To all my readers I wanted to let you know that Christian Affiliate Marketing has moved.  I originally wanted to use this domain to create a directory of Christian affiliate offers and tack a blog on a folder.

In the end, I could not find enough offers to warrant this and the domain name was too specific for the blog I wanted to create.

This blog is now going to be rebranded as The Affiliate Preacher, Encouraging Internet Entrepreneurs.

The new address for the site is http://www.affiliatepreacher.com/

You can subscribe to the feed by clicking here http://www.affiliatepreacher.com/feed/

I have some great articles in the works I know you won’t want to miss.  I have already begun a series on driving traffic.  So come on by and join in the discussion!

Carl,

The Affiliate Preacher

So you built your super cool Christian themed web 2.0 site and now you are sitting back and waiting for the traffic.  How’s that working out for you?  Probably not very well.  The problem is that nobody knows about your site.   After designing a site and adding quality content, you must get good quality relevant inbound links.

One of the best free ways to do this is to post in forums that allow you to have links in your signature.  Getting links through forums is often called spam because the comments are rarely relevant.  This is a really short sighted strategy.  It will get you banned and your posts deleted.

If you find a community that is relevant to your site, posting a dozen or so posts a day is quite easy.  While these are not the highest quality links, they have several benefits.

1. They are permanent
2. They target the community you are trying to reach
3. They are free
4. You are making relationships with people who may want to further promote your site
5. Forum posters are web surfers
6. You can market yourself as an expert in your field.

So here are 10 PR3+ Christian forums that allow do-follow links in signatures.  Remember, no spam!  Now go link build.

Crosswalk Forums PR5

Christian Forums PR4

Grace Centered Christian Forums PR3 Site with the most obvious non-christian links in signatures

christian Forum Site PR3

Christian-Forum.Net PR3

Christian Teen Forums PR3

Christian Musician Forum PR3

Christian Guitar Resources PR3

Christian Webmasters PR3

Christianity Board PR2 This is not PR3+ but it was the only one with a Rapture Statement.  You can’t pass that up!

Friday’s are for friends.  Here is what is happening around the Christian Affiliate Marketing blogsphere.

Christian Affiliate Program Directory – Wade is finally getting his affiliate program directory done.  He has been working on this for a while.  You should definitely sign up for it.

Jim Kukral Jim Kukral has not updated his blog in over a week!  I don’t remember the last time this happened.

September 2008 Earning Report! New blog friend Shannon Lilly almost beat a grand for the month!  Great job!  Follow him as he breaks the bank.

Earlier today I went to Digital Point and was greeted by this page.  You have to remind yourself that even the most successful sites get errors.

What can you do about it?  I recommed getting the best server you can afford.  If you make your money online, this is a place that it is really stupid to save a few pennies.

the average business that has a 15% profit margin is said to be killing it.  The average online guy wants at least 50% and most are making way more.  Spend a few bucks.  Get some decent hosting.  But when the lights go out temporarily, don’t freak out.

The more websites that I develop, the more I am convinced that Wordpress is the only CMS the average user will ever need. I have built sites with Xoops, Joomla, SimpleCMS, Nuke, and a host of other scripts. I have found that the majority have far too many features to justify the steep learning curve.

As an example, I can spot a failed Joomla by the next and previous links at the bottom of articles which lead to nowhere. The average user has to obtain a Master’s level of education to rid their site of these links. Links that really are not that useful in the first place. The GUI is so complicated that you have to memorize an ebook just to navigate.

The average user is not going to have 15 pages of new content a week separated into multiple categories like in the average newspaper or magazine. They are going to put up content and update it from time to time.

Here is an example. I once built a Christian Videos site. There are specialty scripts you can purchase and others use Joomla or Drupal to do this. But I did not need all that functionality. I used Wordpress. Modified a theme to match my purpose, and launched.

I have used Wordpress for several ministry sites as well. There is an article about that here with another really good one here by ProBlogger Darren Rowse. Coupled with Podpress and eCommerce plugins, Wordpress has been more than enough.

In a future post I will detail the issues I have WP. There are more than a few. But for the average user WP is fine.

I am beginning an adventure to get more traffic to this blog so it can earn money.  I have never monetized a blog before.  I have done affiliate sales with a blog but never had outright advertisers on a blog like I have had with my websites.

So starting today, I am starting a (semi)weekly update on traffic.  This is not on sales, it is on traffic.  I am going to show where I am at and what I am donig to increase it.  Again, this is not tracking income.  This is tracking traffic.  Understand that I am not going to devote a tremendous amount of time to doing this.  I have sites that make money to manage.  Sites that desperately need my love and attention and a server that loves to have temper tantrums.  So between stroaking my money making sites and kicking my server, I don’t have a bunch more time to write here.

So that being said . . . here are the current rankings

• Technoratti Rank: 2,655,296
• Alexa Rank: 21,699,16303|Linking In: 21
• Around 15 pv a day, not worth
• RSS Subscribers 18

Barton Damer of Igniter, Echo, Collide and even Catalyst fame has a new blog of his own, Already Been Chewed.

You may not recognize the name but Barton has been on the leading edge of some of the coolest church graphic design stuff for a while now.  I sent him an email a while ago asking for a recommendation for a graphic designer and he completely ignored me.  (just putting that out there)

Barton has been featured on the web as a contributor to the popular Gomediazine.com. His tutorial on Creating Intricate Patterns in Illustrator is recognized by Smashing Magazine as one of the “Best of Illustrator Tutorials” and PSD Tuts featured his Bling Effect tutorial in a post about Great Photoshop Tutorials.

If you can get past the lime green, barely recognizable links, the blog has a bunch of good stuff on it.  My advice?

1. Use permalinks preferrably /%postname%/
2. Ditch the browns. For an incredible graphic designer, this site is hard to look at.
3. Only use one header.  You use a boring one with your logo in the top, then a changing one with logo variations just below it.  huh?

All in all I am looking forward to what he writes about and I have subscribed to his feed.  Which would give him double the size of my feed.

I have gotten emails through every contact form I have regarding the new search engine Cuil.

<a href=”http://www.cuil.com/”>new search engine</a> [url=http://www.cuil.com/]new search engine[/url] <a href=http://www.cuil.com/>new search engine</a> [url= http://www.cuil.com/ ] new search engine [/url]

Come on guys, quit spamming me.  I have no idea what you thought this was going to do but it is only annoying me.

I now have a first criteria in selecting a new VPS host, monthly billing.  I have been the semi-anual billing guy for a long time.  I had no idea that a host would take a nose dive faster than the US economy. 

So today, I bought a new VPS with a monthly billing plan.

For my ministry, I recently needed to create a photo slideshow in Sony Vegas.  I thought I was going to have to manually add image transition and spacing but I found this tutorial about creating the slide show in Vegas.

enjoy