Trying to pay the mortgage and the car payment and . . .

I originally created this blog as a place to network with other believers in affiliate marketing.

I have so many other things going on that this venture seemed a little pointless.  I have one thing I wanted to do with this domain and then I may never post here again.  We shall see.

Join the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association for an awesome fellowship and networking event and kick off Affiliate Summit East in style on the CAMA Cruise.

The CAMA Cruise will depart at 9:00 am sharp from the dock at the World Trade Center just outside of the Seaport Hotel where we’ll board the cruise boat Lexington (pictured above) We’ll embark on a 2 hour Brunch cruise around historic Boston Harbor that will return us to the Affiliate Summit site promptly at 11:00 - so there will be plenty of time for Meet Market table set up, freshening up or last minute “strategerizing.”

Your ticket will include the cruise plus a delectable brunch buffet including:

ASSORTED PASTRIES
Sour Cream, Coffee Cake, Muffins, Bagels & Tea Breads
Accompanied by Butter, Cream Cheese and assorted jams

BELGIAN WAFFLES
Served with Whipped Cream and Seasonal Fruit

HOMEMADE QUICHE
stuffed with Spinach, Mushroom & Cheddar Cheese sliced and served with assorted condiments

served with
Fresh Fruit Salad
Bacon & Sausage
Home Fries

Fresh Juices, Coffee, Tea & Decaf

Pricing is $50 per person if purchased prior to 12:00 AM PT July 18th 2008 and $60 per person through August 8, 2008

http://camacruise.eventbrite.com/

I upgraded to wordpress 2.5 and it has not changed my life.

How do you balance work, life, and God? Watch this video as I talk about it.

RSS folks (both of you) click here to see the video

I applied for Google’s ad manager:

Hello,

Congratulations! We’ve reviewed your application and would like to welcome you to the beta release of Google Ad Manager.

Ready to get started? Visit
http://www.google.com/admanager?
and sign in with your AdSense username and password.

If you have additional questions, I encourage you to visit our Google Ad Manager Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/admanager/publisher.
Also, feel free to post your question on the Ad Manager Help Forum http://groups.google.com/group/admanager-help to share your questions and expertise with other Ad Manager users.

–
Google Ad Manager Team

Should I care about it? I really hate giving the big G this much data.

Ok, I never post on this blog. Between ministry and work, this blog really takes a back seat. This is the third post this year. But I saw a couple of posts I wanted to respond to.

So Jim Kukral had a free flip video contest during the Super Bowl and I won! I made a little video to say thanks. I took the cam out of the box, put in the batteries and made this video. This thing is really that easy.

Now I had a really hard time uploading the video to my computer because of a firmware issue but they had a notice on their website and after a firmware update all was well.

This may seem petty but it is so ridiculous I have to almost laugh.

FaithWear is an merchant on Shareasale. I am pretty sure they are a Kerusso drop shipper.

Anyway, they have a $5 activation bonus. What’s $5 right? Right. I signed up a few months ago and sent an email to one of the contact addresses for the bonus. I never heard back from them and never got the bonus. I sent an email to Andy, the affiliate manager for the program, and still never got a reply nor a payment.

I forgot all about it till yesterday. I checked my stats for the program and I noticed I never got my measley $5 bonus!

What’s the deal? Has anyone gotten this or is it a really bad scam?

update:  I got the commission since I posted this.  I will guess that it was just a lack of communication.  Maybe they can’t get email from GMail users.  I joked that this might be a really bad scam.  I used the term really bad because it would be one of the dumbest scams for a person to run and assumed that people would understand that I did not think this was the case.  Surely no legitimate merchant would scam affiliates out of $5.  I don’t know Andy Rodriguez but I know Wade and he says Andy is a good guy and I have no reason to doubt that.

I get emails from people on a variety of marketing topics. I am going to address the two most common.

1. How did you grow your site so big? To this question I have a two part answer. First, just because you use a fake name online, it does not mean you can stop being a Christian. If you are running ads for BigChurch on your site, don’t ask me why my site is bigger than yours. BigChurch is part of the Adult Friend Finder network. That is porn. If you are running porn ads under the guise of “Christian dating” then you need to repent. You need to fear God and turn from your sin. I find this especially grievous when these ads are on sites targeting youth. I am not a fire and brimstone kind of guy so I will let Jesus do the talking.

[bibleblock]Matt 18:6[/bibleblock]

That was not Isaiah or Ezekiel, it was said by Jesus.  If  you have porn on your site either live for the devil or repent and make a site God can bless.  The second thing is that I have worked really, really hard and spent years teaching myself how to market, code, and design sites.  Faith is no substitute for hard work.

2. I think we can do great things for the Kingdom of God if we exchange banners. That is the one I love. I am pentecostal. I will get a spiritual as anyone. I started my main site after God told me to in prayer. I know God works in all kinds of ways. But I am not gonna pimp your bone stock phpfox based social network with 75 pageviews a day because you say you are a Christian. I have thrown traffic to sites as a favor. I have helped lots and lots of people with marketing and coding. And lots of people have helped me with scripting. But I have never told anyone that God wants you to send me traffic.

I have ads on my site for a reason. If you don’t have money to advertise your site offer something. I have no idea what I would do if I got an email that said, “Hey, I am new to this thing and I see you have a huge Christian site. I don’t have traffic or money to offer you but if you will send me traffic I will make you a new logo, or layout, or graphics, or copy or something. Just don’t tell me you want to do a banner exchange when I get more traffic than you by a factor of 70.

Again, faith is no substitute for hard work.