My ebook contains many links to other sites. Is this an issue, legally or for the customer?

Ben15,

Another thing you should think about: if the links are "live," every one is another invitation for someone to leave your ebook and jump to something else.

One suggestion would be to put all the links in a "Resources" section at the tail end of the book (appendix). You can still reference the companies you're speaking about in the narrative text, but just let the reader know up front that links to all the resources mentioned in the book are found in the appendix. It's not a perfect solution, but it lets the reader know that if she wants to go online to check something out, she can do that later.

Steve

If it's relevant then there are no problems with links on ebooks.

As long as any aff links are there to add quality then there isn't a problem. One thing i believe is that you should refer people to products or services that you use/have used.

What i ended up doing though was creating a resources page at the end of each chapter this was so that it remained as content.

The advantage of having a resource page on your site is that you can keep it up to date and remove dead links.

If i was doing this i would have a page in the book that was open and honest saying the net moves that quickly that developments are being made all the time, if you would like me to keep you upto date on the best new releases join my list. (Not those words but you get the idea).

You've then got a second list of people happy to recieve your mail.

Eric

Your eBook can contain as many links as you want. As long as you offer quality information, this shouldn't be a problem. Since these are not affiliate links, it's fine to use them throughout your content. However, if there is something you can remove, just do it. Consider setting up a page that lists all links.

This isn't a problem. You should check that you follow the ToS for any affiliate program. Amazon does not allow affiliate links from inside ebooks but Clickbank and JVZoo do, for example.

It is a very common tactic to include affiliate links in your ebooks for recommended products. If you want to have total transparency you can include 2 llinks affiliate/non-affiliate and leave it up to your readers. Just tell them if they use the affiliate link it helps you.

You shouldn't really recommend any questionable products you are not familiar with. You can't be responsible for the end user's experience if you made a good faith recommendation based on your own assessment. That doesn't mean people won't get pissed off and blame you for problems.

But if you recommend Hostgator with an affiliate link and the person has a bad experience with Hostgator, that can happen.



You should use cloaked URLs for any affiliate links in ebooks.

That way you can change the destination of the link if you find a new program or the affiliate link changes.

It is best to use your own domain to keep control and brand the links. i.e. NOT bit.ly in an ebook. A blog comment maybe but not an ebook.

So yourdomain.com/besthost points to your Hostgator affiliate URL.

But after a bad experience with Hostgator you decide to recommend Bluehost. You can go to your redirect plugin and change the destination URL to your Bluehost affiliate link and all the ebooks will now point there instead.


It depends, if you have a lot of recommended resources you can add many links and options. You can do this in an end "Resources" section to keep them handy and out of the way of your ebook if you want.


Mahlon

Put in the ebook only link to a page of your blog where you give the free resource. This is traffic and then you have control of the link.

I like ebooks where you are given links to find more information. I don't have to search it out then.

My suggestion would be to keep your links, but make absolutely sure that it opens in another window.

Also I would suggest that you use a link rotator so you can change the real link if one of the services you link to changes or a better one comes along. It's just easier to change the link once than 500 times :-)

Thank you all for the helpful information. I am looking into creating an extensive resource, but I feel the links being used throughout the book actually adds to the reading experience.

You may want to put a short disclaimer at the start of your ebook saying that you may make commissions if someone buys a product or service through the links in the ebook.

I can't see any reason why putting links in an ebook would upset product creators - unless you were going to do something underhanded - but always read and understand their affiliate Terms of Service.

70 links throughout 40 pages is not too bad so long as you have several paragraphs per page and the links are relevant to the content and unique. For example if you were writing about domain names and you mentioned GoDaddy and Namecheap together than I would choose one sevice and continue. I would then put both links at the end of the ebook on a resources page. That way your not wasting space in your actual content but still giving people a choice of providers.

I saw something interesting the other day in an ebook; The writer had two links to choose from. One was a straight link, one was an affiliate link. He encouraged us to click whichever link we liked. If we thought he had added good value we were invited to "consider" supporting him by using the affiliate link.

I found that extremely respectful (especially the invitation to "consider" support) and a breath of fresh air. I thought it was a class act and even though obviously risky it added to his credibility and built a bit more trust.

p.s. I clicked on the affiliate link.