started for free. So make sure you make a compelling case for why your readers should check out the tool that you recommend. So using that recommended tools page, you.
Can put it in the back of. The book is a great way to do that. Now, now make sure you follow the principles of a good resources page. Okay? So if you want to learn how to put together a resources page, the same principles apply to a resources page inside of a book. Just go to mattmcwilliams.com resources page and you can download my guide to how to put together a resources page. You will follow basically the same principles as you would in the book. The one exception that I talk about on a good resources page online, you want images, you want a logo or some sort of represent image. You don’t want to include that in a book. It just takes up too much space.
And especially if you have a publisher and you’ve got 20 things, you know, it’s going to take up a lot of space. It’s going to be like a six page long thing. I don’t want to personally use my space, not MySpace, but my space that I have in the book when I have a limit, we have a word count limit, but I also have a page limit with, my publisher. I don’t want to take up an extra three pages just for a couple of images. So you know, people are in reading mode there. So that’s the one exception. So when you go download that report, just ignore the part about images but follow all the other principles. They totally work. Make sure you use pretty links. That’s another one.
You know, nobody’s going to type in your 8,000 character long affiliate link into their browser. Just, you know, mattmcwilliams.com ConvertKit for example, right. If you’re looking at ConvertKit all, right. The second way to use affiliate offers inside of a book is to offer an extended study. So this is something I do a couple of times in the book. I don’t do it a lot because it just didn’t fit. But I say, hey, I touched on this subject. If you want to go deeper, check out blank, right? So you know, you’re giving in a book, you might touch on a subject, you’re given a 30,000 foot flyover, you go, you know, two layers deep when the real subject is seven layers deep. But the reader wants to go deeper.
They want to take their learning to a whole nother level. Right. And that’s where affiliate links come into play. So for example, I talk a little bit in the book about product launches, but I don’t go into detail because that’s a whole book in and of itself. Jeff Walker’s book launch and his course product launch formula. We’re getting ready to go through it as a team. And I mean I looked up, you know, that course is like 50 hours long. I can’t write a book about it and include it in my book. I’m also not the leading expert on it. So I point them to Jeff Walker. I say, hey, here’s A little bit about product launches. If you want to, you know, go deep, go learn from Jeff.
Hey, as you’re building your online business, you may want to start a membership site. I’m going to give you a little bit of information about membership sites, but I’m not the expert on that. I can’t write, you know, 300 pages right now. This book would be a thousand. No, this book would be 3,000 pages long. So I say, go learn from Stu McLaren. And so then, you know, if one out of 200 book buyers, you know, goes over to Jeff walker and purchases PLF, I make roughly an $800 commission. That’s $4 a book extra I made. Even if I only convert a quarter of a percent of the book buyers, then I’ve made an extra $2 a sale. All right, the third way that you can work affiliate offers into a book is to what I call the How I Learned it.
Right. So you might go in depth into something. Probably still not fully in depth, but you write thousands of words about something, and then you say, hey, I became an expert at this thanks to Blank. Check out Blank’s stuff here. Again, going back to, you know, Jeff Walker, I say that in the book, like, hey, I feel like I’m an expert at product launches. I’m one of the probably the one or 200 best experts in the entire world at product launches. You know why? Because I’ve studied everything from Jeff. His product launch formula, literally opened the door for me to do what I do today. Now, the thing is, I position that as, yeah, I am an expert. I can teach you a lot about it, but if you want to learn from my mentor, go learn from Jeff. You want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. I’m not going to plagiarize his stuff. I’ll teach you the basics, and I’ll.
Teach you a few of the nuances. That I’ve learned over the years, but go learn straight from him. Now, not only do I want to give credit where credit is due, you know, thank you, Jeff. Right. But I also want to show people where they can learn the same fundamentals I’ve learned. So I link to his stuff and say, hey, if you want all the background, if you want all the background and you want to know the why, not just the little bit that I share with you, go learn from Jeff. So in the book, I say, you know, Jeff Walker literally invented the formula that is now so common in product launches. You may think that you can reverse engineer the process by Watching other launches, but you can’t. You can pick up some stuff, but you need the course. You need the course that gives you the solid framework you need to succeed.
