Last week when we finalized the Ring Sponsorship with Wright’s Jewelers in Lincoln, NE we took the opportunity to shoot some stock video for promotional purposes.

Wright’s is one of Lincoln’s finest jewelers in town, and we are VERY thankful they will be crafting the 2008 Top Affiliate Challenge Championship Rings.

Each ring will be hand crafted, made of solid gold, with a dazzling Ruby set in the center.  The winner of the show will take one of these rings home as a champion, and the other will go to the guru who leads that winner to victory.

We were curious about what goes into making a custom ring, so while we had teh cameras there we asked if we could take a behind the scenes peek at the process.  For the first time ever, Wright’s allowed our cameras to enter their workshop and watch their master jeweler create an original ring by hand, from scratch.

Watch the video to see how a ring goes from concept, to design, to mold, to the finger of the Top Affiliate!

We are very pleased and proud to announce that Wright’s Jewelers, one of Lincoln, Nebraska’s finest jewelers, has signed with the show to produce the two championship rings that will be a staple of the Top Affiliate Challenge brand.

Each show contestants will be battling for immunity from elimination.  That immunity will be represented by this $5,000 ring.  The bearer of this ring will be immune from elimination from the show that day.  In addition the winning contestant as well as the guru who leads that contestant will each take one of these rings home with them.

There are only two of these rings in existance and their design has been copyrighted so no one else can ever reproduce them.  The ring is made of solid gold, with a ruby set in the center.  The rings are slightly larger than a college class ring.

Wright’s Jewelers will be hand-crafting these rings in their workshop in Lincoln Nebraska exclusively for Top Affiliate Challenge. 

We shot some video while we were signing the paperwork on the sponsorship to give you an idea of what goes into producing a one-of-a-kind original piece of jewelry.  Check back tomorrow for the video!

It has been a while since we have posted here and a lot has happened with the show over the past week or so.  I thought I would take a moment to bring everyone up to speed.

Auditions and Voting System

As you may have noticed, the beta version of the Top Affiliate Challenge voting system is online and is being tweaked on a minute by minute basis.  It’s sad to say at we have already thwarted one attempt to infiltrate and compromise the voting system.  We expected things like this, but we were surprised by how quickly it has happened.

We continue to post the auditions we filmed at our live audition events on a daily basis.  In addition, we are also posting your audition videos as they are submitted.  At this time we have more than 80 auditions in the system at one stage of production or another.  Watch for the remaining videos to be released in the coming days.

At the present time, all voting is being accurately recorded in our databases.  With that said, the output you see AFTER you vote may or may not be accurate in some cases.  This is why we are not presently displaying the overall vote averages.  This should be corrected by early next week and then we will be able to tell everyone where they rank among the other auditions.

Sponsorship System

Yesterday we got the final version of the sponsorship system up and running on the main website.  This will rotate advertisements from sponsors in the 4 sponsorship ad boxes on every page of the website.  We have plans to expand the number of visible ad slots to 8 next week.

We have had multiple requests for a sponsorship plan to purchase ONLY the 125×125 ad spots.  We have created a new sponsorship option that places your 125×125 ad in the rotation, hyperlinked to your website, with Alt text of your choice for $100/calendar month.  We are getting about 100 unique visitors an hour at this point, so we feel that is a very reasonable price.

In fact, the first of such ads was just sold today to http://www.jonathanvolk.com and should be online later tonight. 

This week we also sold the Championship Ring Sponsorship from the rate card to Wright’s Jewelers.  Tomorrow we will post computer rendered models of the Top Affiliate Challenge Championship Rings as well as some footage from the Wright’s Jewelers workshop where the two rings will be produced by hand.  There are the only two rings of their kind in existence, and the design of the ring has been copyrighted.

We have a VERY SOLID lead on the Banner Sponsorship as well (that’s the $15,000 sponsorship).  We have a newer affiliate network that is very interested so we should have more to come on this early next week.

Additionally, we have been contacted by a hotel in Lincoln that is willing to give us anything we need as far as rooms and facilities to tape the show.  In essence they are interested in our Hotel Sponsorship package from the rate card.

Show Gurus

We have two of our three gurus locked in.  Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker and John  Chow have both committed to the show.  We have some pretty interesting recommendations for the third position, but nothing we can announce yet.

We have had a few people ask how we got the city and local media so interested in Top Affiliate Challenge.

For example, Next Internet Millionaire was never interviewed by a TV station despite the fact that their budget was more than twice what we are spending.

Truth be told, we sent a press release to the local media and got zilch for attention.  We then regrouped and contacted the Mayor’s office.  We explained what we wanted to do and how it would benefit the city.

Before we knew it Trish had crafted a media release for the show out of the Mayor’s office that met with every one’s approval and they released it to the media.

The result was three stories in the local news paper, two radio interviews, and coverage on the 6:00 newscast.  Not too bad IMO!

Nebraska Bookstore in downtown Lincoln, NE has just signed on as a show sponsor and has agreed to host a live audition event on February 14th from 12-4 and February 15th from 4-8.

If you want to audition for JVAlert and have your audition uploaded first thing to the Top Affiliate Challenge website on March 1st, then you need to be at this live event!

Do you want to host a live audition event in your city or state?  Contact service@topaffiliatechallenge.com for details!

I had another awesome meeting with Trish Owen in the Lincoln Mayor’s office a few days ago.  It is amazing to see the sparks that pop up when she and I get in a room and start talking about the show.

Trish is opening some major doors for the show across the city that will make our production efforts MUCH easier down the road.

Thank you Trish for taking the time to meet with us and getting Top Affiliate Challenge on Mayor Beutler’s desk!

On Friday I had a meeting with the Lincoln Mayor’s Economic Development representative to discuss the possibility that Top Affiliate Challenge could brand Lincoln, NE as a technology destination city.

Seriously, Lincoln has a TON to offer businesses and entrepreneurs.  The city has a very active culture base, there are great clubs and theatres, the University adds a spice to the Downtown environment and there are lots of great paying jobs to be had.

The trouble is that Lincoln is often eclipsed by Omaha when the word “Nebraska” comes up.  It will make it considerably easier for the show to find local sponsors if the Mayor’s office endorses our business plan.

The preliminary meeting went for about an hour, and everyone left the room excited.  Special thanks to City Councilman John Spatz for arranging the meeting.

Next week we will try to get together with the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development and the State’s Visitor and Convention Bureau to gain additional support!