Here's something to wet the Affiliate Blogger's mouth … more blogs!

Global performance marketing firm Forge Corporation Ltd. has acquired BlogKits Blogging Network. Launching world’s first performance marketing network built for bloggers.

(PRWEB) July 13, 2006 — The billion-dollar affiliate marketing industry has finally caught up with blogging. Forge Corporation Ltd., a global provider of performance marketing solutions, with offices in Johannesburg, Cleveland & Seattle, announced today it has acquired BlogKits (http://www.blogkits.com), a blog network built to help match bloggers with advertisers.

BlogKits was acquired from Jim Kukral, business blog expert, who was also recently appointed to Forge as the VP of Branding & Marketing. He has spent the past 10+ years working in the online marketing and blogging industry.

In a survey produced by BlogKits in 2005, 73% of bloggers agreed that using affiliate links on their website was an acceptable practice. The same survey concluded that the primary reason bloggers use Google Adsense is because "it’s easy" (93%).

"Bloggers want control and ease of use. They want to "place it and leave it", said Mr. Kukral. "Which is why Google Adsense works so well for them. The reason bloggers haven’t embraced the standard affiliate networks as a viable model is because those networks don’t specifically cater any offers to bloggers. There’s too much clutter going on. Bloggers don’t want to work that hard. BlogKits eliminates that."

"Google Adsense has been a revolutionary tool for bloggers, and should always stay part of a successful blog monetization strategy. BlogKit's approach is not to recommend to replace Adsense, but to add to it without penalty. We believe there’s a lot more money to be made on a well-matched cost-per-action (CPA) offer for bloggers as opposed to a few pennies per click from Adsense."

There are challenges of course. Google Adsense still holds a majority of most bloggers’ income generation, and the existing affiliate networks like Linkshare & Commission Junction have thousands of existing merchant/affiliate relationships.

But they don’t have the bloggers. BlogKits does.

"I really like the idea behind Blogkits because anything that can help bloggers earn money fairly, honestly, and easily is a great benefit to the entire blogging community," said Dave Taylor, blogger at www.AskDaveTaylor.com. "I’m looking forward to getting involved with the Blogkits project."

"Jim brings tremendous affiliate marketing and blogging experience to the table," said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Forge Corporation, Ltd. "By acquiring and developing BlogKits, Forge now has a unique stable of highly targeted blogs in our network that no other network has. Merchants can join BlogKits even if they have other existing network relationships. We’re not interested in taking business away from anyone; only bringing new business opportunities that they can’t get elsewhere."

Kukral will be responsible for operating the BlogKits Offerforge Network, including working to recruit and educate new bloggers, as well as assisting merchants with developing creative performance-based offerings.

BlogKits is currently accepting applications for signup from bloggers into the network at http://www.blogkits.com, and is working with merchants to prepare offers for launch, which is set for some time in late summer of 2006.

About Jim Kukral
Jim Kukral knows the online marketing industry from all sides. He is the publisher of ReveNews.com, a thought-shaping group blog focusing the billion-dollar industry of online revenue generation. He has been blogging since 2001 and has participated and or created over 30 professional blogs in his career. Jim has written professionally for Clickz.com and Builder.com, and has been featured in Revenue Today magazine and MarketingProfs.

About BlogKits
BlogKits was created by Jim Kukral in early 2005. Originally, BlogKits was made to help bloggers find new and interesting ways to make money with their blogs. Now as part of the OfferForge network, BlogKits will allow bloggers and online merchants the ability to work together in a reliable and robust network platform.

About Forge Corporation Ltd.
Founded in 2003 by Jonathan Miller, well known affiliate marketing strategist, consultant and public speaker, Forge Corporation Ltd. is a global provider of performance marketing solutions that benefit both advertisers and publishers, with offices in Johannesburg, Cleveland & Seattle.

Forge enables advertisers to distribute online advertising through thousands of targeted websites, newsletters and other online publishers. These relationships are driven by two patented technology ad networks: OfferForge South Africa and OfferForge USA. OfferForge advertisers pay only for performance, which could be measured in sales, leads, visitors, impressions, subscribers or even new unique customers.

The ForgeConsult consulting division specializes in developing and executing affiliate marketing strategies to assist advertisers in reaching consumers more effectively such as affiliate recruitment and affiliate program management.

Pepperjam Announces Sponsorship of Linkshare Affiliate Marketing Symposium and Golden Link Awards

Pepperjam, the industry’s leading search, affiliate, and media management firm announced today co-sponsorship of the 2006 Linkshare Symposium and Golden Link Awards, which will be held in New York City on June 20–21. The Linkshare Summit and Golden Link Awards are the premier affiliate marketing conference and awards ceremony for leading Linkshare merchants and affiliates.

