I can hear you already “I don’t have a Kindle” – well that shouldn’t stop you, Kindle has reading apps for all computers and devices. Click on any Kindle page and there will be a button to download a free kindle app to your computer. All of the Kindle books on my Author’s page will be free for you to download Christmas day and the day after, except Poetry and Peonies, I had that free already so it only has one day left. (print books not included)

As part of being on Amazon exclusively for 90 days, I get to offer my Kindle books for free to Amazon Prime members for a total of 5 days. I figure a lot of folks will be looking for Kindle content when they open their Kindles that they get as gifts.

But Wait there’s more! If you don’t have a Prime account, send me an email at dc at merchantabcs.com and I will send you a special link (that our affiliates will get in a newsletter this week also) where you will be able to download pdfs of the same books that I am offering for free. The pdf offer is only for affiliates in our programs and members of the Affiliate Summit Forum

I know not everyone wants to listen to podcasts, so these are our alternative format. Plus there are my photo books as well as the business books.

Enjoy, be inspired, let me know how you like them!

Also: Kudos to Leslie Nazarian for designing the book covers!

Slice, Inc collaborates with some of the most innovative designers on the planet. They take everyday objects – scissors, safety knives, letter openers, ceramic knives, Safety Cutters – and rethink them. How can a safety cutter or a pair of scissors be better? What can we do to reinvent a Box Cutter so it is easier to use? How can we reconfigure beauty tools to make them into works of art?

The result is a collection of award-winning, innovative cutting tools for your home, office, and school that will help you slice in style and inspire you to create great works of art yourself.

Learn about the company, the products and how to promote them via their affiliate program on Shareasale.com

To Join the affiliate program, go to http://teamloxly.com/slicejoin

Billy Kay had an idea, for all the background go to the Country for a Cause webpage.

For those of you that are new or don’t know, Billy is an affiliate, a merchant, a musician, always speaks his mind, and when he takes on a project it generally works out In this case Billy the musician decided to do something for a woman’s shelter in Las Vegas. Here is the press release about that project. The album is for sale on both iTunes and Amazon, so you can support the cause and make some $$$s for yourself or take a bit of that extra and donate it to Shade Tree or your own favorite charity.

Please feel free to pass this press release around, let’s make this a best seller

Independent Artists Release Charity CD “Country for a Cause”

Palmetto Tree Music

The cost of living is rising, gasoline is over three dollars a gallon, unemployment is at an all time high… and country music artists are giving away the proceeds from their CD sales. Surprising? Not for a group of eleven independent country music artists who are just trying to make a difference. October 21st marked the release of their CD, “Country for a Cause”, the proceeds from which are being donated to The Shade Tree, a shelter for abused women and children in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Billy Kay, an independent country artist who added his single “Ready…Set…Gone” as the first track on the CD, is the mastermind and organizer of the project. While taking a tour of the shelter one day, he took special notice of the one outdated computer and scarcity of other resources. The kicker for him, though, was the kids. “We each consider our own childhood to be the definition of normal”, Billy says, “I didn’t want these kids to think the kid’s room with a donated TV and some donated board games was normal.” Realizing that there was only so much he could do alone, he reached out for help.

“I got a surprise email from Billy one day asking if I would like to be involved,” said C Bret Campbell of the group Stephenson Rd, who added their single “Simple Life” to the project. Citing hard times throughout his own life, Campbell was immediately attracted to the project. “That’s no way for women and children to have to live,” he says.

JTodd Burroughs received a similar e-mail. “I didn’t really even have to think about it,” he said. “He (Billy Kay) said he’d like ‘A Little More With A Little Less’ for the CD, so I told him ‘You’ve got it.” That was even before he saw the list of artists who agreed to provide singles for the CD. “It’s a tremendous group of artists on the CD – like a Who’s Who of independent country artists.” Kay said he decided to reach out to some of the artists he’d met over the last couple of years. “I fully expected to be rejected,” he related, “but each and every one opened their hearts and donated a track to the project.”

The artists chose their songs with the project in mind, as well. With respect to his song “Simple Life”, Bret Campbell stated “I hope the song adds a note of hope to the record.” Kay’s song “Ready…Set…Gone” is about the courage it takes to leave an abusive relationship. Aoede chose her ballad “I Lost, You Win” because she wanted to “contribute a song that pulls at your heart strings.”

Artists weren’t the only ones to jump on board for the project. The Nashville Universe, Team Loxly, and Butterflies Radio, signed on immediately. “Butterflies Radio set their homepage to open to a full page banner of the project as well as putting links on their main page. They’re great,” says Burroughs. “They play our songs, record and broadcast bumpers for the CD, update all of their social media sites – it would really have cost us a fortune to try to buy that kind of advertising, and they’ve done it for free!”

