But what I do have time for is going to Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas and writing a wrap-up post about that. Since Shawn Collins gives me a free Press Pass for this stupid blog, I feel obliged to actually write about the show to do my part promoting it.

I didn’t get to go to Las Vegas last year for Affiliate Summit, so it’s been about 2 years since going to a show. It’s great to see people you haven’t seen in two or three years, and it’s great meeting new people along the way.

The bottom line is that if you’re an affiliate or work in the affiliate space, you’re doing yourself a great disservice by not going to at least one Affiliate Summit, specifically the one in Vegas. You don’t even have to be cool or have friends (you will make them if you are not a social rehtard) to get value out of Affiliate Summit. John Chow goes every year and look at him!

Finally, There was a Good Panel

Yes, after going to about 6 Affiliate Summits on both coasts, I finally went to a panel. I know, I had to look it up too – but besides partying, people actually try to teach stuff at Affiliate Summit via a session or panel.

Basically, this one was about people who got started in affiliate marketing, namely on Wickedfire, that evolved themselves into real, legitimate businesses.

It was hosted by the ever-so-curious phillian (what?! there are chicks in affiliate marketing?!) and the panel was made up some special somebodies – Cyrus of Lean.com, Mike of WhatRunsWhere.com, Jason of A4D, and Brandon of Direct Digital.

Whenever a video of this panel comes online, definitely make sure to check it out. Great advice from really smart people. The recurring theme was to outsource or hire, early and often. And putting pants on. Definitely going to need pants.

A Reflection

After missing Affiliate Summit for the past year (guess everyone thought I died), it was really strange to have a number of people come up to me and tell me how ppc.bz “put them on the game” or “made them what they are today.” This is a weird thing to have people tell you, especially since I do not provide any actual real information. It’s even weirder when some of these people are incredibly successful today. I am very grateful and honored that I have provided at least a few folks with some lulz, credibility, or guidance. Word is bond, son.

That said, I want some fuckin’ royalty checks!

Shout Outs and Name Drops Galore

I’m not going to be one of those fools that just loads a post up with pictures of what I ate and shit I saw. This isn’t instagram.

What I am going to do is give a shout out to all of the old and new people I met at the show. I do not necessarily endorse (unless I specifically state it) any of these people or companies. In fact, some of them might hate each other and not even like being mentioned in the same paragraph – deal wit it tho. Also, don’t feel bad if I don’t mention you. A lot of shit happened and I was quite drunk. I still love you.

Firstly, the HBWA Badger Ball was surprisingly good. I showed up a little late, but there was a ton of good people there. I didn’t even know HBWA was a real thing, but I guess it is. Jason of ShareaSale was all decked out. Some drunken Aussies and New Zealand’ers that run F5 media and StackThatMoney showed up, took all the girls, then left. Even Nickycakes was there and surprisingly, nobody stabbed him. It’s all love in the industry.

Ryan Eagle allegedly made an appearance to throw his business cards onto the crowd, giving paper cuts to dozens of victims. And let’s not forget to mention the girls dressed in body paint. That was cool, but it was even cooler to find out they were paid like $70 for the night. Next time, I’m getting me a posse of scantily clad broads to follow me around, knowing how cheap they are.

There were some other parties, but didn’t get a chance to attend or stay long at these. The Affiliate Ball with Big Boi was probably a good time, but I had to part before he came on stage.

Now for some shouts to good people running good companies:
Need that international traffic, and lots of it? Ask for Mike or Jeff at 50onRed.

Ruck and Ryan of IMGrind fame are always on the hustle. If you’re not a member of that forum, you are missing out one some great strategies and a great community.

It was good to see HeavyT (now known as SkinnyT) back in action, so get at him for whatever the fuck he does. Need some links? holler at Nick and Rob at The LinkBuilders.

Ryan Buke was around with his Notebook of World Domination. He has some very anticipated stuff coming out that may turn the affiliate world upside down – stay tuned at Bevo Media. Another person on the world domination path is Mr. Don Vito Glazers. Now we’ve had our disagreements on the web, but Vito turned out to be one of the coolest, down-to-earth people I’ve met at the show. Get at him if you’re a Hollywood superstar. Thanks for keepin’ it toasty friend ^_^

When it comes to affiliate networks, talk to these people:
Steve Howe and his crew are still going strong at C2M.

