Revenue is earned through the membership to the Aligned Thinkers Journey on the SSA International site.
The time management coach will be marketed at small- and medium-sized business (SMBs) owners and entrepreneurs who are time stressed and may not have access to formal project management and time management tools due to the high cost and complexity but who will benefit from SSA International’s training and tools.
The SMB market alone could be worth $100 Million or more per year and, compared with the corporate market, is relatively untapped.
We’ve positioned the Aligned Thinking Journey as a membership continuity program and charges a monthly fee for access to the coach and weekly content updates.
The price point is variable with options including:
• 30 day free trial – converting into paid membership ($19.97)
• 14 day free trial – converting into paid membership ($19.97)
• 30 day preview membership – converting into paid membership ($3,97 preview – $19.97)
To convert members we’re giving away over $620 in value including:
• A 24/7 Personal On Line Coach – $197.97 value
• A Weekly Success Secret – $60.00 value
• 15 Welcome Page Bonus Tutorials – $147.49 value
• Guidance to Create your Work Mission – $97.97 value
• Guidance to Create your Personal Mission – $97.97 value
• A Copy of the Book, Aligned Thinking – $19.95 value

Next actions – we’ll be creating the affiliate microsite, setting up landing pages & putting creative into the affiliate network.

Keep watching!

First we’ll be performing a strategy consultation to develop Jim’s online & affiliate marketing plan.

He’s a phenomenal Time Management Coach and has created a program called the Aligned Thinkers Journey – it’s an online time management coach that takes only 8 minutes and 32 seconds a week – and it works!

The coach is designed to ensure you ‘align every action to the life, riches & values you cherish’

After test driving the course I found that implementing just a few of his strategies and tools has improved my ability to focus on important actions and streamline my time management – I finally have some free time to spend with my family!
Keep tuning in as we build Jim’s affiliate program and try out new landing pages / offers and creative. If you have any thoughts let us know!

Jon

Wow, this month really caught me off guard! Been away from the blogging desk for so long it feels strange to be getting back to grips with my byline.

A good part of January was spent running ourselves ragged showcasing our technologies and business to the Technology Top 100 adjudicators. The TT100 is the most prestigious awards for technology excellence in Africa – you could call it the “geek’s oscars”.

From thousands of entries this year we were selected as one of the top 100 emerging and established enterprises in South Africa for 2008. We’re obviously thrilled at being recognised as a leading global player in the online advertising and marketing industry and we’re pretty chuffed that our ForgeInsight Analytics patent was singled out as an industry leading innovation.

So, what did we do the next day? Got right down to working hard to deliver for our clients and improve our technology. After all, you’re only as good as your next award aren’t you?

California Bill 178 threatens to change the performance marketing playing field.

This bill, copying a similar one in New York, unfairly categorizing publishers as sales presence for out-of-state advertisers. This means taxes will be levied on out-of-state advertisers, potentially causing them to shut down their publisher relationships in the state (it happened in New York). Learn more at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com

With your help, we have a great chance to kill this bill: the PMA is working with the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association lobbying groups to fight this bill. These groups have successfully killed similar bills in the past, but the difference now is the precedent set by New York state. They believe the only way this bill can be killed is to have a coordinated grass-roots effort that demonstrates the devastating effect this bill will have on performance marketers in California.

With the support of CalChamber and CalTax, PMA is launching a coordinated grass-roots campaign that targets congressional representatives. We are developing an attack plan that includes sample letters, fact sheets, congressional contacts by zip code, and a “Visit Sacramento” day, to put faces in front of decision makers.

First step: The PMA is extremely fortunate to have the support and experience of Beth Kirsch, a well known industry leader who was formerly a federal lobbyist. She is leading our effort, but we need your help. We are looking for California performance marketers to get involved. The most seriously impacted are California publishers and OPMs.

We don’t have much time – we have until March 31st to make an impact.

As we learned from our colleagues in New York, the passage of this bill could have devastating effects on California performance marketers. If this passes in California, it virtually assures a firestorm of adoption by other states, which could devastate our entire industry. If we beat this bill, it will severely limit the adoption in other states.

To join the fight contact the Performance Marketing Alliance or at the very least, please forward this email to your Californian friends.

For more information:
Rebecca Madigan
Performance Marketing Alliance, Inc.
805.469.1496
rebecca@performancemarketingalliance.com

This is certainly true in my own experience and we’re thrilled to have landed 8 new clients in as many days for both our outsourced affiliate management agency and affiliate network.