During a time when it seems the news is bad and times are hard, this CD represents what is good and right. Eleven artists – eleven songs – the only obvious connection being a love for country music – come together with a common purpose to try and make a difference. They write songs that tell stories about life, and they have created a CD that is “Country for a Cause”.

The Artists The Songs
Billy Kay : Ready…Set…Gone
Bobby Ray Bittle : Backyard Dancehall
JTodd Burroughs : A Little More With a Little Less
Susie Q : Fallin Star
Bosco and Peck : Lila
Aoede : I Lost You Win
Stephenson Rd : Simple Life
Tiana Star : Farther From Me
Tai Andrews : Fly With Me
Rachel Kays : Butterflies and Nursery Rhymes
Volary : Love and Tragedy

Supporting Cast
ButterfliesRadio.com
TheNashvilleUniverse.com
TeamLoxly.com
Lesruba Designs (lesrubadesigns@gmail.com)

Available on iTunes and Amazon.com.

For more information please visit
http://billykaymusic.com/country-for-a-cause/country-for-a-cause.htm

MommyBloggers: Changing the Face of Affiliate Marketing? panel from Affiliate Summit West 2010, which took place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas, NV. An interesting note to this panel is that I posted a request for speakers in HARO to find the bloggers, except for Kim, who I already knew.

Another thing, for merchants that may be listening, too many merchants are carte blanche turning down “Mommy Bloggers” and bloggers in general. This is a powerful group of people that probably can hit your target markets.

Speakers:

- Deborah Carney, CEO, Team Loxly (Moderator)
- Wendy Limauge, Blogger, Sweeties Swag
- Carrie Rocha, President, Pocket Your Dollars
- Kim Rowley, President, Key Internet Marketing, Inc.
- Heather Sokol, Proprietor, Inexpensively

MommyBloggers are involved in many types of monetization strategies for their blogs, affiliate marketing being one, however they aren’t necessarily doing it in the “traditional” ways.

More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

Many thanks to Affiliate Summit for posting the replays of sessions from past summits. Many of these are still very relevant, like this one.

If you are unable to see the video below, please go direct to YouTube and watch it there.

Have you checked out our newest merchants? Some really great merchants that have a variety of products that are great for family oriented sites, plus some great B2B options!

Slice, Inc, features a collection of design-oriented, award-winning, cutting tools for your home, office, and school.

Good design is the foundation of our company. we want to build superior products that people love to use. fortunately, our world renown designers feel the same way.

Yves Behar
Michael Graves
Scot Herbst
Alfredo Muccino
Karim Rashid

* 12% Commissions * Cookie Duration: 60 days
http://teamloxly.com/slicejoin

Party Beans offers completely customized candy gifts for any occasion for purchase. Whether one has a birthday party for a son or simply wants to send a small “Get Well” gift to an ailing aunt, we provide convenient and easy online solution.

One can pick from numbers of candy containers, add icons, upload own photos, add text, pick candy types as well as candy flavors. All our products ship next business day if ordered by 4pm PT. All products shipped with Jelly Belly are Kosher (OU) certified by Orthodox Union.

Our candy is always fresh, we print photo quality vibrant colors and stand behind our service 100%. We bring over 12 years of promotional gifting experience and our mission is to offer coolest customized candy gifts for the very best price on the web.

* 20% commission * Cookie Duration: 90 days
http://teamloxly.com/partybeansjoin

Whether you are a business of one or fortune 500 company, Promotopia was created with one main objective — to take away the hassle and delays when ordering promotional products. In fact, we made creating your next promo so simple that you won’t believe YOU can CUSTOM-CREATE such an amazing logo’ed products in LESS THAN 5 MINUTES. With hundreds of products to choose from, small to no minimums and next day* shipment, you now have a solution to promote your business. Whether you are in a bind and need last minute giveaway for a conference that starts in three days or you want to give a token of appreciation to 5-man team that just finished a project, at promotopia we have you covered. 

Since we work directly with the product vendors, your orders have no processing delays, product prices have no middle men and we relentlessly strive to get you the most aggressive deal from the product vendors there is. 

* 15% Commission * Cookie Duration: 90 days
http://teamloxly.com/promotopiajoin

As you may know there is not many products when it comes to ugly ceilings that are affordable, beautiful and easy to use. That is why we focus on this issue, keeping consumer in mind and bringing value with our line of our decorative products for ceilings. Our products are new to the market and are gaining popularity with each and every easy installation.

