Awesome surprise delivered by the UPS guy today.

Return address was ShareASale and from the shape of the package, I was afraid hoping it would be a lifesize image of Brian Littleton tending goal.

Instead, it was a massive check that any online money-making guru would be proud to stand behind, congratulating us for being in the ShareASale Top 1%.

The only thing missing is Ed McMahon.

(This is what I’m supposed to do with this, right?)

Thanks guys. I see it’s post-dated for the 31st. I won’t try to cash it until next week.

Story behind the story

I’m sure many of these went out and I wanted to be the first to get it posted. But I’m alone with the kids today on their vacation week. So I set up my three-year-old who is now officially a budding photographer.

Obviously my SLR camera was unavailable so I took this picture with my iPhone with which, coincidentally, I’ve been having a blast taking pictures. So much so that I’ve started a iPhone photography blog called “Phonetography”. Catchy eh? More on that later.

This is quite the rant that Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB, wrote to the FTC in an open letter…

Dear Mr. Chairman:

So there I was last Saturday, about to send out on my Twitter feed — which automatically updates my Facebook page and links to my personal blog — a photograph of this wonderful baked halibut dish I’d just made as a surprise for my wife. I was in the middle of typing a rave review of the recipe, which I’d pulled from my favorite cookbook, Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas. But before I could press the “post” button, I stopped and canceled the whole thing.

I remembered that the book was a freebie, sent to me by an editor at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house 13 years ago. And I didn’t want you guys to haul me into court and fine me for violating the rules you’ve just promulgated to muzzle social media.

He goes on… Read the whole letter on the IAB website.

I don’t know what his problem is, all he had to do is explain that he got the book for free 13 years prior somewhere in the 140 characters available in his Tweet.

And why didn’t he send the book back in the first place? That’s what all real journalists do.

And Mr. Rothenberg must not have felt it was appropriate to put an affiliate link in there.

Well, someone had to do it. And of course I must disclose.

Inspired Breast Cancer Awareness month, and by the NFL’s pink weekend attire where most teams donned pink gloves, shoes, and hats, Joe Sousa (long time affiliate marketer and good friend of mine) has launched RealSportsFansWearPink.com, an affiliate website and storefront featuring pink sports clothing.

Joe’s donating 100% of his proceeds in October to charity, and 50% thereafter.

Awesome idea Joe!

I’m all torn up.

I’ve been writing for five years now about affiliate marketing on my name-sake blog, jangro.com, and it’s been pretty successful. Not REALLY successful though. I’ve sort of hit a plateau.

And every once in a while, I go through an identify crisis there. Is it a professional blog? Is it a personal blog? Is it both? Until now, it’s been everything.

This is a hard decision, because I’ve become fairly well known as simply “Jangro” in the affiliate marketing space. It’s sort of my brand. But so much other stuff has crept into that space on the jangro.com blog that they’re pushing the affiliate stuff out. For example, I posted a form called “Ask Jangro”, hoping to get some affiliate-related questions. I get daily questions about televisions. Alas.

DLP repair has taken over jangro.com. I didn’t intend for that to happen, but to be honest I make about $100 a day on affiliate sales on television repair products and parts. How can I ignore that? As much as I seem to have tried (squandered, really), it won’t go away. So it’s time to give in and see if I can grow that revenue. (I hope to talk about some of that here on AffBook.com.)

In order to allow jangro.com to grow in the direction it seems to want to go, and to grow more in my affiliate marketing writing, I need to split up the content. Something’s got to give.

The affiliate stuff is me. That’ll go with me wherever I take it. That’s the safe stuff to move, and here we are on AffBook.com.

AffBook? Am I writing a book? No. well, uh, maybe. In my head for now, this website is a book of sorts. A handbook on affiliate marketing. I’ve always wanted to write more about standard affiliate marketing stuff. I always seem to need some earth-shattering angle over on jangro.com and I leave a lot of stuff on the drawing board. This is where I hope to be able to publish more content like that. Stay tuned. This is going to be a fun change!