To learn more about Pepperjam please visit http://www.pepperjamsearch.com and http://www.pepperjammanagement.com

Kristopher B. Jones, President & CEO of Pepperjam said, “We are excited to co-sponsor this year’s Linkshare Symposium and Golden Link Awards and are honored to be part of this prestigious affiliate marketing event. In particular, these Linkshare events provide an excellent opportunity to unveil Pepperjam’s newest affiliate marketing initiative, the Pepperjam Comparison Shopping Blog. Unlike other comparison shopping engines, such as shopping.com and shopzilla.com, the new Pepperjam website will offer merchants the expertise of a leading search-engine marketing firm (pepperjamsearch.com), as well as a revolutionary cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and cost-per-click (CPC) advertising model designed with pay-for-performance marketing in mind.”

This year's much anticipated LinkShare Symposium 2006 will take place June 20-21, 2006 in New York City. For more than ten years, LinkShare merchants, affiliates, and leading companies doing business on the web have convened at the LinkShare Symposium to forge business relationships and discuss issues facing the industry at large. Over 500 leaders from companies in the retail, catalog, financial and business-to-business sectors will be in attendance. To learn more about the Linkshare Symposium and Golden Link Awards please visit http://www.linkshare.com/symposium.

About pepperjamSEARCH:
pepperjamSEARCH offers powerful search-engine marketing management solutions based on an advanced search analytics algorithm. The company offers an experienced staff of certified Google Advertising Professionals and Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassadors. Working with advanced, proprietary API-Driven management tools, pepperjamSEARCH offers the ultimate ROI available through the advertising medium of search. Using the model developed over the past seven (7) years by Pepperjam, pepperjamSEARCH offers cutting-edge solutions to many of the nation’s leading online merchants. In addition, Pepperjam is one of only 20 search-engine marketing firms across the United States designated by Google as a Google Adwords Qualified Company.

About pepperjamMANAGEMENT:
pepperjamMANAGEMENT was created in 2002 by a group of industry-leading super affiliates and search-engine marketing experts, including Internet marketing expert Kristopher B. Jones. The company offers pay-for-performance outsourced affiliate marketing management solutions, as well as online media management and consultation in the areas of search, strategic partnership acquisition, and overall market share capitalization.

pepperjamMANAGEMENT is a division of the Pepperjam Network — the world’s largest search-engine marketing super affiliate with over $100 million in annual sales generated to over 2,500 merchant partners, including BabyAge, 1-800-PetMeds, igourmet and Foreclosure.com.

For more information, please contact Robyn Martin, Director of Public Relations at 1.877.796.5700 or visit us at http://www.pepperjamsearch.com and http://www.pepperjammanagement.com.

I was surfing around reading the blogs of other affiliate marketers, and I came across a post by Linda Buquet of 5 Star Affiliates that really bugged me. Not with Linda, no way, but with merchants who think they can rip off the affiliates and totally get away with it.

Seems that DadaMobile slammed shut the doors of their affiliate program right befor Christmas.

That means that any affiliates who were promoting their products and services are basically out of luck for their commissions. Man, I'd hate to be the guy running PPC ads for this affy program … that's gotta hurt!

I think merchants like DadaMobile need to be exposed … to the winter's elements … for the doing bad business.

If you're an affiliate with them, I'd highly recommend you get out of there NOW!!! If you've owed commissions from sales you made prior to the closing of their affiliate program, you need to demand payment. If they refuse, you affiliates need to files a class action suit. Stick together and shady merchants like this will not have as much of an impact in the Affiliate Marketing Industry.

I also received an Associate email from Amazon today outlining more changes to their affiliate payout structure. Man, they're down to 4% for affiliates now … that's just wrong!

The email continued:

Announcing Monthly Payments!

Beginning January 1, 2007, your Amazon Associates payments will be monthly instead of quarterly, paid approximately 60 days after the end of each month. For example, referral fees you earn in January will be paid at the end of March, and payment of referral fees earned in February will be paid at the end of April. As part of this change, referral fee tiers will be adjusted to reflect monthly instead of quarterly item quantities:

Amazon's also sending out another email to some of their associates. I haven't gotten this one yet myself:

I met Marc Chase in a affilaite focused forum. He's an Affiliate Manager trying to fire up a new affiliate program for MyCreditGroup.

Marc's got some strikes against him, as he's got a spanking new affiliate program in a niche that's flooded and really hard to rank in.

Marc's Affiliate Program is in the Finance niche with a focus on Credit Repair, Debt Settlement and Mortgages. It's one of the toughest to break into, and most expensive to participate in.

I know this niche very well as I used to own a business that generated leads for Merchants as large as Bank of America. I used to earn upwards of $50 per lead. That's per lead, not per sale. Money was good way back then, but not anymore if you're new to the game.

So, when I saw Marc's post announcing his offering to the affiliates … I saw some really good things and I saw a few things that could be better.

Marc's post read something like this…

We've put a lot of effort into building a flawless reputation before launching our affiliate program.
We put just as much effort into creating support for our affiliates. 

