As I have discussed here time and time again,  “Christian” dating is a minefield of legitimate and illegitimate offers that target Christians.

Some are great and Christian in ownership and mission in vision like SinglesofFaith, ChristianCafe, CatholicMatch, etc and some like BigChurch are really flawed and shouldn’t be promoted by Christians to Christians.

A lot of Christian webmasters are still running BigChurch though because they either don’t know better or choose to look the other way for the cash.   Hey, I’ll admit it - they build a great landing page and they know the science of conversion… but they should.  They’re essentially a re-faced porn site that is veneered to appeal to Christians.

There are a couple of sites I like who play “watch dog” over the space and I really value what they bring to the table in terms of doing the research on corporate ownership of the “Christian” dating sites and giving people the straight scoop.   Then, today one of them really chapped my hide.

I saw SinglesofFaith listed as one of the sites not to work with due to “deceptive marketing practices.”  I beg to differ.  SOF is so legitimately Christian it’s ridiculous.  They absolutely should be listed with ChristianCafe and Single Christians Network as one of the “good guys”   I checked with Mike at SOF specifically on the types of marketing methods that were frowned on (bidding on competitor keywords) and was assured that this is not the case.

So- I attempted to contact the site owner through his contact form to get some clarification… hey - if my client has done something wrong, we’d like to fix it.   The “Contact us” form is broken.

Bottom line -  there is what we feel is incorrect negative info on the site up on the page and no way to get any feedback or get a changed noted and recommendation made.   ARGGGGH!

“Dog,” if you are out there and see this, please get in touch.  I love your site and want to be able to recommend you as the gold standard.  But we need to clear this up.
God Bless,

Wade Tonkin

Wow… I have been half down with this lame chest cold for about a week and I have been holding off on more video because I didn’t think anyone really wanted to tune into me hacking up a lung on cam.   But then I thought - hey, if you guys love me, you’ll take me as I am.  So- will kick out some new video today.

I have a ton of video still to edit as well from Interviews with Jason Stanley Marshall, Geno Prussakov and more.

Have a blessed day.

Hey all - as we wallow this morning in a sea of plastic grass, colored eggs, pink marshmallow chicks and hollow chocolate bunnies, I wanted to post a reminder of what this holiday is really about.

I thought it was really well done - great footage from The Passion of the Christ and a great tune.

God Bless you and yours today… Rejoice! He is Risen!

I just got an email from Shawn Collins alerting me to a thread at ShoeMoney’s Blog posing the question “How long is it until someone is killed at Affiliate Summit?”

Jeremy Shoemaker, a “super affiliate” references some alleged threats and incidents that occured at past Summits and poses the question above.   A friend of mine, Carl from ChristianMySpaceLayouts.org jumped into the fray and brought up an incident that occured at ASE in Miami last year where a couple of apparently too -recent Frat Boys engaged in inappropriate behavior at the SAS Beach party.   I actually saw these  clowns myself when they got thrown off the bus going back to the show  hotel because they were drunk and stupid and shirtless.

I have been to all but 1 Affiliate Summit and I have to defend Shawn and Missy and the brand here.   To my experience, the show has been professionally done from day one.  Every official event I have been to has been disturbance free and everyone behaved as though they were at a business event.   The one issue that I referenced above happened at an off-site party and the idiots responsible were tossed from the event, tossed from the bus, and banned from Summit events forever when it was reported.

I thought that this most recent Summit was actually the best I have attended from the standpoint that the networking events were more controlled and more professional with an emphasis on networking and business.   Why?

I think the industry is growing up and a lot of people have figured out that the best way to get someone online as a business partner isn’t to get them wasted (like they’ll remember any discussions anyway)  but to engage the people that you want to work with in a relaxed, discussion encouraging environment.    Digital River, famous for their extravagant parties even backed off - offering a hostpitality suite and a really nicely executed invite only reception on the patio of their suite instead.  Why?   Because doing the big parties cost them a TON of money, branded them a bit, but generated little revenue.  Doubleclick/Performics had a private event at Bellagio, ThePartnerMaker had an intimate event at The  Wine Cellar,  and the entry to the SAS party was actually really restricted to invite holders only.   Heck - from what I hear,  last years Affiliate Summit Horizon Award Winner Todd Crawford,  was refused entrance for a while.

Like a lot of us, the industry is growing up.  I started doing this when I was 24 and recently married with no kids.  Yeah - when I travelled, I liked to get a bit torn up and have a good time.   Now, married 11 years, with 2 kids that I miss terribly when I travel and my tolerance for alcohol not what it used to be, my recovery time off the charts, and most importantly, some direction in life (thanks to Jesus Christ)  I’m just not up for the drinking all night and howling at the moon any more.  I go to shows to do business and catch up with a lot of old friends that I consider second family.   I think a lot of us that I hhave been around for a while are in the same boat.

I think Shoe’s post was sensationalist crap destined to get some reaction.. and now I have fed that by linking to the  clown.

I think Summit is still THE event to go to in the Affiliate industry and I will continue to go, and CAMA will continue to put on events that are inspirational and family friendly as long as we go.

Speaking of which… watch for a CAMA announcement on our Affiliate Summit Boston event next week.

<rant>So, I am talking with a prospect today.  The last thing that is keeping them from signing with my company is their web team signing off on the Performics tracking and reporting implementation and giving them a fair price for doing the work.  My prospect comes back to me and says “well, as predicted, they quoted me 10 hours of work to do the job”

So… we’re stuck.

