How to Get Sales for Your Direct Store
How to Get Sales for Your Direct Store
Whether you already have fans or you're starting from zero, here's how to bring people to your direct store, turn them into customers, and build sales that grow on their own.
The challenge of selling direct
A direct store earns you more on every sale, but it only sells to the people who show up. Before getting into tactics, it helps to be clear about where your customers will come from.
On your own website, every visitor is one you brought
Big retailers have shoppers browsing all day long. A standalone website has none of that. Nobody stumbles onto it while shopping for something else, so every visitor arrives because your newsletter, a post, an ad, or someone you know sent them there.
That means generating an audience falls completely on you. It's the single biggest reason direct stores stall, and the reason this guide exists.
Why Curios puts your work in the marketplace
This is exactly why every product you publish on Curios is automatically listed in the Curios marketplace. You get the benefits of a direct store, 100% of your list price and every buyer's email, and you also get a place where new readers and fans can discover you without you sending them.
Discovery on Curios grows with you. Curios recommends work to fans based on what they've bought, claimed, and recommended, so each sale and each recommendation helps your work reach more of the right people. Paid plans also increase how visible your work is in recommendations.
Marketplace discovery is a bonus, not a plan. The creators who do best on Curios are the ones who keep promoting their work to their own audience, and everything below shows you how.
The one rule: point everything at your direct store
No matter which tactics you use, make sure the attention you create leads to your work on your direct store. When it does, you earn the full sale and you capture the buyer's email, so every bit of effort pays you twice: revenue now, and a customer you can reach again for your next release.
Use your Curios direct checkout links everywhere you promote, so a reader can go from your post or email straight to buying.
If you already have an audience
If people already follow you, direct sales are built for you. You don't need to find buyers. You need to tell the ones you have where to buy, and keep telling them. How you do that depends on where your audience lives.
Your newsletter: the easiest win
If your audience is on your email list, this part is straightforward. Send a few emails letting subscribers know your work is available direct and why buying there helps you. A simple launch sequence works well:
- Announce: what's available, what makes the direct version special, and a buy button for each format.
- Remind: a few days later, share a sample, a recommendation from a reader, or a behind-the-scenes story.
- Last call: if you're running a launch price or a pre-order bonus, tell subscribers before it ends.
After launch, make sure your direct store is featured at some level in every email you send, whether that's a banner, a "Where to buy" line, a P.S., or a link in your footer. Readers who weren't ready this week may be ready next month.
Social media: repetition is the strategy
Social platforms only show each post to a fraction of your followers, so a single announcement is easy to miss. Plan on posting about your direct store over and over. It often takes many dozens, sometimes hundreds, of posts on a topic before most of your audience has actually seen it.
- Say the same thing many different ways: quotes, short clips, covers, reader reactions, behind-the-scenes, and "buy direct" reminders.
- Put your direct store link in your bio, pin a post about it, and add it to every video description.
- Don't worry about repeating yourself. Your followers see far less of your content than you think.
Illustration. On social, the platform decides how many followers see a post. On your list, everyone gets it.
Move your followers onto a list you own
Followers on a social platform belong to the platform. It decides who sees your posts, and it can change the rules at any time. An email or SMS list is a direct line to your audience that no algorithm can throttle.
Make lead capture a constant part of your social posting. Offer something worth signing up for, like a free story, bonus chapter, or early access, and give it away as a free claim on Curios so every follower who takes it becomes an email address you own.
Give fans a reason to buy direct
Most fans are happy to buy direct once they know it matters to you. Tell them plainly that buying from your store means you keep the whole sale, then sweeten it with things they can only get there:
- Early access or pre-orders before the book is available anywhere else.
- Signed copies, special editions, and merch.
- Bundles, like the ebook and audiobook together, or a whole series at once.
- Bonus content, like a deleted scene, an epilogue, or character art.
If you're starting from scratch, or want to grow
If you don't have an audience yet, your first job is to get out of that situation. Always, and forever, be focused on growing your contact list. Every tactic below is about creating awareness and turning it into people you can reach again.
Borrow someone else's audience
The fastest way to grow is to get in front of people who already follow someone like you.
- Ask creators you know. If you know creators in your genre or space, ask if they'd share your work in their newsletter. Offer to do the same for them.