Some Features:
- Multi Tiered: $50.00 per 5% second tier
- $1000.00 bonus per 100 sign ups
- Additional bonuses of 500.00 for second conversion
- Huge industry and we are hands down the most trusted.

We're even working on health benefits (lots of details of course)

The affiliate page can be found here:
The Best Credit Repair Affiliate Program - My Credit Group

Feel free to research our company thoroughly and you'll see the effort we've put into ethics and integrity.

If you have any questions, or suggestions we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you in advance
Marc Chase

• They're listed with Dunn and Bradstreet.
• They have a flawless seven year old BBB record, which in that niche is unheard of.
• They are registered with the Attorney General and Secretary of State.
• They offer the affiliate a lot of incentives.
• They offer the affiliate revenue potential for the client's many possible trasactions.
• Their payout for sales seems generous.
• They offer a second tier opportunity.
• They don't compete with the affiliates.
• They are very responsive to their affiliates.

What I didn't see caused me to ask Marc a few questions and offer some suggestions:

• I wanted to see a short form for affiliates to put onto their websites to generate sales easier.
• I wanted to see a 365 day cookie set because in this niche clients take a long time to sell to.
• I wanted to see a first-in cookie so that affiliates who really work it can benefit and not have to worry about cookie theft.
• I wanted to know what states they could service, because this niche has lots of legal limitations.
• I wanted to know who owned the company.

Marc was prompt to respond to all my questions, and lightning quick to supply all the elements I suggested. He also gave me some more insights into his company and their ethics:

Debt Settlement. Its rather lengthy so I'll paint some broad strokes
1) Greed - average fee is 14% we charge 8%. It still makes a ton of money. I dont understand 14%.

2) Because we have a credit repair mentality, credit scores are first things we think of. So, while client is saving their "settlement" money, we keep the debts tied up with validation, method of validation, FCBA requests etc. What this does (not always) is prevents them from marking the accounts late while they are saving. Goal being to get them debt free and preserving their credit.

3) Greed again: Settlement companies get paid on the total amount of debt settled. Many debts that arent even necessary to settle are included because its more commissions. We work on repair first (where applicable) if we can get something removed, then its less the client has to pay. Again, still a ton of money.

4) We always attempt to pay for deletions (credit repair mentaility). Collection agents usually just care about money and will delete the tradeline entirely as long as they get paid.

Again, settlement companies don't do credit repair, so those things aren't their concern. Since we want everybody to eventually turn to a mortgage, it is in our best interest to perfect their score no matter what service we're providing.

I am impressed with company's business model, and after chatting with Marc, I'm also impressed with their attention to details and customer service for their affiliates.

I decided to join their affiliate program and if you have finance sites that focus on CPS more than CPM/CPA, this would be a good affiliate program for you too … very ethical todate.

Thanks to LinkConnector, I'm going to be attending the Affiliate Marketers Bootcamp with James Martell, affiliate mentor associated with Commission Juntion.

I'll be talking about my training with James Martell and sharing a few tid bits along the journey. In the meantime, here's a shameless plug for Affiliate Marketers BootCamp complete with affiliate links (thanks for your support).

Affiliate Marketing Mastery Can Be Yours By Attending James Martell's BootCamp

Its been said that the very best way to learn anything is to study with a master.

And the reason is simply this: We learn so much more through personal interaction than from books or tapes.

With that in mind, James Martell has series of BootCamps — intensive, live workshops using animated screenshots of everything James does to be successful on the Net — to "mentor" his students on the essentials of running a first class publishing business to profit from "affiliate programs".

Many know of James' Affiliate Marketers Handbook — 2006, which was first published in May of 2002, but not everyone knows that James originally started teaching his "secrets" to a small group of lucky locals in 2001-2002.

At that time he got out of live trainings because it took precious time and energy away from his growing affiliate business.
And although his "downloadable" training provided everything someone needed to know to make excellent income from a home-based operation on the Net — many over the years have asked if he planned to teach a live class again.

Although he entertained the idea from time to time, he never saw the need, especially since so many were reporting mind boggling incomes themselves when applying the principles taught in the Handbook, his Google Mastery audio report and his twice-a-month audio newsletter, know affectionately as "the buzz".

But the demand was still there from those who felt they either needed a "kick-start" — or some advanced training about how to take their operations to the next level by modeling James more closely and putting a small staff in place as he has done.

And because he now has people trained to do much of the "grunt" work he and his wife Arlene used to do — he has determined that putting together another live class might not only be profitable for himself — but could also be quite profitable in the long run for those attending.

And, of course, James loves to teach so it seemed like a good decision to launch another live training — and one that promises to be "light years" ahead of anything done by either himself or others in this fascinating, emerging industry that offers so much lifestyle and income rewards to those who master the techniques involved.

More can be learned about this BootCamp HERE.