Eli has grown AboveAllOffers into a very respectable affiliate network in a short amount of time. Super nice guy and team. But that’s not surprising since there aren’t really any mean people from Oregon.

If you’re into mobile offers, holler at the Angry Russian Alex over at MobAff. But come correct – it’s a private network.

And let’s not forget the most solid network of all (no offense to the others mentioned) – W4. You’ll never hear stories of late or missed payments from them. They gots the shit on lock. Ask for Oren. Then ask to rub his head. $$$.

Shout outs to the people I missed
Eleah of Adsimilis – get at her for international offers. The real yt cracker. It is unfortunate I missed your face. And I’m pretty sure I missed the Funk Doctor, Charles Ngo. Like, I’m pretty sure I missed him but I cannot honestly remember (this has nothing to do with Asians looking alike – I can pick Charles out of a police line up, don’t you worry)

OK, enough ass-kissing. I still need some recovery sleep.

Well, maybe…I’ll post just one picture:

Affiliate Ball

The biggest, baddest, hottest party of the year is just around the corner. We’re super pumped to have 6 time Grammy Award winning artist, Big Boi of Outkast to perform a full concert as our ASW crowd networks and blows off steam. What can you expect this time? Expect this party to be over the top in one of the greatest venues in Vegas, Chateau located at Paris. Start time is 9:30 pm on Monday night January 14th. Please get there early to avoid any big lines. Our party is in heavy demand, last year we had 3,000 invited guests.

Here’s the agenda. We will have the mighty YT Cracker spin the hottest music ranging from hip hop, dubstep, electro-house with a little rock fusion. Our opening act is a surprise, so I won’t tell you that, but they are amazing! In addition, iBallers will have a big stable of beautiful Go Go dancers shakin’ their tail feather everywhere in the club. This round we have party hostesses sponsored by EnvyusMedia, they will be the life of the party. Did I mention Big Boi is performing a full concert of Outkast hits and some from his new Grammy nominated album? We’re fired up for this party, so please make sure you don’t miss this classic event which will be remembered for years to come. Legendary!

Also, we will present 4 of our industry’s finest with AFFY Awards during the party. We select winners based on people who deserve the spotlight for their outstanding achievement in our industry.

If you’ve already RSVP’d then you are entered into our drawing for the reserved table and VIP’s. If not, please RSVP now before we close registration. We will pick the winner in a week. Please send the RSVP link to your friends who will be attending the Affiliate Summit. It would be a shame for them to miss this one.

We have 2 reserved tables left, if anyone would like to receive some promotion long with the best seats in the house and VIP passes. Please contact me at info[at@]affiliateball.com or call 818 825-3972.

You know our party gets the greatest artists when they perform on Letterman less then 2 weeks before our event. If you missed Big Boi on Letterman, here’s a clip I found on Youtube of his performing his new track. It’s amazing!

Huge thanks to our sponsors, without their support this party would never happen.

Headlining Sponsor – SocietyInvite
Platinum Sponsors – OfferSearch, iBallers, KSIX
Gold Sponsors – Evoplus, PerformInsider (no link for you!)
Silver Sponsors – WP Engine, W3i, TrustedRevenue, Webair
Bronze Sponsors – Sellhealth, DerechoMedia, EDK Innovations, CallPixels, NDemandAffiliates, Coolhandle
Go Go Dancers – iBallers
Party Hostesses – EnvyusMedia

Media Partners – CPAFIX, Adhustler, PPC.bz & Ourselves ;)

See you in Vegas! All passes can be picked up at our Meet Market booth #108 for the Affiliate Ball. Don’t forget to ask for your Players Card. This is a plastic membership card with VIP Perks for all future events. It will be good for VIP line entry, sponsored gifts, social network and entry into all of our future events for you and your group every time.

- Darren Blatt
Vibe Creator

Fake Affiliate Summit Passes

Look at this shit. Hilarious. Someone should have told Collins that fake passes aren’t even a problem. It’s people giving their passes to others or using passes from previous Affiliate Summit shows. This is like the Hall Monitors you used to have in high school. Wonder who Shawn hired to be on his “Crime Stoppers” force? Really I wouldn’t even want to fuck with this guy.

If you see something, say something.

Fresh off the press!

WhatRunsWhere has launched their Ad Vantage product which gives people access to the WRW Google Content Network data for only $19.

