Latimer Williams

By Latimer Williams

As a blogger or webmaster we all look for different ways to create revenue via our sites. The main way is advertising and one of the main ways is through affiliate programs. That said as African-American webmasters and bloggers we should search for those affiliates that first and foremost pay the most and are the most reliable in payments and support. I began to search for affiliate programs that were from black owned companies and I have to be honest there are not too many but enough that there are options for us to consider incorporating into our websites. I believe as African-Americans we have some responsibility to make the effort to support black owned because we support each other on the black blogesphere so why not expand it to affiliate programs also.

Here is the 5 African-American Affiliate programs to consider for your website :

• It’s A Black Thang - a commerce store that sells an assortment of African-American Products and gifts. The site offers a 2-tier affiliate program with 10% and 5% commission. Minimum amount for payout is $50.
• Cushcity.com - this site claims to be the worlds largest online supplier of Books, Videos, Music, Toys, Calendars & More. Cushcity is different from the other African-American affiliates as they offer CPC rate of 0.03 cents per click meaning you earn money even if your traffic doesn’t buy any products. I’m not sure if the CPC rate is negotiable but if you are gonna bring a high volume of traffic I would call a negotiate a new rate.Minimum for payout is $50
• Coffey Park Greetings - Correy Park Greetings is a publisher of African-American Greeting cards and stationary.They bring an urban flare to greeting cards and stationary. They offer a 13% commission on all sales.Minimum for payout is $50
• Brown Horizons Art Online - Brown Horizons has a wide range of African-American Art. They offer 10% commission on all sales and has an auto deposit setup that pays you when a sale is made.
• Especially Yours - For ten years, Especially Yours has offered distinctive wigs, hair pieces, accessories and apparel for the fashion-conscious African-American woman. The comission rate ranges from 15% - 30% depending on the volume of sales. The payments are made quarterly.

I’m quite sure there are more out there and if you know of any please let me know. I plan on taking a look a couple of these and integrating into my website. I will keep you posted on how it went.

There are many Content Management Systems to choose from that it cause great debate on which to choose and whice is the best. One CMS that I came accross is Joomla!. It is a power CMS that is an out-of-the-box open source solution for dynamic websites. It can be used for a wide range of solutions from blogs to online applications. Joomla! is an open source application that is powered by PHP and Mysql on the backend.The basic install is meant to be an easy install and a turnkey website that you add the content on the backend or frontend just like any other CMS.

What makes Joomla! standout?

Joomla! will let you install add-ons called components onto the website. This will increase the functionallity of your website. Such components for Joomla! include ones for forums and community builders to allow user to log in and create their own profile and also components for customer forms and to add the ablility for comments for articles or blogs. The possibilites with Joomla! are endless with this application.

What’s the catch with Joomla!

As with any application there is always a learning curve and with Joomla! the learning is basic if you just install and start adding content. If you want to customize Joomla! the learning curve is steep and you must have a strong hold on php,ccs, and xhtml(html). Luckily there are a vast amount of websites dedicated to joomla! templates. One such site is The Joomla Shack.

Support for Joomla!

Finding support for Joomla! is pretty much on the forums site , they do answer you can find the answers to your questions but you will have to search because the “experts” don’t like to answer questions that are stickied on the top of each top. There are also books you can purchase which are linked at bottom of the post.

Joomla! is a powerful and scalable tool that may be the perfect fit for you. The learning curve can bee steep at times but if you can graps the tool and the languge used on the backend, you will have yourself one great Joomla! site.