My next question asked is - do they also HOST your site and ecommerce solution?

Answer “yes”

So - effectively, my prospect is stuck here because his whole site and ecommerce solution are hosted on their proprietary system which gives his internal resources, or vendors like my company,  a way to plug in this tracking code, which should take no more than an hour.

What was his mistake?

There is nothing wrong with outsourcing your ecommerce development.  BUT, I heartily recommend that you both  choose your provider carefully, and insist that your solution is developed on a commercially available cart solution that YOU own and have total access to.  If you don’t you are selling your soul and making your future very dependant on the web company you outsourced to.

Let’s say my prospect gets tired of these guys taking advantage of him.   What can he do?   They control his site completely, and because it’s hosted on THEIR proprietary system, good luck on being able to move it somewhere else to work with somone reasonable.

The work we’re looking to have done is a 1 hour job ( since most companies bill a 1 hour minimum) on almost all of the cart solutions I have ever worked with.  I have even implemented some and I am one of the least technically proficient people I know.

If you are looking to launch an ecommerce site, or to have yours redeveloped, please consider very carefully the approach you take and make sure you are not putting yourself in a bad place for the short and long term.

</rant>

I have had a few questions on this lately and I found this video from Joel Comm that addresses the issue of “What is the fastest way to make money online”

Links to some of the training tools he mentioned:

Secret Classroom

Internet Marketing Explained

Let me take a moment to vent.

I just found a product that I am pretty psyched to promote to my audience here… I take their tour and I am impressed, I am happy to see that they offer an affiliate marketing program. I sign up for the affiliate program. I get approved a few mintes later. Awesome so far right?

I thought so.

I log in to pick up some link code for my site… thought I might throw them a banner and a write up to see if I could stimulate some business. I get logged and there are literally no creatives other than their default text link.

ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

Okay…. here is the deal. If you have a badass product, launching an affiliate program is a great idea. But for the love of Pete (whoever that is)

MAKE SURE YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM IS POPULATED BEFORE YOU LINK TO THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM ON YOUR SITE!!!

That is all… you may go…. I feel better now.

My invoice for affiliate consulting is in the mail.

I was just chatting with my pal Jason Stanley Marshall and he is looking to get the word out and get some support for a launch he is doing for an awesome cause. He’s been working with a boy named Petey with a degenerative neurological disorder and is trying to raise money to buy a wheelchair ramp equipped van to help get him around. Until recently, his existing van had been able to handle the manual wheelchair, but the new power chair Petey got won’t fit.

Some awesome folks from the Internet Marketing community have joined in the effort by contributing products or services to be included in a limited time “firesale” of a collection of products and services called “Petey’s Power Pack” including Paul Counts, Alejandro Reyes, Joel Comm, Stanley Tang and more.

Do you have a product or service you can throw into the bag? Can you help get the word out?

Check out the site for the project at http://petey.heartheirstories.com

God Bless,

Wade Tonkin

The question today comes from Samantha at Fingerhut.com

What are your reasons for recommending AvantLink for catalog retailers?

Best,

Samantha

Samantha, nice to hear from you. There are a few reasons why I recommend that any catalog merchant that uses product feeds to promote their products should take a look at AvantLink.

Their datafeed tools for affiliates are absolutely top notch- and they don’t charge anything additional for set up on either the merchant or affiliate side to use them. They make it easy for affiliates to merchandise products, and have some awesome features as well like coupon feeds that you can use to traffic specials on affiliate sites and update on the fly.

They have also just recently ( at Summit) added on board support for video creative - which is ahead of the curve.

And my personal favorite - they make all affiliate contact info (email, name and phone) available by default.

Their roots are in working for a catalog retailer in Backcounty.com and they have built the tools that affiliate managers need (and affiliates need) to get the job done. They have really focused on working only with retail, feed-based merchants and developing a feature set that would be just what the doctor ordered for them.

They also do some cool innovative things like RSS based reporting for the affiliate manager.

Check them out

God Bless,

Wade

Hi Wade,
I have been a subscriber for a while and I first want to thank you for your blog. I appreciate it and I have started to get my feet wet in Aff marketing… But, the one main problem that I am running into is conversion tracking. I tried hitslink and conversionruler, but all of the affiliate links on my pages link to the manufacturers page - so I don’t have the BUY page on my site. Both hitslink and conversionruler seem to only be good if you can put the code on your purchase confirm page (which I don’t have)

So, what I really want to know is if there is any way to follow the user from the Google search to the purchase, IF the buy page isn’t on my site?

I appreciate any thoughts you may have on this
thanks,
bob

Hi Bob, and thanks for the question.  I am going to assume some things here -

1.  The merchants you are working with have no affiliate program in place
2. They have no interest in adding one at this tim

I have heard some super affiliates talk about requiring merchants to place their  own conversion reporting for them to allow them to effectively audit their PPC affiliate efforts.    In either case, there will need to be either an affiliate system integrated or some of your code placed on the site.   There’s simply no way that I know around this.  If the transaction is taking place on the merchants page - you need to have code there that will report when a conversion is successful.

Let me see if I can ping some super affiliate buddies to see if we can get you a hard fast answer on this.

In the meantime, if the merchants you are working with actually do their job of selling online effectively, you may want to steer them towards launching a low cost affiliate solution.   You can pick up software apps like GroundBreak or PostAffiliatePro that are pretty effective and feature good reporting.

You could also steer them towards a network like Shareasale or - if they are a nice online catalog retailer, AvantLink

Anyone have suggestions?

God Bless,

Wade