Affiliate Marketing Podcasting | Affiliate Marketing Domination

How To Start Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate Marketing Podcasting

September 9th, 2010 |

Affiliate Marketing Podcasting

Internet marketing audio has come a long way in the last few years, mostly due to the increased speeds of processors and the ever-widening reach of broadband Internet marketing. And now, being able to tap into the huge audience using iPods, iPhones, iPads and similar devices has made using audio recordings a powerful affiliate marketing strategy as well, thanks to affiliate marketing podcasts.

Marketing podcasts, whether for use in affiliate marketing or any other online marketing, is simply good, solid content delivered in an audio format – usually MP3 files. These can range from simply reading your articles or blog posts and recording your rendition on your computer to full-blown audio productions with audio overlays, background music, lead-ins and exits, etc. To illustrate the point, think of the old radio news bulletins at one end of the spectrum and the old radio dramas at the other end. If you’re old enough to remember radio shows like the Green Hornet, The Shadow, etc then you’ll recall they used voice, music, sound effects and more to put together each production.

And while that took a professional studio and a great number of people to produce in those days, now your affiliate marketing podcasts can feature all that and a lot more just using today’s audio editing software and a few commercial sound files from any number of sources. Music tracks, sound effects collections and all the software you’ll ever need are all available online, and a bit of searching will reveal a lot of these resources that can be downloaded for free – even your production software for basic jobs!

But when you start affiliate marketing, or at least when you first incorporate podcasting into your affiliate marketing mix, keep your audios simple and easy to understand. Aim for 3 – 5 minutes in length at first, as this gives you sufficient time to deliver solid content without being long enough to create huge files that may need special handling. Without delving overly into the audio format specifications, it’s enough to say you want to render your audios in MP3 format using 16-bit recording at 44.1 Khz – your software will have these settings available, so just choose those when you come to those options.

Once you’ve created and uploaded your affiliate marketing podcasts to your hosting account, there are two common ways to make them available to your target market. The first, and easiest at first, is to use them on your affiliate marketing blogs, either with the text version of the article or with a summary of what the podcast is about. There are a variety of plugins for you blog to enable podcasting, so look for one that also creates the podcast RSS feed for you as well.

If you’re more advanced or just technically-inclined, you can also embed the audios anywhere you like on your blogs, static web pages, etc, and then create your own RSS feed for them in the established .XML file format. Details on the exact format for building your own podcast feeds can be found at iTunes and other podcast directories.

When you’ve created your affiliate marketing podcasts and your audio feed, it’s time to submit that feed to the major podcast directories like iTunes, Podcast Alley and Podcast Ready. And once they’ve approved and listed your feed, there’s no need to update them with each additional podcast you add – they’ll check your feed at regular intervals to see if you’ve included any new podcasts since they last spidered the feed.

Now not only have you added Internet audio to your blogs as another method of content delivery, but you’ve expanded your potential affiliate marketing reach to include the millions of users at the podcast directories each month. Depending on the niche you’re affiliate marketing in, this could become a major and lucrative source of targeted traffic, so don’t skip using affiliate marketing podcasts starting today!

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Marketing mentor and speaker Doug Champigny is a huge advocate of using Internet audio and video in your marketing mix, including using affiliate marketing podcasts to reach a wider audience than your competition is targeting. Doug is the author of the powerful guide to podcasting and video blogging your way to success as an online marketer, and makes his affiliate marketing podcast downloads available as a free feed. Watch for marketing mentor Doug Champigny speaking at a live event in your area soon!

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