WhatRunsWhere has a ton of intelligence data ranging from mobile to Google Content network and other platforms. But this intelligence comes at a price. The full WhatRunsWhere monthly package is over $200 – which is completely justified for most affiliates and agencies, but its definitely not for everyone.

The fine people at WhatRunsWhere saw this gap in the market and decided to offer something for entry level affiliate. For $19 you get access to their huge database of Google Content Network data. Content Network is massive, which means there are plenty of ads for you to “borrow” from. Use this data to launch your own Content Network campaigns or to get inspiration for other ad networks. Either way, $19 is a steal.

So if you’ve always wanted to see whats working but couldn’t justify $200 or more a month, then here is your chance. Get access to the WhatRunsWhere Google Content Network data with the Ad Vantage package – only $19 a month. Damn son, that’s less than like a gram of weed!

The Affiliate Ball is back as an official party of the Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas on January 14th, 2012. Entertainment for the night and the location will be announced soon. Since the Affiliate Ball has been around, the party scene has never been better. Last years event at ASW was considered by many veterans of the game to be the greatest industry party of all time. With Nelly as their headliner, one of the biggest artists throughout the last decade, it’s no wonder why those who attended had an amazing experience they will never forget. Darren Blatt, organizer of the event explains, “No matter who is performing, you can always expect an amazing vibe in the room, incredible networking opportunities and legendary talent performing who would normally sell out huge venues. The Affiliate Ball is all about providing the ideal situation to do more business with others. After 15 years of throwing internet B2B marketing parties, I’ve seen some of the biggest deals happen right in front of my eyes. The best time to bond with others is in a party environment. Whether deals happen right there or not, relationships are always made and strengthened.”

If you are attending the Affiliate Summit and want to RSVP for this monster party, then sign up now at
http://affiliateball.com/register.html. Passes can be picked up at the Affiliate Ball Meet Market table #108. All levels of sponsorship’s are now available and fit for everyone’s budget. Please contact info@affiliateball.com if you’re interested in receiving some amazing exposure, VIP’s, reserved tables, entertaining prospects, clients and much more.

Curating all of this content is truly a pain in the ass. If you appreciate this great work I’ve been doing for you, then you should vote for me, Barman, here in this silly King of the Bloggers contest. I don’t even think there is a prize… I just think it’s time ppc.bz gets the recognition it deserves. Every one else gets to win contests, and they’re not even legendary like ppc.bz. So make yourself useful and vote for me.

Don’t forget that previous wrap-up posts contain “evergreen” information. See July for example. If you wanted to, you could wrap-up my wrap-up posts and sell them on Warrior Forum for $37. It’s like printing money!

It’s October and if you haven’t noticed, I managed to miss doing an August wrap up post. This time around I had 2 months of crap to sift through. It took some work and I’ve tried to be even more strict with whats get posted here. It just takes too long, so info had to be truly useful or captivating.

Also there appear to be some ad spots available on this blog. Advertiser here so we can stop seeing all of these EWA network snowman ads.

Let the 4th Quarter begin!

Online and Affiliate Marketing News and Posts

I’m not going to post stats and figures as much anymore because they’re redundant. The internet is growing, people are getting mobile, blah blah blah. Instead, check out this State of the Internet Slide deck. Over 100 slides of data for everything that you could possibly want to know about where the internet is heading.

Yes, I am linking to a post on PoF that Justin Dupre wrote. Deal with it. It’s a good primer / overview of advertising on Plenty of Fish with CPA offers. Following that, POF Ben gives you the ghetto-est Photoshop “trick” ever.

iPyxel has a case study on POF’s mobile performance. If you’re going to mess with mobile on PoF, here’s a post discussing mobile landing pages with PoF mobile traffic.

iPyxel also brings you some Facebook advertising tips that “they” don’t want you to know (but really, they do.)

Bryn has a guest post over at the Neverblue blog – Advice to New Affiliates. RevivedMedia has a handy mindmap on doing the proper research and getting shit done.

A handy way to find top keywords in a category from traffic+conversion.

Juicy copywriting nuggets
How to gain the trust of a skeptical consumer. 101 Proven Headlines ( headlines are the most important meal of the day.) This is an oldie but goodie – The most important writing lesson you’ll ever learn.

Seven tactics for increasing your sales letter response. The infamous “diet farticle” now in print.

Good to Great Copywriting in just 24 hours, or your money back! Finch also writes this post with 5 ways to save your sanity with moonlighting (note: selling your body not required, but recommended.) And finally, how to become a guru in any market.

