AP 0442: How Do I Handle Links in Ebooks?

AskPat 442 Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 442 of AskPat. I don't know why I did that. Thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you and your time and I also appreciate Jonathan's question today.

But before we get to that, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is ZipRecruiter.com. So hey, if you are a solopreneur or you're looking to expand your team, any kind of staff your trying to hire, go to ZipRecruiter.com because it makes it incredibly easy. It takes away the headache of finding the right candidates for your position that you're trying to fill. It just makes it easy because you can just put the description of who you're looking for in one spot and it sends it out to all of the most important, I think over a hundred actually, different job sites out there. It actually filters and finds the best candidates for you. It just, like I said, finding new people in your business to fill in different roles is an incredibly stressful part and costly sometimes, so you want to make sure that you do it fast, you do it well, and do it without the headaches. Head on over to ZipRecruiter.com/Pat for free. You can use this tool to help you find the next perfect hire. So again, ZipRecruiter.com/Pat.

Right. Here's today's question from Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hi Pat. This is Jonathan Hamilton from the UK. Hope you're well. I have a blog at Best27InchMonitor.com. It's quite a new niche site, and it's monetized using Amazon affiliate links. Now my question is, I have a number of downloadable ebooks, and Amazon don't allow you to have affiliate links in any ebooks. So my question for you is what method do you recommend to putting links into ebooks? Or do you recommend not using them at all? It'd be great to hear your thoughts. Thanks Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jonathan, what's up? Thank you so much for the question. I hope you are well too. Amazon, yes. Ebooks, not really encouraged for including links to Amazon products within those ebooks, but there is a specific solution I can share with you. This isn't going to take very long, but I think this is the best solution. That is, essentially, you want to create a resource page on your website that you then reference within your ebook as much as you'd like. Whenever you come out with a product or mention it in a particular ebook, no matter which ebook it is, you send people over to this particular page on your website and on that page, you include the most updated links and products, and you can even include other calls to actions in there as well.

What this does is, it's beneficial for your readers because they know that when they go to this particular website that the most updated product is there. People know that an ebook didn't come out that day, essentially, and there are potentially dead links in there or links to old products. But you can ensure that the people who read this particular ebook of yours, have the most updated links and get to see the latest products by going to this particular URL. On that URL, like I said, it's a resource page which includes images, pictures, more information, perhaps videos, and other things that you can include to really drive home that these are the products that they want, these are updated, and all the best information is there. That's it. So the links for Amazon would be included on that resource page, and then the link to the resource page would be included in the ebook.

This is cool because if you do have to update anything, it's just on that one particular page. You don't have to reprint, even though you're not printing 'cause it's digital, but you don't have to re-upload a new version of that ebook to change things because certain things have changed in Amazon. You could utilize this resource page, make life so much easier for you, provide even more value to your audience, get people coming from your ebook back to your website to take even more action with you, and you are good as gold.

Now, there are some things that you can do to improve your experience even more, improve the customer experience even more, and increase your potential commissions too. If you go to Geni.us, you will go to a page that gives you access to a tool that allows you to sign up as an Amazon associate for several different countries. So you're in the UK, you'd also be able to sign up for Amazon.com's associate program. Then what Geni.us does is it gives you a special link which you can include on that resource page and that special link, when people click on it, it takes them to their country's store. So if I were to click on it, for example, I'm in the US. I would be taken to Amazon.com and see that particular product, but you would also get commissions on the purchases that I make as a result of clicking through your affiliate link. Currently, unless you use a tool like this, when somebody in a different country clicks your Amazon affiliate link, they go to their country page but then you lose out on that affiliate commission.

So hopefully that helps you. Again, that's Geni.us to get access to that tool. I've used it. I get commissions from the UK now when people from the UK click on particular Amazon.com or Amazon links that then take them to their UK store or Australia store or Italy store. I mean, you have to sign up for these different affiliate programs in these different countries, but you're leaving money on the table if you don't do that. Hopefully that helps you too, Jonathan.

So that answers your question. Hopefully that makes sense. If not, shoot me a message on Twitter at @PatFlynn. Use the #AskPat442 so we can all reference this and continue this conversation on Twitter if you'd like to do so. Thank you again, Jonathan. I wish you all the best. For having your question featured here on the show, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt. Yes, all the way to the UK free of charge, free shipping, because we love the questions that come in and we want to reward those whose questions get featured here on the show. So you'll hear from my assistant Jessica in the next couple weeks to collect your address and all that other stuff, so we can send that to you right away. I also want to thank everybody else out there who's asked questions. This show wouldn't exist without you. If you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, and a chance to win an AskPat t-shirt of course, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask it right there on that page.

I also want to thank today's sponsor which is ZipRecruiter.com. Kind of a fan favorite sponsor here. I know a lot of people who have used this tool very successfully to help make the hiring process so much easier. Whether you're a solopreneur looking to add some new hires to your business for the first time or you have a mother lode of people who work for you already and you're looking to add more. Or maybe replace certain people. You can use ZipRecruiter.com and it makes it incredibly easy for you to just, in one place, post that job description, and it sends it out to over a hundred different job sites and finds the most relevant and best candidates for you, so you can interact with them, communicate, and see if that's the right person for you. So ZipRecruiter does a lot of heavy lifting for you so you don't have to. Check it out for free at ZipRecruiter.com/Pat. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com/Pat.

Thank you so much for listening in, and I appreciate you. Here's a quote to finish off the day from Jimmy Dean. He said, “I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

Love it. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.