We’re almost done with BigBrownBox.com. Just wrapping up some final touches on content and rules. Here’s our logo.

Will you be ready for the Big Brown Box? What’s in the Big Brown Box? Stay tuned.

Some guy bought an entire row of spots over at Affiliate Marketing Friends, then canceled the payment after the ads went up and won’t return my emails. I should clarify, his Paypal payment was set to clear yesterday, so in good faith I put the ads up a day ahead of time. Then I see the payment set to “canceled”.

The Internet and some of the people in it never cease to amaze me. It’s for charity people. Geez. You can see who it was by viewing the screenie in this post. It’s the very bottom row of letters, since removed.

We’ve passed the $500 mark of donations raised for charity over at AffiliateMarketingFriends.com. I wanted to thank all of those who have participated so far. The page is starting to fill up and it looks great!

There’s still plenty of time to get in and get your spot. Some banner spots up top available as well, very cheap.

Update: I’ve decided that the money should go to an organization in my hometown that is doing some AMAZING things. This page should say it all. These are amazing people who have been through a parent’s worst nightmare, and now they use what they’ve learned to help others.

http://www.cornerstoneofhope.org/aboutus.html

Make sure to head on over to listen to the latest ‘Affiliate Thing’ radio show where I was a guest today. Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit and Lisa Picarelle, editor-in-chief of Revenue Today magazine interviewed me about the current state of happiness that has perpetuated the industry ranks these days.

From Shawn’s blog…

We chatted about Jim’s new project, Affiliate Marketing Friends, and the overall boom of creativity and friendliness that has perpetuated in the affiliate industry over the last few months.

We tried to come up with an explanation for the recent Kumbaya in affiliate marketing. Is this all due to more interaction at conferences, tools of Web 2.0, marginalization of the Chicken Little pundits, all of the above, or something else?

Whatever the reason, it’s good to see the collective industry turning on, tuning in, and dropping the attitudes for the collective good.

I was also subject to some word association, of which I failed miserably at. Lisa said the word “blogging”, and I completely blanked. I dunno, I think when you think about something so much, so often like I have with blogging over the past 5 years, it’s kinda hard to come up with one word for it. That’s my story at least. Maybe I just got stumped.

We also briefly chatted about my newest affiliate site and project at www.asktheblogger.com.

Thanks for having me on the show. If you’re interested in affiliate marketing at all, you need to listen to this weekly show.

Do you love affiliate marketing? I sure do. I’ve been working knee-deep in the trenches of it since 2000 or so, as an affiliate, a merchant and from the agency side of things. Affiliate marketing has been good to me.

There are many positive things happening in the world of Affiliate marketing these days. Bumpzee from Scott Jangro has literally exploded the discussion. The Affiliate Summit event has blown away everyone with its growth and amazing success. And of course you have long-standing web communities like ABestWeb.com who continue to champion our industry through its valued members.

Those are just a tiny few examples, there are many more.

So I thought to myself, our industry seems to be in a bit of a happy period. By that I mean, we all seem to be getting along and sharing and growing and well, just being friends. So I kept thinking, how can I further that friendship?

Introducing AffiliateMarketingFriends.com.

From the site…

I built Affiliate Marketing Friends because there are some amazing people in this business and I thought it would be a great way to get a bunch of them together to have some fun, and to raise some money for charity at the same time!

Every ounce of money that this website generates will go directly to a charity. I’m not sure which one yet, I’ll update this page when I figure it out.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see your face staring back at me soon. If you love affiliate marketing, you need to join!

So there you have it! Let’s have some fun.

Update: I’ve decided that the money should go to an organization in my hometown that is doing some AMAZING things. This page should say it all. These are amazing people who have been through a parent’s worst nightmare, and now they use what they’ve learned to help others.

http://www.cornerstoneofhope.org/aboutus.html

Super blog powers unite! Shape of… a big juicy charitable blog meme!

I can feel something starting to happen. A meme you say Jim? Yes, Shawn, a meme! Earlier today I wrote about how bloggers like Jason Calacanis and others could/should be selling ads or sponsorships, or whatever they can, on their blogs for the simple sake of giving the money they don’t need to charity.

I mean, why not? If you can help people with your blog super powers, why not, right?

Well, check it out. It appears we might have something going here. Turns out Jason bought into the idea and is offering space on his blog for a $100k donation to a local school.

Jim says I’m throwing away 100k by not having ads on my personal blog. That’s probably a little high since I only get 5k page views a day/200k a month. At a $25 RPM that would be $5,000 a month/$60,000 a year.

Anyway, the reason I don’t sell the space on my blog is because:

a) I don’t have the time to sell it
b) I like the way the clean design looks
c) I make money building profitable businesses, not selling ads on my business card (and that’s what I consider my blog to be).

That being said, if someone wants to sponsor my blog I will give them three ad units on the page and a huge hug if they donate $100,000 to the Bay Ridge Prep Opportunity scholarship fund (the same one that PodTech and Godaddy sponsor for my podcast–oh yeah, time to do one!).

The scholarship goes to folks who could never afford a private school education, but who the school feels could really benefit from it. So, it’s not an academic scholarship for folks who have amazing grades, its a scholarship for folks who didn’t get dealt the best hand in life.

THE CHALLENGE FOR US ALL

Game on. Our job is to find that buyer for Jason. How do we get started? I want to see this followed through, and those kids get that money. Any advice? Maybe we could get three or more companies to pool the money and share the ads? Let’s work this out!

Then we’ll put the pressure on Seth, Mark, Guy and Scoble too :)