Why is affiliate marketing proving to be so resilient and indeed flourishing at a time when budgets are being slashed to the bone?

Simply put, advertisers realize that they have very little risk in setting up an affiliate program. For the cost of one offline campaign in a regional market you can hire an affiliate management team, implement a network such as OfferForge.com, CJ.com or GoogleAdNetwork and run your program for a year!

The bias towards only paying for results certainly contributes to Affiliate Marketing being adopted as the ‘flavor of the month’.

Additionally, with corporate layoffs and global job losses we’re seeing a dramatic upsurge in new affiliates entering the market in order to generate an income. The learning curve is steep, but already there are some phenomenal new publishers generating great content and leveraging social media tools like twitter and facebook to drive traffic for advertisers.

I think Malcolm Gladwell says it best in Outliers, his new book when he talks about overnight successes. Affiliate marketing is set to become a real ‘overnight success’ but let’s remember that as with all success, it’s taken years of hard work and energy to prepare for exceptional achievement. Over the last years thousands of companies and individuals have refined the models, established the tracking and analytics platforms, evangelized the markets and built the networks we rely on!

So, as we head into 2009 I’m downright bullish about the future of affiliate marketing and Forge will be right there at the cutting edge with our analytics tools, outsourced affiliate program management agency and our affiliate network!

Today we’ve launched the affiliate program, exclusively available on OfferForge and we’re paying $3 for each free user that opens a Projjex account.

As a Projjex convert I can attest to the fact that its great for managing small distributed teams and getting instant feedback on project progress. Those of you that know me personally, know I’m a ‘give-me-the-lowdown-now’ kinda guy – so Projjex satisfies my craving for instant updates on what everyone’s doing – from affiliate recruitment to new client integration.

They’ve even added Basecamp and MS Project import capability – so projects don’t need a central administrator – and each team member can update progress in real-time. I’m so impressed by the product that we’ve adopted it as our new collaboration solution and chucked out our clunky old software!

Take a look at this video that sums up in 30 seconds why Projjex rocks

For more news on Projjex visit our affiliate site

Don’t be Alarmed!

All OfferForge publishers, don’t be alarmed. Next time you log into the OfferForge Affiliate Interface at http://us.offerforge.com or http://za.offerforge.com you’re going to have to accept the Affiliate Agreement again before you can continue to see your stats.Don’t worry, we haven’t sneaked in any new material changes – but we updated spelling errors and omissions.

Just as a good practice, please review the terms again and agree (if you do agree). If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact your affiliate representative.

Jonathan

Shawn Collins, organizer of the Affiliate Summit just mailed me and let us know there are only 50 passes left! This year’s going to be the biggest get-together yet with 2,500 attendees at the 3 day event.

Of course Forge will be there in full force, exhibiting at Booth #424. We’re also key sponsors of the Monday Night Official Summit Party, being held at Tao, after the Gala Dinner – remember to rsvp if you want to mix it up with us and be entertained by the Blue Man Group.

Till vegas!

Jonathan

Both these clients have shown tremendous growth and innovation this year, with MJB adding phenomenal growth in revenue year on year & launching some great social media applications to boot, while Peapod continued its stellar growth year on year with innovative mixed media performance campaigns.

Unfortunately, the Ad-Tech awards site was down again all day so I’m cooling my heels writing this blog post. If I don’t get to enter you for the awards – just a word of thanks to both companies from the team at Forge – it’s a honor to work with great companies such as yourself!

BTW, Same goes for every other client we work for!

Jon

It seems though that the big G in South Africa is not above some clever advertising to drum up new business for their fledgling office – using their own Adwords, of course.

I happened to see an ad for Google’s Adwords product triggered off a search for “SA Affiliate Networks” on google.co.za.

SA Affiliate Marketing
Gain New Customers In Just 15 Mins Sign-Up To Google Adwords Today!

They go one step further and target Affiliates in the same way to attract Adsense users.

I’m not complaining – Google’s been a great source of leads for us over the years and our affiliates earn a lot of income using Adwords to promote affiliate programs……….. but I have to wonder about the anti-competitive nature of advertising your own services on your own platform in competition with smaller (just, lol) companies.

Especially since you don’t seem to have to pay for the ads while your competitor who’s going after the same market has to pay a premium fee completely determined by you.

What happens when Google decides to start offering jewelry, shoes, apparel and more?

Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?

Luckily for us, merchants realize that affiliate programs deliver value beyond paying for the click.

There’s more to affiliate marketing than just search engine placement – as long as the niche lives affiliate marketing will flourish!