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.
Aside from internet marketing I am a licensed minister. I mostly work with youth and young adults but I do weddings, funerals and pretty much preach whenever someone gives me a microphone.
I know that not everyone has a pastor. Not everyone has a church. Think of me as your internet marketing pastor.
What does this do for you? Well…If you don’t contact me it won’t do anything.
If you do contact me I promise to pray for you. I will pretty much pray the will of God for whatever you are going through. If you are launching a new site, I will pray that God bless your hand. If its a porn site or a gambling site I will pray that God causes it to fail. See how that works?
Seriously, if you are going through something and just want to know that someone is praying, let me know.
About six months ago I wrote a post about desiring fellowship with Christian affiliate marketers
Other than the youth in my youth group, there may be a handful of people on this planet that know my sites. That plain sucks. So I am hoping for fellowship with other Christian internet marketers.
If you are a Christian internet marketer (and by that I mean 1. You are saved, and live like you are saved 2. You actually make money online) and you are seeking fellowship with others that understand what it is like to spend 16 hours straight staring at your monitor in the hopes of eaking out a living on line, drop me a line.
Recently my friend Wade made a post challenging Christians in this business to go a step further and help Christian owned business in launching.
And just today, Shawn Collins posted an article about tithing your marketing time. Though from a secular perspective Shawn is looking for a community of like minded individuals who will partake in some charity to help the larger body politik.
I’d imagine that silent majority among networks, affiliates, and merchants has some great feedback and advice, but they’re all “too busy.”
Well listen here - if you care about the industry, invest in it with your insight. It doesn’t take so much time to contribute.
There are some folks that share a lot - they info tithe, meaning they spend a good 10% of their week helping, sharing, informing, correcting, and generally growing the industry.
There is good news and bad news in this. For those who hate God and are skeptical of those who don’t, there is very little to worry about here. We as the called out ones are not doing any better that the rest of the industry. The bad news is that I would really like to be part of something that will change that.
So why the failure?
When a business venture starts you have the visionary who raises capital to launch the venture. We have visionaries, we just have not had the capital raised. For business ventures that capital is financial. In kingdom work that capital is prayer.
Will you agree with me in prayer today? Please pray to the Father that we can have some sort of meaningful fellowship of believers who can bridge the gap between their faith and their business. A place of trusting relationships based on integreity where we can multiply our resources.
One can put a thousand to flight, two can put ten thousand.
One of my sites gets a couple million page views a month, a fairly loyal usergroup with 10+ pageviews per visitor. I have had the site for a while and it is clean, without any adult material. But it is a Christian community.
I have been looking for a CPM company to fill the 728 x 90 banner at the head so I thought I would give Doubleclick a try. Here was the response I got:
Thank you for your interest in Performics. At this time we cannot approve your application. Your site may have been declined for one or more of the following reasons:
1. We were unable to access and review your site based on the URL provided.
2. Your site was under construction.
3. The information provided doesn’t match registered domain information.
4. Submitting unsolicited commercial email (Spam) or trademark infringement.
5. Contains gambling information.
6. Publishing libel or defamation.
7. Promoting illegal substances.
8. Uses violence or hate-oriented speech.
9. Has extensive religious commentary or attempts to preach or solicit members for a particular church or faith.
10. Contains adult, obscene, or offensive content.
Please feel free to contact us for additional information or after you have made the necessary adjustments to your site. We are more than happy to review again.
Sincerely,
Performics Affiliate Network…powered by ConnectCommerce
www . performics . com
Christianity is now in the same category as spam, porn, violence, and illegal substances.
I was a mortgage broker in the height of the refinance boom. I knew people who were doing 20 mortgages a month. Guys who were only doing “A” paper and making less than $2k a loan were still making 40 grand a month. Several times a week the office would be invaded by affiliate managers from various loan companies pitching their latest product in an attempt to get your business.
The thing is that their rates were generally within a quarter point, the credit terms were virtually the same and they charged about the same fees. Yet they always came in pitching the same product every one else has.
The question I aways had in my mind was always the same, “When I call you at 5 p.m. with a loan scenario are you going to pick up the phone and give me a useful answer? When I send in the paperwork with that same scenario will the loan get approved? Will you ’suddenly’ get some new loan stipulation that will prevent me from closing a loan on those terms five days before the closing, making me look like a liar and losing the deal for me? Will you make sure someone will actually process my loan in a timely manner so I can get my stipulations well before my closing date?
It was like a chiropractor telling you about their fancy equipment and cool waiting room when you just wanted to know, “Are you gonna fix my back?”
