Pepperjam Network is a new affiliate network, launched in January 15, 2008. They have a performance based marketing network model. Publishers get compensated only when a transaction occurs. The Pepperjam Network calls itself as the next generation of affiliate marketing. So I have decided to give it a try. This post is all about my first impression with this new affiliate network.

Features of Pepperjam Network

• New affiliate marketing network.
• Good quality affiliate tracking, reporting, and payment technology.
• Cool Web 2.0 interface.
• Reputed merchants.
• Innivative pepperjamADS™.
• Pay Per Performance commission model.
• Affiliate transparency meter.
• Good communication tools.
• Resource center that you can use to gain knowledge!

What is Affiliate transparency?

This is a type of affiliate ranking system, used by Pepperjam Network. They uses a special algorithm to determine transparency ranking of each and every publisher. The result of this algorithm is shown in the Pepperjam Network transparency meter. This meter is displayed throughout the publisher and advertiser account. Higher levels of transparency means that you can access better commission payouts for certain merchants. According to their website, only 5% publisher receives transparency rating of 5 out of 5!

How to join Pepperjam Network as a Publisher?

Joining Pepperjam Network is free and very easy. If you are a website owner/online marketer and ready to go for affiliate marketing on a Pay Per Performance basis, then you must join Pepperjam Network today!

What are the commission structures?

Pepperjam Network offers two types of commission options – Cost-Per-Action (CPA) and Percentage of a sale.

How to promote Pepperjam Network Advertisers?

To promote a new program, first you need to find the suitable merchants. You can find them by searching with relevant keywords. You can also browse through different categories to find a suitable partner. After finding the right partners, join them and start promoting their products or services.

As a publisher, you can promote Pepperjam Network advertisers with the help of various creatives, like text links, product feeds, pepperjamADS™, banners, dynamic rich media, e-mail etc. You can use common marketing methods like Pay-per-click (PPC), Search-engine optimization (SEO), Email Marketing, Coupons, Loyalty etc. to promote your Pepperjam Network merchant partners. Well, all the above promotional methods may not be applicable to all advertisers. So, be sure to check the accepted promotional methods, before joining a program.

What is pepperjamADS™?

The pepperjamADS™ is a cool affiliate marketing widget that you can use to serve customized contextual ads on your blog, from one or multiple Pepperjam Network advertisers at the same time. Their ad units come in various shapes and sizes. You can easily mix and mash ads from any of your merchant partners. The pepperjamADS™ is definitely a cool feature in affiliate marketing.

What about the payment?
Pepperjam Network payments are made in every two weeks. They can pay you via direct deposit, check or PayPal.

After joining the Pepperjam Network and browsing through the pages, I feel that this is really going to work. Presently they have 117 different merchants with different offers and commission rates. Their approval method is automatic. This is what I like about them! So I would like to recommend it to my readers. Join Pepperjam Network Today!

WPThemesPlugin, creator of the Forte theme, has just released a new theme, called KayuPress. KayuPress is a beautifully designed, wood textured, 3 column WordPresss Theme. It uses the color of wood as the base of the color scheme. If you love wood, I am sure that you are going to love this theme too! This free WordPress theme comes ready with space for 125×125 ads and flickr photos. KayuPress uses idTabs by Sean Catchpole and it look good. Take a look at the screen shot below.

The following plugins will help you to decorate your KayuPress Theme:

• flickrRSS
• edit-comment-xt
• myavatar
• wp-pagenavi
• wp-polls
• popularity-contest
• subscribes-to-comment
• feedcount
• show-top-commentators

The KayuPress theme is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. So the fotter links must remain intact. Try the live demo of KayuPress and if you like it, you can download it for free. The theme designer is also selling the layered Photoshop (.psd) file for $9.95. So, if you want to edit the theme, get it today!

Got your own domain? But not ready to start your blog? Use LaunchPad, the WordPress Domain Parking Theme. This simple theme will help you to display a customized message to readers till you are ready to launch the blog. With LaunchPad theme, you can tell your readers that your blog is coming and allow them to subscribe to your blog via email.

From where the idea came? The theme developer says:

If you’re like me, you like registering domains. It’s exciting. But what’s not exciting is watching your hosting company or domain registrar turn your name into an ad-farm while you’re getting ready to launch your next WordPress blog. If you didn’t know it, that’s called domain parking; a way for hosts and domain registrars to capitalize on all the underdeveloped domains out there.

So, this theme will help you to brand your domains from the very first day!

Features of LaunchPad Theme:

• Simple WordPress theme.
• Easy to use Theme Options Page.
• Integration with FeedBurner
• Professional design and typesetting.
• Licensed under GPL.

