Affiliate Profits With Downloadable Audiobooks - Product Strategies No Affiliate Should Ignore

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By Jim Musselwhite

Affiliates looking to bolster their product line should first have a perspective of the downloadable audio book (audio book subscription) market size. Audio books are now a $2 billion industry, which has enjoyed a compound average growth rate of over 100% since 2004. Amazon is the undisputed leader in the worldwide book marketplace, online or offline. Barnes & Noble is another very popular and highly visited audio book market place on the Internet.

But here is the interesting point.

In 2005, the leading audio book download (audio book subscription) company was Audible.com, with sales of $65 million. That sales figure is exclusively downloadable audio books. Interestingly, that $65 million represents only 3% share of the total audio book market size, meaning that the vast majority of the audio book marketplace is is still a land grab. Affiliates who quickly seize the opportunity to weave audio book products into their niche sites will reap the rewards.

Let's examine how affiliates can implement this strategy:

Go Wide: With thousands of audio books (audio book subscription) available for download, with more coming daily, an affiliate marketer has an almost limitless choice of market niches into which she can build in audio books for added monetization. There are dozens of audio book categories that already overlay popular affiliate niches (e.g. business, health and recreation, self help) as well as subcategories (e.g. management, motivation, sex & relationships).

The challenge is certainly not finding applicable audio book titles, rather it is building out niche sites as fast as possible with as much relevant audio book content as possible. Fortunately, the technology is available today to quickly and easily add customized audio book content to virtually any affiliate web site.

Don't have a niche web site? Just select a topic and build around an audio book category. Of course, you'll want to add articles and reviews to distinguish your web site and create value for your visitors over and above the availability of audio book download titles.

Go Deep: Think about your last visit to Barnes & Noble or Borders store. If you looked for a specific audio book title, it was highly unlikely that you would have found it since these stores carry only a tiny fraction of what is available. You could order it online, but the odds are that you would have to wait a few days for the order to arrive on CD.

Now imagine how lucrative it would be for you as an affiliate if you could offer exactly what your visitor was searching for. Visitors could find their audio book of choice directly from within your niche web site, something they would never have been able to accomplish through a conventional audio book store. For example, there is a far greater chance of selling audio books on "learning foreign exchange" from a foreign exchange site than there is at a conventional bookstore or even a generalized audio book (audio book subscription) site. The ability to go deep into these niches is the key to affiliate profitability.

Optimize for search engines while avoiding duplicate content: If you are concerned that Google (and other search engines) duplicate content filters will shut you down for page after page of audio book title content, you can relax. Downloadable audio book (audio book subscription) content distribution technology is available today to ensure that every page of audio book content on your site is unique.

Tools are available from Spoken Network that make it almost infinitely impossible to get the same page twice. For example, if 100 page were generated with this tool, the chances of generating a page that has been created for someone else previously are over ten billion to one. Your audio book (audio book subscription) affiliate site is a "content magnet" for the search engines.

The search engines love original content. With the ability to publish unique pages of audio book (audio book subscription) titles in an instant, the search engines will very likely rank your pages higher once they spider your content.

Maximize commissions for profit: Amazon has long held a leading position in affiliate programs for book sales. Yet Amazon's single digit affiliate commissions pale in comparison to the newer audio book content suppliers that have entered the market. So monetize your niche sites with more lucrative commissions. And for those with pure content sites (articles, reviews), add Google Adsense ads to the sites you create. With such strong audio book content, it's quite likely that your Adsense revenue will skyrocket. Even if you never sell an audio book.

Yes, go wide AND go deep. Affiliates just starting out with limited resources would be advised to start slowly with a few niche sites (go deep) and later expand to other niches as resources and time permit (go wide).

Main Benefits to Affiliates

* Monetize your affiliate sites further through audiobook sales and high commissions

* Offer a highly tailored set of products for your customers

* Customer affordable, with substantial savings versus audiobooks on CD

* Usually a non-subscription model offered by audiobook content suppliers (no ongoing commitment)

* Instant access 24/7 enabling sales to be generated all the time with NO affiliate involvement (passive revenue)

* Tools to enable affiliates to sell directly off their own site. The customer thinks he is buying direct from the affiliate site.

Jim Musselwhite is the owner of several popular information websites offering a wide array of products and services and valuable information content. His latest learning resource http://www.myaudiocenter.com/ offers affiliates all the tools they need to sell thousands of the highest quality downloadable audiobooks on all major subjects.

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