One day a guy came into the office just like everybody else and handed out his rate sheets with loan programs, got all the brokers together and said, “We have the same programs as everybody else. Some of our fees are a little higher. Some of our stipulations are a little stronger. But I guarantee you that if you send me a loan, I will do everything I can to get it closed. I will drive here to pick up your loan packages so you don’t have to lose a day shipping them. I will answer the phone when you call. And when I tell you the parameters of a loan, they will not change.”
We sent him a few loans and he did exactly like he said he would. He got every one of my loans that qualified for his programs after that.
Affiliate managers, here is what we want from you: Make my life easier and you will get all of my business.
Please stop telling me you have a new ringtone campaign that pays $12. Yes, I know you have a zip submit that pays $1.40. Could you at least look at the names of my domains before suggesting a program?
I know the true.com video ads of the flirting girls are converting but no, I might lose some niche authority on my minister’s resource site by placing it there. Please … think.
So here is my list of tips for the hungry AM:
1. Invest in your affiliates. Get your network to pay someone to write a decent ebook and give that to your affiliates with promise. Most of these ebooks are useful but not worth $100. Get one done that covers affiliate marketing. When an affiliate calls you and expresses interest in ppc advertising tell him you have a free ebook that might help.
2. Return phone calls and emails. (period)
3. At least act like you care about their business.
4. Try to take note of affiliates heavy in specific niches and send them a group email when a new product comes that might be of interest. (wade tonkin of USN is really good at this.)
5. Put more than product announcements in your communications. You talk to so many marketers. Yo are in the industry. You may be the only other person that we know who is in the industry. Could you throw us a bone? ex. “Many affiliates report that structuring your ppc ad like this blah blah is working. You don’t have to give trade secrets but come on!
6. Set incentives. Azoogle had a thing where if you converted like$10k you got a $50 gift card. So if I make $10,000 I will get an extra $50? Am I the only one who thinks that is stupid? Offer your smaller affiliates a t-shirt if they increase 25% or feature them in your newsletter or something like that. Get creative.
Relationships.com, which bills itself as the most visited christian dating site recently changed its name to ChristianMingle.com. I searched and searched but could not find out why they changed the name.
ChristianMingle is owned by Sparks Network which recently reorganized here in the US. They specialize in niche dating sites. Dating sites are pretty big revenue for Christian sites and you have to wonder why they would mess with such a well known name.
From the Press Release
Relationships.com™ has changed to ChristianMingle.com! We will be continuing to add new features which will better reflect our purpose and help to attract even more members which will earn you more commissions.
For the next month or two, Relationships.com links will still work and you’ll receive credit for all the work you do in referring visitors to Relationships.com.
With more features and a quickly growing database of Christian singles you can expect to see more conversions each month.
For the last year or so Relationships.com has been the most visited Christian dating site according to Hitwise, and we are confident that this will hold true as we continue as ChristianMingle.com.
For tips and suggestions on how to best promote ChristianMingle.com, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We appreciate your partnership as we move forward with these exciting changes. Please let us know how we can help you in your continued success.
I just got back from my trip to Orlando. If you are in the marketing business, Orlando is like getting your masters in the trade. I am going to list a few things I noticed in the coming days but I also made my first video thingy.
I sent an email asking the guy at 45n5 how he made his. He answered but I got no link love. Oh well . . .
It has been my heart for quite some time to be able to network with other Christians in this industry. That is the purpose of this blog (since it is obviously not for the profit) and the hope of this new community.
So if you are a Christian in the internet game, come join our community!
Kevin was trained as a medical doctor but now does domaining full time. He is also a believer. The article says that he has a penchant for Christian domains. To which I ask,
So I do this online thing for a living. That is great! and it is awful.
The great part is that I get to do what I love with no timeclock. The bad part is that I have no boss telling me that I have read the Washington Post long enough now back to work!
That is why I have decided to make a June push to ramp up production. Since I am up to something like four readers I don’t have to really worry about secrets getting revealed so here is the plan:
Create at least one new site a day. Most likely this is going to be a blog based around a specific niche. Either a CB product, under-represented keyword, or affiliate product. I will post to this new site every four days until I have roughly eight to ten articles.
Add content to my top producing site at least every other day the entire month. We neglect the top producers far to often in the hopes of creating new income streams.
Market more. I have sent out two mass emails in my entire marketing career. I have a database of almost 10,000 people who have requested to be on my mailing list. I think it is time to let these people know I am alive.
Pray for direction. This may sound silly but I really believe that God cares about my business. I need to get Him a little more involved.
Stay focused.
I am in the process of selling off some sites that don’t fit my portfolio and will free me up to do other things. It is time to ramp up productivity!
See how that works?