I was just chatting with Jonathan while he pretended to be online looking up American Idol results (my apologies to his lovely wife Leanda) and we were comparing our wives…’ Blogs.
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Last week marked the official launch of the BlogKits affiliate marketing network for bloggers, as powered by Forge Corporation. As founder of BlogKits, and currently the network director, I am responsible for the overall operation of the network, and, the fun part that I love the most… promoting it.

And what a promotional week it was! Here’s a few links to some of the coverage we received over the past seven days or so. One thing is for sure, and that’s that we’re right about a lot of regular people who blog out there wanting better ways to try and earn with their blogs. Now if we can just keep the promotion up and get all 50 million of them signed up we’ll do just fine.

Here are a few of the press/blog highlights. (more…)

Watch a short video of MyJewelryBox.com President David Mamane talk about his relationship with ForgeBusiness.

Listen to our CEO, Jonathan Miller at Webmaster Radio talking about ForgeInsight! (mp3)

Visit ForgeInsight.com for a free pdf download.

Back in Jan. of 2005 I created a little thing called BlogKits. The idea was to be a bridge between bloggers who wanted to learn how to monetize their blogs, and advertisers who wanted to reach bloggers. It worked pretty well, and over the past year and a half the system collected over 2500 blogs from around the world.

I had a problem though, I needed to take it to the next level, with zero budget in my pocket. So when I came on board Forge, I said to Jonathan that we should turn it into a CPA network and he agreed. So, as of yesterday July 13, 2006, we’ve officially launched the new and improved BlogKits…

BlogKits is the world’s first true performance marketing network, for bloggers! You can view the release here at PRweb.com.

Excellent coverage is coming fast. Here’s a quick list of it so far. Also, more information on the launch and signup can be found at the BlogKits blog at http://www.blogkits.com/blog/.

Affiliatetip
Threadwatch
5 Star Affiliate Blog
Marketing Pilgrim
Webpronews
The Blogging Times
Blogging Systems
TechMeme
Marketing Vox
Sabahan.com
Blogger Success
The Blog Herald
Digg

What a great show. Me, Jonathan, Ferdie and Wade all attended in Orlando this past week. Jon and Ferdie all the way from South Africa! Fortunately for me I only had a 2 hour flight back to Cleveland, but the SA crew I believe had something like a 22-hour flight? Ouch.

So we’re all back in the swing of things, playing catch up. It was great to meet a lot of new people at the show, and I gotta say that I’m more impressed with this show time after time. The exhibitors were great, and the networking even better.

If you are even remotely involved in the affiliate industry, this show is a must-attend show. I believe the next one is in Vegas in Jan 2007, so we’ll see you there!

The Affiliate Summit is just days away. Traveling there from Forge will be me, Wade, Ferdie and our fearless leader Jonathan Miller. Please do stop by our booth at #309 and have a chat?

We’re looking forward to the show, especially since we have some huge announcements to tell you about. Hint, hint… www.blogkits.com.

JupiterResearch came out with a report saying the following…

64 percent of executives say they spend less than $500,000 to deploy and manage corporate blogs.

News flash, you don’t need to spend anywhere near that type of money (by far) to make a successful business blog. Those 36 percent of executives that are spending over half a million on a blog, please us today! :0

More good stats from the report.

Some 35 percent of large companies plan to initiate corporate blogs this year – and combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent of such companies will have deployed corporate blogs by the end of 2006.

So what’s holding you back now eh? You can do this, with our help.

Call US +27 12 676 9364.

Planning on attending the Affiliate Summit? Let’s get together and chat about how Forge can help your online business. At the very least, you can get us to expense dinner or drinks and save money that way!

Please use the form on the left hand side of the page to let us know you’re coming, and we’ll arrange a time to meet that is convenient for you.

Branding isn’t about your website design, or your logo, or anything like that. Branding is the experience that your customers have with your company, whether it’s a service or product, or even just interaction with an employee.

One of my jobs at Forge is to help tell the world about the amazing brand we have. How do I do that? It’s easy, I simply help us get new people to work with, then let our team of professionals do my job for me. See, if you have a good team, or product, or service, then building a strong brand is easy to do.

Every time a customer interacts with your company, in any manner, your brand experience is being built. I like to call it “sticky goo” branding. A customer is either going to lick it off of their fingers, or go running to the bathroom to wash it off. Gross, but you get the point?

Do you know what your customers think of your brand? It might be time to ask them.

As for my work here at Forge, stay tuned for some fun and creative “experiences” coming to you soon.