“Which gospel was written first?”

The CAM site in Wades own words is:

“…a Christian community for people in the online and specifically the affiliate marketing industry.”

I’m a fan of the site and of trivia in general, so I’ll be popping in I’m sure.

I had a chat with my new friend, Wade Tonkin of the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association the other day, and he filled me in on some interesting happenings at this year’s Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, February 24-26. I kept bumping in to Wade in various places on the Internet and was glad to finally get to know him a little better. Wade is a fellow Christian believer, affiliate marketer and blogger.

I’ve haven’t had the opportunity to go to an Affiliate Summit yet, but it is at the very top of my list for conferences to attend. From what I have heard from those who have attended, Affiliate Summit is a very rewarding experience. It kind of goes against what I would have thought, that affiliate marketers would be competitors and therefore suspicious about socializing and giving away secrets at conferences like Affiliate Summit. I guess I’ll find out first hand one of these days when I have a chance to attend one.

Wade has a passion for bringing Christian affiliate marketers together in fellowship. Wade told me that CAMA is organizing the second annual CAMA Gospel Brunch Sunday, February 24th from 9:15-11:30 AM at The House of Blues at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Anyone can attend (I just heard it is sold out) to share food, fun and fellowship. Wade says CAMA is “expecting 50 attendees that represent a cross section of the online marketing business: affiliates, merchants, agencies, search professionals, media will be in attendance.  We have attendees coming from as far away as Singapore and South Africa to attend.” He says the goal of the event is to “present a spiritual kick off to the Affiliate Summit event and provide a Fellowship opportunity for Christians  in the industry who are away from their home church.”

I got permission from Wade to mention that one of the high points of the event will be the unveiling of the “CAMA Certified” badge, a program that will certify merchants with legitimate Christian values, sites and offers.

The badge will serve to provide Christian marketers with a source for offers that they can be proud to promote on their sites or blogs. merchants that would like to be “CAMA Certified” will submit an application that will be reviewed by a panel of industry professionals of faith. They insure that the merchant is truely one that aims to advance the gospel with their products and services and looks to the Christian consumer as more than just “another niche to monetize” and that the structure of their offer and business practices are in keeping with Christian values (fairness, integrity). They also look to offer an  Affiliate Membership which will certify the affiliates site or sites and hopefully earn Member affiliates additional commissions and benefits from member merchants.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? Wade also said:

I am expecting great good, inspiring fellowship and networking and really incredible music that will send  all attendees – believer or non believer into the rest of the Affiliate Summit on a spiritual high note. It’s really an awesome event.

Wade said last year’s CAMA brunch was a blast. He expects to get some footage as he’s bringing his flip cam. Also, he expects Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson to have their cams with them as well–if you listen to these guys on WebmasterRadio.FM or elsewhere, you know they are great marketers and lots of fun.

I am looking forward to hearing more about the CAMA event as well as the usual Affiliate Summit goodness. Hopefully there will be a third annual CAMA Gospel Brunch and I’ll be able to attend and meet some of these interesting folks. In the mean time, I am praying that this year’s brunch is a success.

read more and see the AdSense check

I signed up for Chitika eMinimalls contextual ad service in fall of 2005. Like many webmasters, I was attracted to the novelty of graphically appealing contextual ads featuring comparative shopping that might be a good Google AdSense alternative. After testing Chitika eMinimalls ads on a few sites, I found that their performance justified me keeping them on certain pages, mostly pages with shopping or product specific content. I grabbed my horn and jumped right onto the bandwagon. I even wrote an enthusiastic review of Chitika for Clickfire visitors. I received my first check in November. I was pulling for this little upstart, hoping they’d turn out to be a strong competitor.

I checked my stats daily with a little playful smugness. It was now coming time to receive my first big payment from Chitika. I will not publish the email that I received from Chitika Customer Service as I don’t like to make the contents of private emails public without permission. But, one can imagine the let down I felt when I saw the title: Chitika Account Suspension Notice. Chitika suspended my account due to their belief that fraudulent traffic activities were taking place. My immediate response was:

Dear Chitika Customer Service,

I’ve removed all Chitika ads from my site as requested. Please indicate what is causing the concern in your analysis so I can investigate my server logs and take appropriate steps to prevent recurrence.

After waiting some time and receiving no response, I tried again:

Dear Chitika Customer Service,

I’m writing to inquire about the suspension of my Chitika eMinimalls account. I am not aware of any fraudulent activity on the account and would like to know what is causing Chitika the concern. I am especially vexed about this development because I take great pains to conduct business in an ethical manner. I am eagar to determine how the problem can be corrected and especially when the suspension may be lifted. Please respond and advise me of next steps.

Unable to get any kind of response, I decided to cut my losses and move on to other things. Chitika is very new to a young market. The company would surely be a target for click fraud by unscrupulous webmasters. That’s understandable. It is less easy to overlook the customer service issue. After all I’d invested in Chitika, I expected the courtesy of a reply.

I, and I suppose other unsuspecting webmasters are casualties of Chitika’s youth and extremely rapid growth. After having suffered some loss, I have to wonder…Will Chitika survive? This whole experience taught me that any PPC based advertising network must be able to discern fraudulent publishers from the good guys. Goodbye, Chitika. No hard feelings.

Why has the thread generated so much controversy? The screen shot of Mook-Jon’s CJ stats for the two month period show $81,332.78. Some webmasters are cheering Mook-Jon’s openess as motivational and others are questioning the screen shot’s authenticity (he isn’t stating what sites he owns but others are busily trying to investigate and publicize them).

Mook-Jon is generously answering questions and giving advice on how he achieved this figure using the Commission Junction affiliate network. Seeming to be more of a marketer than a developer or content writer, some of his statements are provocative and seem outside the typical webmaster box of thinking. The main thrust of the questions is:

“How did you do it?”