* 10% commission   * Cookie Duration: Unlimited
http://teamloxly.com/dctjoin

I thought it would be a good idea to post our merchants that are not subject to Sales Tax so that affiliates know they are safe to join these program:

Viator- their tours are not taxed
Raven Tools – They are a service, not subject to sales tax
WyzAnt- they are a tutor matching service and the affiliate program is leads based so there is no sales tax involved.
Knowem – User Name registration plus other services that are not required to collect sales tax
Expand2Web Small Business WordPress Theme – Not subject to sales tax
PartyBeans – based in CA, also most products considered food so not taxable in other states.
Decorative Ceiling Tiles – will charge sales tax if thresholds are met
Loxly Gallery – will charge sales tax if thresholds are met

Here is also a link to a podcast on our forum at the Affiliate Summit Affiliate Marketing Forum where you can discuss the tax issues and pretty much anything related to affiliate marketing.

Let us know if you have any questions on any of our clients!

As we have announced before, Team Loxly is focusing on educating affiliates, bloggers and merchants. We would like to invite you to come and be our guest at the following sites, you can submit more than one topic, or more than one site. We have guests that have discussed topics that cover all three audiences.

We have three ABCs series of podcasts where we give advice and pointers on how to achieve success as an affiliate, monetize your blog or run the perfect merchant program. Part of the success of our podcasts are listening to the people that listen to the podcasts and hear what they want to learn about or when they propose a topic that they want to share their expertise on. We encourage people to introduce us to guests we should have on our shows, and also offer to be guests and speak on a topic or ask us questions about a topic. Our podcasts are all discussion style and not necessarily interview style. We often will have a panel of up to 4 people that will discuss a topic.

We also like to keep the podcasts short and one specific topic so that our listeners have one main takeaway from our shows and are not bombarded with information that they can’t absorb. We also like our guests because we feel that the affiliate industry is in constant growth and there is no one “voice” that can keep up with all the changes. We may create some ebooks from our podcast topics and create some formal training (we are developing that on Merchant ABCs first) but we are not interested at this time in producing print books that are almost out of date by the time they are published.

Here are the links:
Be our guest on Merchant ABCs podcast: Tell merchants what you want them to know to make their programs stellar
Be our guest on Affiliate ABCs podcast: Ask us questions, tell affiliates about your timesaving tips, what things work for you
Be our guest on Blogging ABCs podcast: Ask us how to monetize your blogs, offer your style and writing tips, software and plugins you use

And on Merchant ABCs we have a very special page where you can share the things that Merchants, Affiliates, and Networks do that annoys you or makes you happy. Come share your pet peeves and your props about all aspects of the affiliate industry. Here are some of the responses we have gotten so far. There are some very similar peeves/props that have us already thinking about future podcasts and looking for guests to cover those topics.

Finally, other places to find many affiliate voices discussing industry issues Affiliate Summit Affiliate Forum and FeedFront Affiliate Industry Magazine.

Although we are a successful OPM agency, I wanted to let our site visitors know about some of our other projects that we will be posting about here and that you are free to comment on and that we welcome input on. Because of the number of people that are entering the industry we have created a number of ABCs projects that are helpful to affiliates, bloggers and merchants.

All of the projects impact webmasters whether they are affiliates or not, i.e. Blogging ABCs. That is about blogging, constructing and starting a blog and then going on to monetize it. Bloggers may not consider themselves to be affiliates when in reality they can be very successful affiliates.

We hope you will embrace the ABCs projects, consider being a guest, and recommend topics that we cover. Many of the Affiliate ABCs podcasts will be posted here grouped by similar topics. When we started Affiliate ABCs it wasn’t an organized podcast and over the years people have started requesting that we make a “roadmap” of the podcasts to help people actually follow them in some kind of order.

Here are links to each of the ABCs projects:
Affiliate ABCs Website – Podcasts and articles for getting started as an affiliate. Tips for veterans also.
Blogging ABCs Website – Podcasts and articles for starting a blog or making your blog better, plus how to monetize your blog.
Creative Marketing ABCs – Podcasts and articles for creative people, people that are creative artists but need marketing
Merchant ABCs – Podcasts, articles and videos to teach merchants how to start an affiliate program and manage it the right way.

We’ll be grouping the podcasts together by topics and posting links in posts here, so if you subscribe to each podcast we won’t duplicate info on you

For the Shareasale Think Tank event that was held in Half Moon Bay California in October 2010 we put together a DVD of Affiliate Kits for each of the affiliate programs we manage. This ranged from resource pdfs to videos, blog posts and keyword lists. Some included premade pages to pop onto your sites.

If you are interested in having access to these kits, please send an email to affiliates@teamloxly.com with the programs you are interested in listed and we will give you access to the Dropbox that has the files (there are 2 gigs if you want all the programs!) or send you just the link to the one or two merchants you want.

We want to give you actionable items you can add to your sites to give you a leg up on the competition and earn money a little faster