Sales of tickets for the Gospel Brunch at Affiliate Summit are humming along nicely and I wanted to remind everyone who might be interested in going to make sure to get their tickets while the price is low and the tickets are still relatively plentiful.

Early Bird pricing ends on 2/10 and some of the coupons that I have out are expiring on 1/31 at midnite PT.

If you want a coupon code to save $5 on the Early Bird price, you should check your favorite affiliate forum.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

God Bless,

Wade

I finally had the chance to read a book that I was hoping to read on the way home from Affiliate Summit West 2007.

A Practical Guide To Affiliate Marketing by Geno Prussakov (aff link) was everything that it promised to be in it’s title and I recommend it to any affiliate manager who is currently working in the business, as well as anyone who is looking to jump into the industry as a manager. Most importantly, I recommend it to any merchant who is thinking of launching an affiliate program as Geno’s book really effectively walks through all the steps involved in launching a successful affiliate program and managing it to it’s potential.

All phases of launching and managing a program are covered from how to evaluate your readiness to launch a program, selecting a network or software platform, how to structure your initial offer as well as scam proof and motivational incentive programs, and setting up and distributing datafeeds for catalog retail programs.

I personally found the most useful content to be the last 5 chapters of the book:

• Affiliate Manager and Merchant Mistakes
• Mistakes made within the Affiliate Program
• Mistakes made within the website that runs an Affiliate Program
• Ideas for Affiliate Program Promotion

Geno also includes an Appendix featuring an Internet Marketing Acronyms and Abbreviations Glossary. it’s perfect for newbies to the business who don’t yet speak the “Lingo”

Geno is really bright, well educated (Cambridge) guy who is a leader in the business and a Brother in Christ as well.

There is way more to this book than I can describe here, so I recommend that you pick up a copy and read it, then keep it handy for reference.

Order your copy now (aff link) for $18.95 ( I think it’s well worth it. )
God Bless,

Wade Tonkin

Christian affiliates, merchants and folks who are interested in getting into the affiliate marketing industry should definitely consider attending Affiliate Summit West next month in Las Vegas. The event presents some awesome educational sessions as well as top shelf networking opportunities and chances to learn from some awesome people.

Affiliate Summit West Agenda

Christian affiliate marketers and merchants can save 10% on Affiliate Summit registration using the coupon code “CAMA” when they register.

I want to register for Affiliate Summit now and save 10%

The folks at SinglesofFaith.com are offering a special promotion over the next 90 days to help get the program kicked off. During the promotion, affiliates referring more than 10 members per month will earn 50% retroactively and affiliates referring 50 or more members per month will earn 55% commissions on all sales generated during that period.

SinglesofFaith is a truly different Christian dating site in that it is “Kingdom minded.”

The focus in on preparing relationship ready singles to meet their match through service. One of the ways this takes place is in Workdays in inner cities across the United States where the members within 200 miles are encouraged to come out and serve as Christ did. It’s pretty awesome and I am really excited to be involved.

The next SOF Workday will actually be in Las Vegas from 1-5 PM on Saturday, February 23rd - the day before Summit. We are hoping to shoot some really compelling video at the event as SinglesofFaith members join local volunteers in action to help the hurting.

If you are interested in helping, please contact me for details.

You can join the SinglesofFaith affiliate program in Shareasale

God Bless!

Wade Tonkin


Online Event Registration - Powered by www.eventbrite.com

Christian marketers and retailers have a lot to learn from their secular counterparts in my opinion. I look at Christian retail and service related sites daily and in most cases, their marketing methods and strategies just don’t match up? Why is this?

I think that a “Greed Gap” exists that puts Christian retailers behind the 8 ball.

Secular sites are in the game for the money - pure and simple. They embrace that and work to get every possible penny out of their marketing efforts. It’s pretty commonly accepted that most of the innovation in online marketing (that doesn’t come from Amazon) comes from 2 areas - Adult (porn) and Gambling. Why these two verticals? Because the money is HUGE… mind bloggling infact.

Because of this, players in these spaces focus on conversion… they want to convert every visitor into a subscriber, buyer, or player. Each half a percent of their visitor base that buys additionally or doesn’t buy, means a swing of thousands or millions of dollars of revenue. So they watch their metrics, and tweak, and tweak, and tweak constantly to get it right.

We tend to focus more on the ministry aspect of “retail ministry” and miss out on being as aggressive as we possibly can at converting visitors to buyers. A buyer or a member for a Christian retail site, or dating site, etc is a person who can be ministered to by your team, or that you can minister to others as well.

We’re in the “Conversion” business as well… but our conversion has a higher reward.

So let’s all ramp up our efforts and take some inspiration from the “World” here and really look at our sites and our affiliate efforts in 2008 and see where people are falling through the cracks on our sites. And let’s learn from the secular retail world and use that knowledge to impact more people for Christ.

Find some of the leading secular sites in your space and compare how they treat visitors to the way you do. Learn what they do better, make the changes and see what happens.

The payoff will be amazing… and eternal.

God Bless,

Wade Tonkin

I’ve taken a couple of weeks off of the blogging effort and now it’s time to get back in the saddle again and do all I can to make Christian affiliates and merchants more effective in their combined efforts.

Here are some of the exciting things that are going to happen here in 2008:

• Affiliate Summit Gospel Brunch - a major announcement is coming on this - most likely today or tomorrow. It’s going to be awesome.
• Video blogging - I love to write, but I think that in some cases, it can be more powerful to speak the words on camera. The new year is going to bring the increased use of video on this site for daily thoughts, affiliate program reviews, Ask Wade responses andresponses to the latest trends in affiliate an online marketing from a Christian perspective.
• More voices- there are a ton of dedicated and talented Christian folks out there doing affiliate marketing on both sides of the coin. I want you to meet them and learn from them. I think we’ll probably start with Shawn Collins and Joel Comm. If you are interested in appearing on the site in an Interview or Video segment, please get in touch.
• Program directory - I am interested in developing a directory of Christian affiliate opportunities, so affiliates can come here and find the programs that they need. These programs will be reviewed to make sure they really bring some conviction to the table in how they do business.
• More “Christian” programs exposed. Know of an affiliate or CPA offer that is targeting Christians with predatory and abusive offers? Or sites that are “wolves in sheep’s clothing?” Let’s shine some light on them.
• More action from the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association (CAMA) I’m the president of the group and my partners and I have decided to really step it up in 2008. We’ve got big plans that we’ll be speaking of between now and the Gospel Brunch at Affiliate Summit West that we think will add a TON of value for both merchants and affiliates.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m hoping to be on later today with my first video post (come on with that Flip Cam DHL)

God Bless,

Wade Tonkin