- Reach out to creators you don't know. Find their contact details and send a short, personal note. Say what you like about their work, why your work would suit their audience, and what you can offer in return. Keep it brief, and don't take silence personally.
- Collaborate on social. Duets, stitches, joint lives, guest posts, and shared giveaways put you in front of a new audience at once.
- Pay for exposure when it makes sense. Newsletter sponsorships, influencers, and promo services can get your work seen faster. Make sure every one of them links to your direct store.
- Swap with your peers. Two creators with similar audiences can feature each other, and with the Curios affiliate program you both earn on the sales you drive.
Give ten times more than you ask
A good rule of thumb: for every time you ask for a sale, give something ten times. Share behind-the-scenes looks at your process. Create great content and give it away for free. Help other creators in whatever way you can, whether that's sharing their launches, recommending their work, or answering their questions.
Generosity builds trust, and trust is what makes people say yes when you do ask. It also makes other creators much more likely to share your work when you need it.
Post as yourself, and as a fan
You can and should have social accounts for yourself as a creator. Consider adding fan-style accounts too: accounts that talk about your work alongside other work in the same genre, like a book recommendation account for your corner of fantasy or romance.
These accounts can be nameless and faceless. They focus on the stories, the characters, and the moments readers love, not on you as a talking head. That makes them easier to create content for, and they reach readers who are looking for their next book, not for an author to follow.
Choose content that keeps working
Not all posts last equally long. Short-form posts on TikTok and Instagram tend to get their views in the first few days, and those platforms rarely show them again. Searchable content, like YouTube videos, can keep being found and watched for years.
Keep posting short-form to stay visible, but invest some of your effort in content with a long shelf life. Every piece that keeps working is one you don't have to make again.
Create a lead magnet that sells your main work
A lead magnet is free, premium content you give away in exchange for an email address. It's one of the best ways to grow your list, as long as it's related to what you're actually trying to sell.
If you're selling a book, write a great novella with the same characters and leave it on a cliffhanger that's resolved in your book. It introduces readers to you, your style, and your characters, so by the time they're asked to buy, they know they'll love it. That takes the risk out of buying.
With Curios: list the novella as a Free (Claim) product, so you capture the email of every reader who claims it. Then set up an automation that offers your book, with an optional discount, when a reader claims the novella or finishes reading it.
A lead magnet that does its job: free story in, email captured, book sold.
Be everywhere, but send traffic only to your store
Make your work available far and wide. The more stores, libraries, and platforms your work is on, the larger the surface area where someone could discover you on their own.
But don't send your own traffic to those other stores. When you spend your time and money on attention, sending it to a retailer means a smaller cut, no customer email, and no way to reach that reader again. Let other stores be where people find you, and keep everything you promote pointed at your direct store.
Paying for growth: ads and affiliates
Paid growth can speed everything up, but it works best on top of the foundations above, not instead of them.
Treat ads as a tool, not a foundation
Ads can be a tricky beast. They're expensive, and they're temporary: when your budget for the day runs out, your work stops showing. Organic content, on the other hand, stays live and can keep being found.
It's always best to build your business so that over time you rely on ads less, not more. Use ads to accelerate growth and to feed your contact list, so that each campaign leaves you with customers you can reach for free next time.
Illustration. Ads stop when the money does. Searchable content can keep working for years.
Make your offer big enough to advertise
Ads work best for higher-priced offers, because you can afford to spend more to win each sale and still come out ahead. A low-priced ebook rarely earns back what it costs to win a buyer with ads. A larger order can.
The way to get there is bundling. Sell a whole series together, combine the ebook and audiobook, or add signed copies, special editions, and merch. Bundles make the offer more desirable to buyers and raise the value of each order, which gives you more room to spend on ads.
Example figures, before print and shipping costs. A bigger order gives you room to pay for the attention that wins it.
Run Meta ads the right way
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) still offers some of the best ad targeting available. To make it work for you:
- Connect Meta Pixel and the Conversions API. Meta needs real purchase data to find more people like your buyers. On Curios, both take about five minutes to connect.
- Optimize for purchases. Choose Purchase as your conversion event, so Meta looks for buyers, not just clickers.