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My team and I plan to regularly go through the course as a refresher. It’s a significant investment, worth every penny. And I mean on that note, we’re going through it as a team. As I’m recording this 14 days from now we start. No, we’re starting next week. So in seven days we start going through it together as a team. And then we’re going to meet every week for an hour and discuss our biggest takeaways and ask questions and talk about how we might implement what we’re learning in the course. So I was being serious when I say this will be the third time my team and I have gone through the course in the last six years. Every other year is what the, kind of what we’re training on, that. So sharing how you learn something, it’s a really, really effective way of driving traffic to affiliate offers because you’re living proof that an offer actually works. You’re living proof that what that person taught you actually works.
So that’s the third way. So just to recap so far, you know, recommended tools, having a page or two at the end of the book kind of offering that extended study like you touch on something and then if you want to go deep, here’s how to learn. And then how I learned it, right? The fourth is just a casual mention. You know, this is probably the most low key way to promote affiliate offers in a book. Naturally it’s the least profitable, but it’s worth it because it’s just so easy. And I do this probably 10 or 12 times in the book. You know, I mention a person and I, m or I mentioned a product and I just put a link, you know, in an ebook you can do the hyperlink, right? You could do footnotes, you could do a, link in, you know, in parentheses. So you know, in the book, for example, I, again, I just mentioned this a little bit ago, but I talk about ConvertKit and I just put in parentheses mattmcwams.com ConvertKit. That’s all I put.
You know, I, I say a lot of people ask me, you know, well, how do I set this up from a tech standpoint? And, and my recommendation is go sign up with convertkit, mattmclaims.com convertkit, blah blah, blah, blah. I forget exactly how I word it now. You’re not gonna get a ton of activity on these links. I’m thinking I might get one out of every three to 400, you know, people to click on that link. But it’s so easy, so why not? What would be the point in not doing that? For one, if I wanna go, you know, I’m still gonna include it in the back, but it’s longer. If I want to drive people to ConvertKit, it’s longer for me to say, you know, I recommend convertkit. Parentheses. There’s a link to convertkit in the back of the book in the recommended tool section. That’s just. Why not just put the link there? It’s shorter, right? So just these casual mentions. Are you going to make tens of thousands of dollars even if you, I mean, you have to sell a crap ton of books to make tens of thousands dollars?
No, but what if I make an extra 25 cents a book? You know, we’re going to sell hopefully between 20 and 35,000, you know, pre orders of the book. And if that brings in an extra 10 grand, hey, that’s kind of cool, you know. All right. The fifth way is your bibliography or suggested reading. Basically, at the end of the book I have a thing that says, hey, I recommend numerous other helpful books on the topic of starting, an online business. For a full list, visit mattmcwilliams.combooks if you’re gonna recommend other books, instead of having a bibliography in the back and making nothing, why not earn an affiliate commission? I mean, yeah, it’s like, you know, 28 cents on Amazon. Well, 28 cents times an average of 2.5 books, times one out of 100 people that, you know, buy your book. And Whoopi do, you’re making an extra again, an extra quarter a book. Well, it could be an extra ten grand.
Why not? You know, I always look at things in terms of like, if I can do something that simple and pay one fifth of somebody on my team’s, you know, like, an assistant’s salary. If I do five of those things in this book, I’ve paid for my assistant’s salary. How cool is that? You know, in the ebook, the bibliography or suggested reading section can easily contain affiliate links. In a print book. You got to get a little creative though. So rather than providing a list of other books, like I mentioned earlier, you provide a link to your suggested books page and then you, you create a, you know, a suggested book page. That link I mentioned, mattmcwams.com books that follows the principles of the resources page that I mentioned earlier. But it’s for books, you Know, it says the name of the book. It has a picture, of the book and why I recommend the book and then the link. So you follow the same things. If you go to that URL, you’ll.
See how I lay it out. Just mattmcwilliams.com books and you can actually know. Feel free to copy the way I do it. I don’t care. Pretty basic format. And then number six is just recommended products from others. So this is not something that I do in my book. But we’ve done really well with some other clients where they’re interviewing somebody for their book and they ask them for their recommendation of certain products and then link to them. So they say, you know, something like, you know, Jeremy recommends focus at will to improve your focus. Find out more at this link. And then you provide the link to them. It’s a great way to avoid author bias and get kind of a neutral recommendation.
