Help Sell E-Books to Earn Extra Cash

Okay, so that headline sounds a little scammy. But come on, you know me. I promise it's not! I'm not promising that you'll get rich quick, be able to leave your day job, or earn $5000-$10000 per week, or anything stupid like that. Just a little extra pocket-money, if you're interested.

So, do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? Want to earn some extra cash?

I'm not sure if you've ever noticed, but if you visit many books on Smashwords while you're signed into your Smashwords account, and you scroll right down to the bottom of the page (past the reviews), you might see something similar to this:

(Click the image above to enlarge it)

The text after the "ref=" will be your unique Smashwords username, and the number before the question mark will be the unique ID number of the book on Smashwords.

Go ahead and give it a try, with Stingers, Heritage of Deceit, or A Petition to Magic (you must be signed in to Smashwords first, so create a free account there and sign in, if you haven't already).

So here's how it works:

1. Each book contains a unique URL. If you want someone to buy a book, send them the unique affiliate URL of that book, including "?ref=" and your unique Smashwords username.
2. If the person visits the link you send them, and ends up purchasing the book in the same session, you will earn the stated percentage of the book's list price at Smashwords. 11% is typical, but some books may offer more or less commission, or none at all (free books offer no commission at all). All my books offer 11% commission, at the time of this writing (except Billy's Zombie, which is free).
3. Even if the person ends up not buying that specific book during that session, but buys another qualifying book, you will earn the stated commission (if any) on the book that the person eventually ends up buying.
4. Similarly, even if the person does end up buying the book you sent them to, and then buys another qualifying book during that session, you will earn commission (if applicable) on all books purchased during that session.

As you can imagine, it could end up being quite a lucrative proposition for you!

Smashwords accrues your income immediately, as you sell books, but "banks" all money owing to you until such time as you have at least USD$10 in your account. Then, once a quarter, you will be paid the amount owing to you (if it's over USD$10) into your PayPal account.

So what do you say: do you want to help me sell some books?

If any of the above is unclear, or you need help getting started, just hit me up in the comments below, and I'll try my best to help you out!