- Be patient. It can take Meta a few months to get seasoned and learn what kind of person actually buys your work. Early results are rarely the final results.
- Watch closely and keep adjusting. Monitor your ads often. Change the creative, try a different landing page or offer, and adjust the message as you go to dial in what works.
- Retarget and find lookalikes. Show ads to people who visited but didn't buy, and to new audiences that look like your existing buyers.
Let affiliates sell for you
Affiliate programs pay people a share of the sales they bring you, so you only pay when a sale actually happens. Every affiliate program works on the same idea: can you motivate people who are great at building attention to point some of it at you?
With Curios: turn on the Curios affiliate program and choose which products to include. You set the commission an affiliate earns, from 5% to 50% of the sale, and an optional discount for their audience. Your products become available to affiliates, influencers, and other creators across the Curios network, and you can share your catalog link with anyone you'd like to promote you. Curios tracks every referral for 90 days and pays affiliates for you.
Early in your career, consider offering a generous commission. A high payout can open the door to getting featured in other creators' newsletters, or make working with an influencer affordable, because you only pay when it works.
Other affiliate programs, like TikTok Shop's, can work well too, if you can meet their shipping and seller requirements.
The marketing snowball
Put it all together and you get a cycle that grows on itself. Your marketing effort and spend lead to sales. Those sales fund more marketing. That marketing leads to more sales, which fund even more marketing, and the whole thing spirals outward.
The marketing snowball. Selling direct makes it spin faster, because you keep 100% of each sale and every buyer's email.
Why selling direct makes it spin faster
Two things make the snowball grow faster when you sell direct. First, you keep 100% of your list price, so each sale gives you more to reinvest than a royalty would. Second, you capture every buyer's email, so each turn of the cycle leaves you with a bigger list you can sell to for free. The customers you win today make your next launch cheaper and easier.
Measure, reinvest, repeat
Keep an eye on what's working using your Curios analytics, statements, and recommendations, and on your ad results in Meta. Put more of your time and money into the channels that bring sales, and cut the ones that don't. Small, steady improvements compound over time.
Things creators often forget
A few small habits that make a big difference over time.
Launch with momentum
Open pre-orders early and build up to release day, so your launch lands with a burst of sales instead of a trickle. Send advance reader copies to early readers so recommendations and buzz are ready when you launch.
Use limited-time offers
A launch price, a coupon code for your newsletter, or a discount on book one of a series gives people a reason to buy now instead of someday.
Sell to the customers you already have
Your easiest next sale is to someone who already bought from you. Offer the next book in the series when a reader finishes one, and upgrades like bundles when they add something to their cart. Curios automations can do this for you.
Show social proof
Share what readers say about your work in your posts, emails, and website, and feature your best recommendations on Curios. New readers trust other readers.
Stay consistent
Most growth comes from showing up regularly for months, not from one big moment. Pick a pace you can keep, whether that's a weekly email and a post a day or something smaller, and stick with it.
Common questions
How long until I see sales?
If you already have an audience, you can see sales as soon as you tell them where to buy. If you're starting from scratch, expect it to take months of steady effort to build momentum. That's normal, and every contact you add along the way makes the next step easier.
Should I link to my books on other retailers?
Keep your books available on other retailers so readers can discover you there, but point your own promotion at your direct store. That's where you keep the full sale and the customer's email.
Do I need to run ads?
No. Many creators grow through newsletters, social posting, collaborations, and affiliates alone. Ads can speed things up, especially for bundles and higher-priced offers, but they work best once you know your offer converts.
How often should I email my list?
Often enough that your readers remember you. For many creators that's every week or two, with a few extra emails around a launch. What matters most is that every email gives readers something they value.
Will Curios find readers for me?
Curios helps. Your work is listed in the marketplace and recommended to fans who are likely to enjoy it, and the affiliate program can put it in front of new audiences. But discovery is a shared effort, and the creators who grow fastest are the ones who keep promoting their own work.
Where to go from here
Every tactic in this guide works better with a growing list of customers you own. Learn how to build one, or go back and make sure your store is ready.
Build Your Customer Email List
Tips on how to grow a massive customer list.
How to Sell Direct
Set up direct sales on your own website or on Curios.
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