Check the live demo of LaunchPad WordPress theme. I am sure that you are going to love it. Because, this is a very unique theme! Download it and launch your blog in style!

Want to run away from Facebook but unable to do so? I mean want to delete your Facebook account permanently? I hope that you can do it now! Because, on Tuesday, Facebook updated the account deletion policies. Earlier Facebook has offered only a deactivation option, which keeps copies of your personal information on the company’s servers. For complete removal of your account you need to contact them. There is no automatic account deletion system in Facebook. This is really annoying for users, who wants to leave Facebook.

On Tuesday, Facebook has updated their help page with a new question “How do I delete my account?“. The answer for this question is:

If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content or information you have added. If you would like your account deleted, please contact us using the form at the bottom of the page and confirm your request in the text box.

Facebook supports the deactivation option, as many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and expect their information to be there when they return to the service. But all users are not same. Many of them complained that even after contacting Facebook, they were unable to delete their accounts! That’s why, Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, called Facebook as the “Hotel California” – “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”!

It took Mr. Das about two months and several e-mail contacts with Facebook’s customer service to erase his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das’s empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network.

Now Facebook says, a technical problem prevented the deletion of Mr. Das’s account. With the update of Tuesday, I hope that Facebook is going to take the matter seriously and will offer a good option for easy account deletion. What you think about it? Feel free to give your comments.

Mozilla has released a third beta version of popular Firefox browser, with approximately 1,300 changes from the previous beta, including fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. So, Firefox 3 Beta 3 should be more stable, perform faster, use memory more efficiently, and fit better on different operating systems.

This beta release is targeted to Web developers and Firefox testing community only. It has many improvements, compared to the earlier Firefox 3 Beta 2 release. The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when the product is fully ready for common users.

Some Features of Firefox 3 Beta 3:

• One-click site info. Just click on a site favicon to get more info about the site.
• Improved Malware Protection with warnings.
• New Web Forgery Protection page. Blocks suspected web forgery pages.
• New SSL error pages for invalid SSL certificates.
• New add-on manager to find, add, disable, and uninstall plugins.
• Automatic check for versions of add-ons and plugins.
• Secure add-on updates. Insecure add-on updates will be disabled.
• Informs your anti-virus software about download of executables.
• Supports Vista Parental Controls.
• Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.
• Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
• Easier password management.
• Improved download manager with resumable downloading.
• Integration with the Mac and Linux.
• Improved Location bar & auto-complete feature.
• Smart Bookmarks Folder for easy management of your bookmarks.
• Improved speed and optimized memory use.
• And many more features to give you a safer, faster and better browsing experience.

If you are interested to test the Firefox 3 Beta 3, you can download it from here. It is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages. Mind it that, this is a Beta release and for testing purpose only. If you are not sure about this version, better use your present stable version!

Popular blogging platform, Blogger has released a number of updates including some bug fixes. Now it highlights some of the most popular OpenID providers on the comment form. It is done to show that Blogger loves OpenID! Then they have added transliteration feature for Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu languages. This is a good news for Indian bloggers.

The updates in Blogger:

• Clearer identity options on the comment form, which now highlights some of the more popular OpenID providers.
• Transliteration is now available in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.
• Posts with more than 200 comments have them split across multiple pages.
• Layouts blogs now have a “Layouts” tab instead of “Template.”

The bug fixes in Blogger:

• Better Persian translations and other BiDi layout fixes.
• A fix to the long-standing incorrect label counts bug.
• Safari 3 support for the Layouts template editor pages.
• Faster loading times for the Blogger post editor.
• Improved international support in the post editor’s date and time fields.
• Compatibility fixes for Picasa’s BlogThis! button.

Good news for Blogger and TypePad users! ShareThis now supports Blogger and TypePad for quick and easy integration of the popular ShareThis button. What is share this? ShareThis is a free service that lets you instantly access all of your profiles, blogs, friends, and contacts for easy sharing and updating. ShareThis provides an easiest way for your visitors to share your site content to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail & other communication channels (like Facebook and MySpace) to a friend. This is a beautiful online tool, that makes blogging and sharing a lot easier!
New Features of ShareThis:

• Advanced reporting system for publishers, to analyze their users’ sharing activity.
• Blogger and Typepad plugins for Blogger and Typepad blogs.
• More styling and positioning controls for ShareThis WordPress Plugin.
• Several new global API features for more customization of your ShareThis widget.

How to get ShareThis buttons for your Blogger and Typepad blogs? Simply go to sharethis.com/getbutton, select your blog platform and configure your ShareThis widget. Paste the code on your blog and enable easy sharing of your blog posts! If you are on WordPress, you can use the ShareThis WordPress plugin.