Podcasts that are helpful to new merchants, and to established merchants.

Steps to Revamping and Relaunching an Affiliate Program – Merchant ABCs #29

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare and Amy Ely joined Kim Salvino of buy.at and Liz Fogg of Team Loxly to answer a fundamental question for affiliate managers: What key steps should I take when launching (or relaunching) an affiliate program?

When and How to Choose an Outsourced Program Manager – Merchant ABCs #28

Merchant ABCs hosts Deborah Carney, Vinny O’Hare and Amy Ely discussed the benefits of working with an Outsourced Program Manager (OPM) and how to find the right one for your business.

Kitchen Affiliate Program

Craft Art produces a full line of elegant surfaces including countertops, cutting boards, chopping blocks and tabletops–including a broad DIY offering to reach different price points. Craft Art’s products range in selling price from as low as $40 for a premium cutting board to $1,500 for a luxurious chopping block wine cart or Do It Yourself (DIY)countertop. We offer a 8% commission on all of our products.


Benefits of Joining

• 8% Commissions
• 60 day cookie
• Creatives and tools to help you sell
• Craft Art is on autodeposit on Shareasale.
• Dedicated affiliate management team by Team Loxly Affiliate Management Team.
• Affiliate Support Forum at Affiliate Summit Affiliate Marketing Forum
• We also have a series of podcasts to assist you to be a better affiliate at: Affiliate ABCs

Join the Craft Art Affiliate Program

Questions or Concerns

If you have any questions regarding our affiliate program, please send an email
to Affiliates@craft-art.com.

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!

Photography eBook: Poetry and Peonies Volume 1: Japanese Tree Peonies

I can, and have, spend hours just looking and drinking in their solitude and beauty.

This book is the first in a series and even though it isn’t all poetry, I hope you will give me poetic license to include quotes and words that are inspirational to me, and hopefully to you.

This book has full color photographs when viewed on Kindle apps or on the Kindle Fire, and the images are also beautiful in black and white when displayed on devices that don’t support color.

Currently available on the Kindle, coming soon for the Nook. Don’t have a Kindle? No problem! There are free Kindle Apps for your PC or Mac, plus other devices. Check the Amazon Kindle store to find out your options.

The Decorative Ceiling Tiles affiliate team would like you to get to know more about the products and how they can be used, and promoted. Debbie, Vinny and Liz made a presentation with Milan Jara about his products for about 30 minutes and then we had some great questions and answers.

The webinar was recorded, here is the the replay:

Please watch to learn more about this unique product that is gaining ground in the US decorating industry. Tiles like these are already very popular in Europe.

Visit http://decorativeceilingtiles.net and get your questions ready! Feel free to add questions in the forum thread.

Let us know if you find this format of getting information helpful!

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

Listen to host Deborah Carney in a roundtable discussion about how affiliate marketing got started and how it has evolved with some of the people that have been in it since the beginning. Are they in the same place they were when they started? Where do they see the industry going?

Listen as panelists Todd Farmer, Todd Crawford, Connie Arnold, Scott Jangro and Brian Littleton have a lively discussion, history you probably don’t know, and as they answer some burning questions about the beginnings of our awesome industry. Our industry is so young that we want to capture the thoughts about it’s growth some of the leaders in the industry. No one currently in our industry wanted to grow up to be an affiliate or affiliate manager, the jobs didn’t exist. But now, there are many young people whose parents are in the industry and they kinda would like to do what Mom and/or Dad does.

Let us know what you think about this format! Who would you like on a future podcast in this style? Or would you just like to hear more from this crew?

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.

First in a series of merchant spotlight webinars from Team Loxly is Small Biz Theme by Don Campbell. The theme affiliate program is run on Shareasale and is 30% commission, 60 day cookie and managed by Team Loxly

This theme is unique in that it can be used by consultants to easily build sites for clients, or for clients to have the site set up once and then not be able to “mess it up” when they need to make updates. The blog is secondary (you can change this) with info pages for the company instead.

Built in are sections to create the mobile version of the theme… no extra charge or extra plugins… and a really cool ability to add content to facebook pages right from within your blog! There are some free apps that allow you to create pages that you have to change on facebook, but this function within small biz theme hosts the pages for your facebook tabs right on your own site. Plugins for that type of functionality start at around $40-50.

If you can make the time to watch the video you will see all kinds of goodies and get info on what’s under the hood so you can better sell this theme as an affiliate. There were many good questions asked and answered throughout the video and we welcome more questions and comments from those of you watching the replay!