Using Wealthy Affiliate to Learn How to Sell My Books

492 followers

Updated 8 years ago

Tomorrow will be two weeks since I was called into a meeting at work and told that the call center I've been working at for almost six years would be closing its doors and "moving in another direction." I looked around at my co-workers. Some of them were crying and others were shocked. Still processing the fact that I would be picking up my last paycheck in a week, I went home and pulled out the stack of children's books I had written last year.

It had been my daughter's idea to write the series. We wrote a poem together about Galapagos Tortoises because she wants to go study them when she's older. We had so much fun researching the islands that we continued to learn about other countries. After a few weeks of cooking ethnic food, watching videos of dances from around the world, and combing through hundreds of pictures, my daughter asked me, "Why don't we write books about this stuff?"

So we did. We created "The World Adventures Series," and they've been sitting on Amazon ever since, hardly moving. We did a local book signing that was moderately successful and I went to my youngest son's school and read to a couple classes but other than a small burst here or there, I really didn't know how to sell them.

I had tried and failed a couple times to build a website but the truth is I'm just not very tech savvy. My husband would try to help to the best of his ability but I didn't even know the right terms to articulate to him what I was trying to do. We'd both get frustrated and it caused a lot of unnecessary tension between us. When I tried to contact support they would respond in prewritten letters loaded with jargon I couldn't begin to decipher. I just gave up.

But 13 days ago, I sat in a group meeting, listening to my supervisor tell us what great sales reps we all were and that she'd be happy to write letters of recommendation. My co-workers began to chatter among themselves about other places that may be hiring seasonal help and how to draw unemployment, but I knew I would not be standing in that line with them. I refused to let that happen.

I immediately went home and started researching how to make money from home and checking each operation for bad reviews. I only found one for WA and even though I had never heard of the company before, I read it thinking, "What is this guy complaining about?" He was complaining about the first couple lessons being too easy, by the way. If that's the worst he could come up with, I wanted to find out more.

The lessons were walking me through how to do all the things I tried to do before and failed! Kyle's step-by-step courses and videos were so easy that even I could do it! I wish I could describe the feelings of relief and excitement every time I learned how to do something I never thought I could. Every page, every ad, and every link brought me one step closer to a dream I had already given up on.

After only two days, I had learned enough to launch worldadventuresseries.com (I immediately knew this was my new home and became a premium member). I finally have a website that I am proud of to show off my books!

I had no clue how affiliate programs worked before but after reading a few blog posts on the WA site about the benefits and how to do all these "scary" things, like create banners and hyperlinks, I joined Amazon's Affiliate Program. Now, even if my book doesn't sell, I can still potential make a few bucks off of that visitor if they buy something else, cool!

As easy-peasy as the instructions on this site are to follow, I've hit a couple snags. I fought with an image that wanted to grow every time I hit save, I had no idea what plug-ins to look for, and I have managed to accidently reset my password twice. Support was so fast and friendly in their response, by the way. But most of the issues I've had already have a tutorial or blog walking you through it. When I do need more info, the ambassadors and premium members seem to be on standby waiting to help.

Then, this really cool thing happened a couple days ago. My husband asked what I was doing and I casually explained how I was hyperlinking my books to Amazon and then sharing my posts to social media sites and he just smiled and nodded, "You did it. You're doing it."

I am. I'm doing this, I'm living my dream. In thirteen days I went from not knowing what an affiliate was or the differences between a page and a post, to having my books up and selling again. I've also been contacted by teachers in my area who want me to come visit their classrooms, made many connections, and have a strategy for how I am going to thrive.

It doesn't stop there. I've already built 3 more websites and have an entire notebook full of ideas. This is just the beginning. If I can do this, anyone can.

What Are You Waiting For? Go Start Your Adventure!

Katie Kahn

Worldadventuresseries.com