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The popular series of WordPress Revolution themes are beginning to offer exclusive WP themes.

While the current Revolution themes can be purchased an unlimited number of times, the exclusive Revolution themes will be limited to 10 copies being sold, and then will be removed forever.

You can see an example of one of the non-exclusive Revolution themes at http://feedfront.com/, which is the site for FeedFront Magazine, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit.

The Revolution Exclusive #1 theme is a widget-ready, customizable theme that is geared towards “churches, rock bands or other websites that want the grunge-style look,” according to Revolution creator, Brian Gardner.

The exclusive themes will include a PSD file as well, and they are being sold at a price of $499.95. There is a special launch price of $399.95 through Sunday, August 31st at 12:00 midnight CST.

I was just reading the latest LinkShare newsletter for affiliates, and one item caught my eye - the launch of a new WP plugin from them.

The LinkShare RSS DealFeed plug-in makes it easy for WordPress users to promote RSS feeds from advertisers they are partnered with. Users simply download the plug-in, enter their token and choose the Advertiser feed they would like to promote. Publishers will need to be partnered with an advertiser to display that advertiser’s RSS feed content.

That’s cool to see LinkShare getting into the WordPress action, since pretty much any and all of my new sites these days are built on WordPress.

I went for a long time hand coding all of my affiliate sites, but it was just time to move on and make the process more efficient.

Anyhow, you can get more details and download this plugin at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/linksharerss-ads/, as well as information on the LinkShare site.

LinkConnector has been on a tear this year with signings of Internet Retailer Top 500 companies. I noted a few months ago that they’d scored 7 from the list, and now I see another 5 on their roster.

• BootBarn, Inc.
• Gander Mountain (owner of Overtons.com)
• Hats.com LLC
• Tool King LLC
• U.S. Auto Parts Warehouse

See the Internet Retailer Top 500 at http://www.internetretailer.com/top500/.

I just read the Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing Workbook by Jay Berkowitz, and it was an excellent and informative read.

If you’re not familiar with Jay Berkowitz, he has a podcast that I never miss, he is the CEO of Ten Golden Rules, and a frequent speaker at marketing conferences (he’ll be at the Affiliate Summit Social Media 2008 event on October 5 in NYC).

As the name suggests, the book covers Jay’s ten golden rules of Internet marketing.

It’s a quick read, and I think it would be an asset for any affiliate or affiliate manager. Contents include 11 case studies, some practical exercises and tips, as well as consumer and B2B examples.

The book also includes a CD of Jay’s podcasts. Check out an excerpt.

Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing is available at http://www.tengoldenrules.com/order-book.htm.

Internet Retailer has a new article on the importance of rewarding and engaging in relationships with top affiliates.

Ravenwood Marketing isn’t an online retailer, but it’s partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales each week for many online merchants. Ravenwood is a so-called superaffiliate, a web site that pushes a high volume of qualified traffic to online merchants, accomplishing that through efforts that go well beyond simply pasting up links to merchant sites.

The article also touches on the subject of the economy, and I reflected on affiliate marketing back in 2000…

Bell notes that it isn’t the first time affiliate marketing has survived—thrived, in fact—in a down economy. Bell says online marketers turned increasingly to affiliate marketing in the downturn of the early 2000’s because spending was based on performance rather than impressions. “At the time, companies were folding but I didn’t see many affiliate managers being laid off,” he says. “And so far today, I’m not aware of any cutbacks or layoffs in any affiliate marketing programs, or programs being affected in any other way.”

Read the complete article at http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27606.

ShareASale announced today that affiliates can now create and generate their own video creatives, and link them to multiple different merchants throughout the video through the use of cue points with Make-A-Video.

Make-A-Video was announced earlier this month, but now it’s ready for affiliates to play around with it.

I checked in with Brian Littleton, President and CEO of ShareASale, about the release of Make-A-Video, and here is what he had to say…

“Our goal has always been to put the best tools in the hands of Merchants and Affiliates, enabling them to do what they do best. From an Affiliate perspective, I feel we have done that in this case by allowing them to focus on things like merchandising and content – and not on trying to create a video player or worrying about tracking.

Video content is an area of enormous growth potential as everyone recognizes, and the only hurdle for Merchants and Affiliates alike seemed to be the actual technical tracking… so we targeted our efforts there. Once a video is shot, it takes no more than 5-10 minutes to generate a full-featured video creative which they can then use immediately.”

This looks like an exciting feature from ShareASale and I will be testing it out very soon.

Watch a demo at http://blog.shareasale.com/2008/08/06/make-a-video.

We are now accepting speaker proposals for Affiliate Summit West 2009, taking place January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas.

Submit a speaking proposal at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/09w_speakers.php.

A complimentary conference registration is provided to speakers. Travel and hotel are the responsibility of the speakers.

The submission deadline is September 12, 2008. Any submissions after this date will not be considered.

More details on Affiliate Summit West 2009 at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/09w_conference.php.