Man, I just don’t get this audio book thing everybody is pimping. Cleary I am missing something. The man behind this madness is Paul Smithson. He developed the excellent XSitePro program. I use it. I love it.
Now he has created something called Build an Empire Partner System. To me it just seems like he is building a massive affiliate network, one in which the affiliate pays to play in. And he really cashes in heavy. Real close to multi-level-marketing if you ask me. Am I wrong here?
So the deal is you are pimping audiobooks. For a 30% cut. They also give you the technology to build tons and tons and tons (where have we seen this before?) of webpages. Each splashed with audiobooks (yawn) and Adsense. But word is you pay $1,000 to play. $1,000. Of course, only a few can join, blah, blah, blah.
So it comes back down to driving traffic to these things. I also wonder about the ease of spitting out webpage after webpage. Sure only a chosen few gets to participate, and I totally get the mathmatical improbablility of your site looking like his, but that is still alot of webpages all pimping audiobooks. If 1,000 people build a 100 (easy) pages a day, well, that’s a lot of spam sitting out there. Good luck driving traffic to all these pages that are spewed to the web sewer.
The players may all make tons of money but I honestly just don’t see how unless you have websites or lists that can drive traffic to these things. I can see tons of newbies listening to the list gods drone on and on, quoting stats about how much is projected to be sold in audiobooks and plopping down their 10 benjamins thinking they have struck it rich. Ain’t going to happen. You better be prepared to buy yourself a bunch of traffic and hope the market for these audiobooks is for real. The churn at Audible.com is pretty nasty although it has improved somewhat over the years.
And why don’t they just open up the technology for free and let there be as many affiliates as possible for this? Why limit it? Seems like you would want to sell as many audiobooks as possible. Could you imagine if Shareasale set a limit of 1,000 affiliates and made you pay to play? OK, bad example. What if you took one affiliate program in Shareasale and limited it to 1,000 affiliates and charged them $1,000 to use the “Make a Page” technology? Seems stupid. So why do it here? To make it appear exclusive? Whatever.
Just casting a critical eye on the “next big thing.” I hope those that play can come back and report how they sell 30 audiobooks a day to Granny Lou and Cubicle Carl, have put Amazon, iPod, Wal-Mart and Audible out of business and are making five figures daily. I’m saving my money.
15 responses so far ↓
Si // Nov 14, 2006 at 11:11 pm
I’m very much with you on this Splork. I unsubscribed from their messages as soon as I found out the initial entry fee was at that level.
The launch day has the potential to be very special for them - 1,000 places at $1,000 is a cool $million, not to mention of course that they now also have 1,000 people paying a maintenance fee of $50 per month ;o)
This kind of initial fee and monthly payment might also be the reason why so many are pimping the opportunity around?? ;O)
My personal feeling is that if you are going to take part in this, then the best way forward is to work out the niches that you can supply and then go and find the sites within those niches that have high traffic / good organic listings, and then offer to build them an audio store for free - offer them between 10% and 20% of the revenue. Leave the traffic generation to them - leverage the traffic of the site owners.
Chris // Nov 15, 2006 at 1:06 am
I never caught that it would cost $1,000 up front, I thought it would just cost $49.99 per month, which is pretty reasonable, imho.
It in no way appears to be worth $1,000 plus the monthly fee…
I’m sick of the emails myself. I have almost decided that if I receive another email promoting a “Death of…” Report, or this blasted Build An Empire system, I will start unsubscribing to all of them…
Chris
Splork // Nov 15, 2006 at 1:21 am
I could be wrong, but I swore an email from Phil Wiley came through that let out that it was $1,000. The thing I didn’t know about was the $50 monthly fee. Good grief. Pass.
Si // Nov 15, 2006 at 8:51 am
I tried to ask this question via their support system but didn’t get an answer back - just a sales pitch trying to build up the ’suspense’. So I emailed the guy who put me on to it initially and he came back with the $1,000 fee needed.
I still think that most, if not all, the spots will be taken quite quickly but it’s out of my price range - who else has $1,000 spare to just put down a month before Christmas?
steve // Nov 15, 2006 at 4:28 pm
“who else has $1,000 spare to just put down a month before Christmas?”
There will be plenty, some no-doubt hammering their overdraft or credit cards.
But you’re going to have to deal me out this time.
I’m still waiting for Paul to update xSite Pro. Maybe he can use some of his $million from this venture?
Best,
Steve.
Chris // Nov 15, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Not me, that is for sure.
Chris
Nick // Nov 15, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Just so tired of all these launches. How much money do
these gurus think we have. Anyway I have unsubscribed from
loads of newsletters and I have much more free time. One
expert deserves a mention and that is Dr Andy Williams. He
gives away loads of useful and usable information;
refreshingly he never takes part in this mass launches. More
respect to him
Deke // Nov 15, 2006 at 11:24 pm
If the idea is to pump out tons of pages for ebooks why not just get a datafeed from Audible and create your own web store based on that feed for free?
Audible gives you a cut of any membership fee and offer 12% commissions for any a la carte sale.
As a matter of fact I’ve signed up for their affilate program after reading this post.
Thanks for the tip and your datafeed articles Splork. Keep up the good work.
Charles Heflin // Nov 16, 2006 at 12:16 am
I was approached about this JV opportunity and politely declined.
I just don’t see it working for people unless they, of course, gain the knowledge to rise up in the SE rankings to compete in that market.
Many people will jump on this opportunity thinking that just because they invest $1000 that they will be given an exclusive opportunity.
This is not the case and the main reason why I declined to offer it to SEO 20/20 members.
Too many product launches by too many people.
My suggestion is to unsubscribe from every list that you are on and just keep the ones that you truly trust 100%.
This information overload issue isn’t going anywhere.
As Mike Filsaime said in his recent report “The Death of Internet Marketing”… Pick a course and stay on it and let all distractions go… believe me… You won’t miss out on anything except for a few benjamins gone out of your wallet.
I have chosen search engine optimization *and all the facets within it) because it is the start of all traffic… I am staying the course.
I don’t care what new get rich quick product comes out, gaining traffic from the search engines is the key to making anything work so I will remain focused on that until search engines cease to exist.
All these product launches are a clear distraction to my efforts so I ignore 99% of it.
Best regards,
Charles
Splork // Nov 16, 2006 at 1:04 am
Thanks for weighing in Charles.
Chris // Nov 16, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Great insight Charles. We appreciate it.
You should drop a link in your comment to be put on your list
Chris
steve // Nov 16, 2006 at 11:15 pm
I’m AMAZED, after 6 and a half hours you can still buy in to build an empire. I thought after all the hype this thing would have been sold out long ago. (like in the first hour)
Steve
Gary // Nov 17, 2006 at 3:14 am
Perhaps people have spent so much on earlier crap, they can’t afford it?
Gary
John // Nov 29, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Well, I have one word response - AMAZON
Build An Empire of Audio Books - Manuel Viloria.com // May 1, 2007 at 12:39 pm
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