Right. And then you make money from products that you might not be the expert on, but somebody else did the recommending. That’s kind of cool. So if you interview people or if you, you know, you couldn’t be just quoting somebody you know in the book. Like, you could find an article and so and so talked about such and such and recommends this product and you link to it as an affiliate. That’s pretty cool. That’s a pretty cool way. So again, number one is those recommended tools. Make sure you go check out the supplies for your. What we’ll talk about in a second. Number five, the bibliography as well. But make sure you go Download that report mattmcwilliams.com resources page and learn how to put together a resources page.
You can also use that to put together a recommended books page. Number two, that extended study. You know, I touched on this little bit of a topic, but if you want to go deep, check it out here, how I learned it. Sharing how you learn something that you share in your book. That casual mention, just parentheses, very easy. Talked about it just, you know, a moment ago. The bibliography, slash, suggested reading. And then six recommended products from others maybe that you interview. Like books can be a great way to promote affiliate offers if you do it right. So six ways, hopefully to maybe even double what a book is worth to you. Now, I got a great question about this when I was doing a presentation recently, and I’m gonna four, authors, and I want to share my answer here.
Lady asked, how do you handle affiliate disclosure in book form? That’s the part that always trips me up on a website. It’s sort of normal and more expected. But it feels like one of those, moments in a book for some reason. Now, number one, depending upon when you’re listening to this, this could change. So we’re talking about the disclosure of material connection is what the Federal Trade Commission here in the United States says. So my first advice is go to the ftc, just Google disclosure of material connection. Ftc. Read what they say specifically about this because it might change. In seven minutes I might record this and release it. And it’s already been changed. Now, my personal answer, based on what I’ve studied and just, I mean, full disclosure, I’m not an attorney.
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I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night is that you need to include a disclosure in your book. Now, I would recommend making it obvious. Put it in the beginning as like an author’s note or something. Don’t try to bury it. It’s not going to affect sales. They already bought the book. It’s not going to lower trust. It’s actually going to increase it. So you might just literally put it at the very beginning of the book. You talk with your publisher. If you’re self publishing, figure that out. But something like, you know, note some of the links in this, you know, book might, I forget how we worded it, might be affiliate links. That means if you click on them, I, make a commission. That however, does not impact my recommendation of, you know, said product, et cetera, et cetera. Right.
You might put it on that resources page in the back. But based on what I read, if you put it at the beginning, you put it where there’s more than one link. You don’t really have to put it after every single link. That would be ridiculous. You know, just clogs up the book and makes it kind of sound stupid. So hope that helps on that. Again, ask the FTC though. Seriously, I legally, I have to say that, you know, don’t take my word for it because it might have changed. So again, six reasons how to work books in or work affiliate marketing into your books. Guys, I got to tell you, I’m super excited about my my next episode first interview I’ve done in quite some time and there’s a reason why, why I even decided to do it. It’s because I’ve got my good friend Chandler bolt on and we’re going to talk about affiliates and books.
How to write, publish and sell your book is coming up in the next episode. I’m really excited about that. So make sure you hit that subscribe button if you haven’t yet. So you don’t miss that episode. And some awesome, awesome episodes coming up. I’ve got one. I’m just going to tell you guys, I’m going to talk about the worst part of our business and I would be willing to bet that it will surprise every single listener. It’s going to shock you. What is the worst part of our business? If you think you might know, hit me up on social media and let me know what you think the worst part of our business is. I’m gonna tell you. It’s gonna, it’s gonna shock you guys. So make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss any episodes.
Also, if you know somebody who would benefit from this, hit the share button, you know, or just tell them, like, hey, you got to go listen to this episode. I know you’re one of the 81% of the population that says they want to write a book. Well, here’s how to make twice as much money on it. So have them go listen to this episode. Tell them to hit subscribe as well so they learn everything that’s coming up. So with that, we’ll wrap up and I will see you in the next episode.
See you soon.