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Spider
10-19-2008, 11:56 AM
I'm looking for a publisher of ebooks and ereports who has an affiliate program. Specifically, I want someone who will --

1. let me submit my ebooks and ereports to be sold on their site; and
2. have an affiliate program so I can sell their catalog (mine and others' ebooks and ereports) on my site.

eBooks.com won't deal directly with authors, only publishers. Other e-publishers will publish my stuff but don't seem to have an affiliate program so I might benefit from selling their stuff. Some are only interested in ebooks - with 30 pages as a possible minimum. I would like to publish ereports -same thing but with 2 or 3 pages as a minimum, charging $2 or $3 each. And Clickbank seems to comprise only of spammy stuff to sell.

Any suggestions from you Web Wizards?

Spider
10-20-2008, 09:33 PM
Well, now that my post has been relegated to this relative backwater, does anyone know of a website/company that I can use to publish e-reports and which also has an affiliate program?

billbenson
10-21-2008, 01:06 AM
I'd give you some advice Frederick, if I knew anything about it. It's not my thing. Hopefully someone who knows something about this will come along.

vangogh
10-21-2008, 03:17 PM
Frederick your post wasn't relegated to any relative backwater. It was simply moved to a more appropriate category. Small Talk is meant for non business related discussions. Granted there will be threads in there that inevitably talk about business, but if a thread is business related it will generally be more appropriate to start the topic in a different forum.

As for your question it's a specific one that requires a specific answer. If I had an ebook I would likely sell it directly through my site instead of looking for others to sell it. I'd set up an affiliate program so others would promote help promote it. As far as selling other people's ebooks as an affiliate I'd sooner pick and choose specific ebooks that offer an affiliate program.

Sorry I can't be more help with directing you to a site. I'd have a different approach to selling ebooks so haven't researched what you're specifically looking for. Hopefully someone else here has.

Spider
10-21-2008, 08:54 PM
Frederick your post wasn't relegated to any relative backwater. It was simply moved to a more appropriate category....Well, as the last post in this forum before the move was over a week ago, I thought 'relative backwater' would be a lighthearted way of describing it. Seems my humor fell flat.

Not to worry!

vangogh
10-21-2008, 09:16 PM
My bad for misunderstanding the joke. I guess I hadn't realized how few new threads we'd had recently.

Sorry again I couldn't help point you to a site. Is there a reason you want to have someone else host the ebook? Most people I see selling them usually do so on their own site through PayPal or another merchant if they use one. I would think there's ultimately more money in it that way for you and once the system is set up it shouldn't require much in the way of maintenance.

Spider
10-21-2008, 10:48 PM
...Is there a reason you want to have someone else host the ebook? Most people I see selling them usually do so on their own site through PayPal or another merchant if they use one. I would think there's ultimately more money in it that way for you and once the system is set up it shouldn't require much in the way of maintenance.Yes, there are several reasons, actually ---

1. I'm a business coach and I write and speak on business subjects. I am not a webmaster, nor do I have any interest in becoming one. Likewise, hosting.

2. I am not so sure that there is more money to be made in an isolated website. Selling one's books on Amazon, even at half the income per book, must be significantly more profitable than sales from an isolated website with much less traffic. Same for ebooks and ereports. (Same for auto dealers in the real world.)

3. I'd rather have a single check per month from a consolidator of affiliate programs - like Commission Junction - than having to follow up with 100 or more individual publishers with individual affiliate programs.

4. Neither do I want the security concerns and technical hassles that running my own shopping cart would involve. Paypal avoids that but still requires manual delivery of the product, which is okay for a real book but ebook buyers deserve instant delivery.

I'm really surprised there is nothing out there that covers all this. It seems like a winner to me. If anyone wants to set up a business that covers these things, contact me. Maybe we can jointventure the next killer business!

vangogh
10-22-2008, 12:35 AM
1. I can understand. It's certainly easier to set up if you happen to be a webmaster, but just so you know it's not something that would cost much to have someone else do. Of course even after the site is built you'd still need to promote it.

2. You might be right. It really depend on what you plan for the book/site and how much you really want to put into it. There's nothing wrong with taking advantage of another site's visibility even if it means sharing the profit. On the other hand another site isn't likely to be as interested promoting your book as you would be. To Amazon you're just another product on their digital shelves.

3. Certainly easier to deal with one affiliate than 100, thought it does mean you're limited to selling what that affiliate carries. There are enough large affiliates though that you should be able to find one carrying enough of the books you want to offer even of not every one. However this does bring up the question if you're going to be promoting affiliate books why not just add your book to the mix and displayed it as the featured ebook on the site. You'll need a site to sell the affiliate ebooks.

4. Not an issue. PayPal really does handle everything. You can set PayPal so that as soon as someone completes a purchase they're redirected to the download page for the book. I've purchased a couple of digital products that way and there's no wait. At most the buyer would get an email directing them to the download page. There really isn't any wait. A full cart isn't needed for a single book, just the one buy buton to PayPal.

You could also set this up on WordPress and add a shopping cart plugin if you did need or want a cart. I haven't used the shopping cart plugins, but I'm sure they all make it easy to connect to PayPal.

I'm not too surprised nothing quite like you want exists. Most of the people I've seen with quality ebooks sell them directly. The ones I've seen sold through affiliates seem to be a little older and ones that at one time were sold directly. The tend to move to the mass affiliates once their sales have peaked. That's a pretty big generalization I know and probably not entirely fair. Just what I've observed in some markets.

Spider
10-22-2008, 09:54 AM
Thanks for your observations, VG. #4 is particularly interesting and something I can do. Thanks.

vangogh
10-22-2008, 06:07 PM
Glad to help. When I first heard of PayPal I didn't care for it too much, but the more I've used it as an end user and developer I have to say it's a nice system. It's not perfect, but it can really simplify a lot of things and help get people set up to sell things on their sites.