Selling on WordPress – Part Two

Posted on by LittleFears

Today’s post is more a follow-up blog with some further useful ideas and tips for writers and artists on WordPress. Let’s start with a link to my first post, Selling on WordPress from two weeks ago.

Selling on WordPress – The original blog post

It turns out. I was right on the mark. Selling your own products is something that doesn’t come natively to most of the artists and writers that commented. In fact all of them now I’m reading over them… So, know that you’re not alone with your sales issues.

Affiliate Links

Priyankaspen asked how I embed affiliate links into my posts. I’ve discussed affiliate links before. The income you get from them is woeful. I’m lucky if I see $100 every three months. But I don’t ‘sell’ other peoples products on this website. I occasionally link to pens and paper. That’s about it (click for an example). If anybody clicks an Amazon affiliate link and buys anything from Amazon in that session, you get a few pennies. A word of caution here. We’ve spoken about affiliate links on blogs a few times. Nobody seems to mind odd links, but when you stuff a blog post with them, it’s like flicking a switch that pisses people off. If you stuff a blog post full of links, you might make a few pennies of the post, but you’re guaranteed to lose subscribers.

When you sign up to Amazon or any other affiliate network, you get short links to products. On Amazon.com when you’re signed in to affiliates, you get a bar across the top of each page. I always aim for a text link and embed the link in my post.

Copy the short link off of Amazon, highlight the text and right click, then copy. Go to your WordPress post and highlight the text you want to turn into a link. Click the link icon above. Paste the link into the empty box. That’s it, all done.

Icons

   

Janowrite asked about the icon set at the bottom of my posts. I create the icons myself in GIMP (free image editing software). I then embed the pictures the same way you would any image. Add content, Media, select an image, insert.

Then we add links the same we did with affiliate links. Select the image in the post, click insert link, copy paste in the link you want the image to go too. Handy if you want a book banner you’ve made yourself to link directly to your Amazon author page for example.

Ko-Fi

Forrest asked me about Patreon and tip-jars. Patreon is not for everyone. My tip jar is just a PayPal business link. Setting up a PayPal tip jar is frankly a pain in the arse and far more effort than it should have been.

One thing I do want to change too, though haven’t had time to look at yet is Ko-Fi. It’s a website you set up so people can support you for one-off tips to buy you coffee. Smart idea. Worth a look if you want a tip jar yourself.

https://ko-fi.com

Sales Post

Donna from DMStrachan.co.uk suggested that instead of adding sales announcements to weekly posts, I dedicate a post to new products. So that’s what I did… I’m still adding it to a weekly post… Doh.

Villains & Birdsong

But the focus of the post was far more into the new products. The result is, I had a few email enquiries and I sold three prints right off the bat. So I had some success. A dedicated sales post is better than burying new products. Sounds obvious, but we’re creators, writers and artists. We do have funny ideas about selling our own gear. I’ll get the new art prints on Etsy at full price this week. If anyone still wants a copy at £9 a print, please do drop me a message or email to fears@gmx.co.uk

Another follow up

I will be writing another follow-up blog post on this subject to discuss and link to ideas people had about real-world selling. Until then, looky, icons!

Ko-Fi | Patreon | Etsy | Kindle | Skillshare | Threadless

29 thoughts on “Selling on WordPress – Part Two”

  2. We always try to make sure that every post, blog, whatever, at least in some small way still serves the aim of either gaining reader awareness or selling books. Whether by making a post about us or about the book, or even by adding a footnote to a relatively unrelated post.
    …Aaand as of this A.M. we have almost 1200 words written for “Villains and Birdsong”. Proper credit for the inspiration on the title will be given:-)

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      2. Aha, I always try to refer to people by comment or blog name. Shortened or in full. I kinda figure that’s how people want to be known on the net. 🙂

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  7. Excellent info. I have NO head for business, and frabkly come from the punk rock world where “selling out” is frowned upon. Trying to get over that… Thanks for sharing!!!

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    1. Yeah, man, I feel ya. I think we go far too extreme opposite of selling out though. Where it’s properly detrimental to our own well being. Gotta find the balance man!

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  8. Thanks for sharing this! Sometimes I’m afraid to take the next step because it seems like it’s this overwhelming, scary thing…but these are some simple and straightforward ideas I can look into! 🙂

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  9. Thank You so much for doing this! You’re a huge help. And thanks for the link by my name. 🙂 I’m still thinking about that whole thing….I’m gonna do it today. A tip jar, something. I like the ko-fi thing also. You ROCK!!! I don’t understand how You have time to do all that social media, Your posts and odd jobs. Amazing! Cheers and all that!!!

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    1. Cheers, Forrest. Hope you got a few hits back out of it.

      With regards to social media, I don’t do them all. Medium, Instagram, Twitter and Ello. Ello and Medium are pretty slow but more specific to art and long-form articles. So the only social media I do that gets time is Instagram and Twitter. Most of the rest get an AutoShare or quick share and I barely visit them.

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      2. Ello and Medium are slow! They don’t have the populations of the main networks. Ello, in particular, suffers from a lack of comments. But they are very niche and I like them both heh.

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