The BBC technology news feed reports that UK consumers have spent a record-breaking £1.52bn on titles in 2007, up 25% on last year and with two weeks of sales yet to be counted – that’s a lot of sales revenue. A whopping £30.4m a week in fact on average with the Christmas run up seeing much higher figures. I don’t know what the split is between high street and online sales – that’d be an interesting statistic.
With more than 78m titles sold that’s an average unit selling price of about £19.50 (about £16.60 without the VAT). Now, say you partner with amazon and you’re on the 7% tier that gives average commission of £1.16 per title. Use direct links successfully and you’ll earn up-to 10% giving £1.66.
Having shifted more than a few copies of specific game titles myself in the last month or so I’m fairly convinced it’s a profitable niche for affiliates. I know the consoles sell like hot cakes (and that stacks of merchants choose not to pay much, if any, commission on them) but the games market is way bigger than I’d imagined.
Now this might not be news to you but as someone who doesn’t play video games at all I’ve previously not been too interested in promoting them aggressively. With the likes of the Nintendo DS Lite being cleverly targeted at the mass market with the likes of this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUgemPGvUuo[/youtube]
there should be a few niches within the big video game niche to target. Publish a smart wordpress blog, find your USP and give it a go.
Any tips for a virgin video game affiliate will be gratefully received and worthy of a mention!
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