This free niche idea is a definite money maker. The main reason I believe that is because the competiton is downright weak. This site, full of only affiliate links about the keywords, “rent audio books” and “rent books on tape” is ranked #5!
As I said before, I would register a new domain (always use a domain, don’t use a free blog from blogger), and that should be your only cost unless you buy some links. Shouldn’t be too necessary though.
Keywords: Rent Audio Books and/or Rent Books on Tape
Competition: 29,500 and 3,250 (very low)
Price per click: Adwords: $3.50+
Search Volume: Overture: about 200/month
The search volume on this keyword set is very low currently, but it matches the competition. Low competition should mean low search volume. However, this one is set to rise sharply and quickly.
The audio book industry is going to be experiencing a major surge in the coming years. iPod’s and other mp3 players are getting very popular and everyone can afford one (less than $50) so buying one to just listen to books is completely understandable.
Companies like Playaway are set to take the market by storm. The school I work at has bought 3 of them and is looking to buy 10 a month over the next year. Multiply that by many schools in many districts. You’ll have many parents, teachers and librarians searching for the ability to rent audio books. This doesn’t include the people who commute an hour one way that want to rent books on tape and be able to listen all the way to work.
For a great list of companies that have affiliate programs look at the site above and find out where most of their affiliates are coming from…most look like CJ.com links to me. The site listed above is a PR 2 and was registered in August of 2004. You’ll have a hard time overcoming that age, but with a huge lack of links, they are setting themselves up for being overtaken.
You should be able to, with a very informative site, become the expert in this area and get a lot of .edu and a few .gov sites to link to you. This will help you become even more established as the expert. I would write some articles, submit them, then cite on your page that you have articles written on a variety of topics.
Hopefully that idea helps you make some money, get out there and start writing great content about renting audio books online and renting books on tape! Let me know how your site does, and what your domain name is and I’ll give you a free link on this page! (It is already themed around your keywords!)
Hey, I’m going to do this one. Can I post my link and have you link to it?
Sure Jose, just post a link to your site and I’ll put it in the post above. Thanks! Anyone else want a free link?
You have a good idea, but what about sites like audible.com, where people can pay for a subscription and download a certain number of audio books per month? They would be your real competition for the younger market who already have ipods to play the audio books on. Your site would be suited to older Internet users who don’t feel comfortable downloading audio books, but still want more selection than what they find at the local library.
Julie, good point. They really need to try to appeal to the iPod market. I don’t know if there are sites that do downloads, but they should definitely get into that market.
Okay, I just picked up a domain. Now I need to get the domain pointed to my shared servers at BlueHost, get affiliatd with the audio book producers, write some copy rich with keywords, and select a WordPress template heck, maybe I can get away with Kubrick on this one… Yeah, build at WordPress.com without any links, then transfer to BLueHost and paste in links. This almost feels like it could be done in a day. I’ll give it a shot! It’s hard to accept that I need to sleep sometimes. I have sooo much to do! I’ll sleep on Saturday. Beautiful. Thanks!
Okay it’s been 3 days…this is what I’ve got so far:
http://my-audio-book.info
http://audio-book-directory.info
Lots more work to do before driving traffic.
I just wanted you to see some of what your post has inspired.
All the best, Brandon. Nia.
Nia,
Good looking sites so far, let me know how they do in a week or two when they get indexed…I noticed on the directory that the Amazon links aren’t affiliate links 🙁
Brandon, Thanks for the feedback. This is waaay too long a response so I’m okay if you skip it. It’s all good. 🙂
I cleaned up the directory pages…leaving out the “Adult…” and the “Christian…” and “How to Get a Girl” and all the Cache/Similar lines. Dropped the mp3 news and amazon pages. They made the site junky. This site is geared to the institutional purchaser. Dry, clean lines, a directory of the goods period.
If I really get into the “nothing personal, only business” motto I may stick the not-my-cup-of-tea categories back in. Heck this isn’t about me. This is about giving the people what they’ve been programmed to want. All I’m doing is riding the wave, recognizing what is and using it to my advantage.
Now I guess I need to create an AdWords campaign for each page and let each page be the landing page for it’s particular campaign. Maybe I’ll just pre-select (based on the relatives states of what keywords searchers are using)…probably the best is to use long tail key words (ready to buy mode) however right now I guess I need to build traffic such that I can get those affiliate links from CJ. AdWords is going to have to wait. I have a lot of site work to do yet.
Right now I do have an affiliation with Simply Audio, Learn Out Loud, and Amazon so I’ll go through and make those ads affiliate ads. I’ll also follow the other links and see if they lead to a companies that pay publishers…sign up where appropriate.
I don’t know if I can put meta tags on each page but I can definnitely put them in for the site in general. I’ve seen something in the index.php to that effect.
Yeah this is going to take hours. I’ll search my targeted blogs, forums, & podcasts for reinforcement and expansion of my knowledge base in this area.
The other site needs a bit more copy to fill in the gaps. Since it’s basically a static website on a blogging platform I don’t think there is as great a need for original writing so if I replace the ezine/go copy with my own work it will be in my spare time. Ha!Spare time?
It’ll take me at least a week to link up the directory with the links that I do have and do that other piddly but needed stuff. Such tedious work! Thanks for giving me a week or two to get it indexed. 🙂
All the best, Nia.
Brandon,
I’m not doing anything with the audio book blogs right now. I’m spending my time driving traffic and placing/testing ads at 4+ other sites. I’ll get back to the audio sites once as soon as the marketing campaign of the others becomes more systematic. Should take just a few ore days. (Barring no more MEMES)
Thank you Brandon. Thank you…oh, this is what I’m doing: http://me2ultimate.com
Take good care. All the best, Nia.