Also, Finch tweeted this incredible resource with 600 plus places to share your content.

Now Back to Landing Pages and Content Generation
Unbounce always has the goods. How to write a call-to-action that converts, with case studies. Here be 23 posts about landing pages that might be worth a read.

KissMetrics also has great posts. In-depth overview about creating viral content. Yes, easier said than done, but its backed up by data. Yo dawg, if you’re into link building, then this post is for you.

Here be a ton of conversion optimization tools you can try.

Matt Cutts Engine Optimization
The SEO world has been shaken up quite a bit this year. Pandas and Penguins, oh my. Here’s some info on Google’s leaked Search Quality guidelines from SEWatch.com. 125 pages on how to tell if a website is garbage, how to make webmasters cry, and more!

SocialMediaExaminer has a good guide on creating blog content that’s highly valuable for your readers. Here’s a good post explaining how to use Google’s authorship to your advantage. Luke from Peerfly touches on this as well. Indeed, here are six things you should be doing in this New World Order of SEO.

Here is a good guide on traffic generation that isn’t overwhelming. It’s simple – different things work for different niches, and once you figure those things out, automate and move on to the next one.

Quicksprout has a good list of ideas with where to start after the Penguin / Panda update. More for QuickSprout – getting that content nice and fresh. TheLinkBuilders has some advice on whoring your social media profiles for SERP real estate.

Another goodie from LayeredThoughts titled Really Easy SEO strategy for startups.

Something from SEOmoz about social sharing and the Open Graph and what have you.

Let’s Get Really Nerdy
How to launch an Amazon EC2 instance. I don’t know anything about this service mentioned, but here’s how to send SMS with PHP and Curl.

Here be a ton of Javascript and jQuery libraries(Part 2) that you can use on your sites and landing pages.

Using WordPress as a backend for your SaaS platform. Want to make WordPress better with some custom content types? Check out this Pods tutorial.

The 4 Hour website is an article / sales page about coming up with the website for 4 Hour Body. Really cool viral way to sell a $3,999 Landing page design service.

If you’re wanting to learn how to program from the comfort of your own browser, here are 5 great resources you can use.

Infographic mania
How to integrate SMS with customer service. 20% of moms in the US shop with their smartphones. But overall, men are still bigger mobile shoppers than women. Global e-commerce is going to explode – better learn some Chinese. How to improve your AdWords Quality Score.

Outside the box thinking – using mTurk to interview 100 customers in four hours.

And a lil’ bit of Facebook and Google
If you’re advertising on Facebook, here’s a very handy and simple guide to all types of Facebook Advertising. Advertising on Google? Here are a slew of webinars for making use of all of those Google products.

Donor’s Choose has some good tips for marketing content on Facebook. Luke from Peerfly has this interesting case study on Facebook’s Sponsored Posts.

Google is also updating its policies, so check this post out for the latest updates in Google-will-find-a-way-to-fuck-you-over.

Marketing News of the Mobile Variety

Have an app? Here’s how you can integrate A/B testing for your app promotion. It’s an interesting take on the app promotion process. Google AdWords is also providing some split-testing tools for driving apps installs.

Google has some more advice on mobile – Giving mobile user’s what they want and Mobile-friendly websites turn users into customers.

Peep Facebook’s mobile growth in handy infographic form.

Great resources from mobyaffiliates: Increasing mobile app revenue with mobile ad servers. I feel like this has been linked to before, but a comprehensive PDF on building mobile sites and landing pages. This one too, but whatever, it’s good – Mobile affiliate marketing guide.

Urban Airship is providing some highly granular geo-targetting capabilities.

There are a shit ton of government APIs out there. Gov data is becoming more open and available, so get to building! If you need a way to build a mobile app, here’s a round-up of mobile application builder platforms.

Startups, Growth, and Productivity

Productivity and Procrastination
The science of procrastination, animated, is a cute video explaining why we procrastinate (it’s a symptom, not a cause) and a few tips on how to overcome it. This is the first time I ran across brainpickings.org – very good site.

And here we have an article about the science of motivation. Why do we do what we do everyday? Here’s some science on why exercise makes you feel better. Science, fuck yeah!

32 Lessons learned for life and business, a great read from ConversionXL.com

Here be seven procrastination busting tips. You know, once you read enough articles and advice on productivity, you see the same themes emerge over and over. See this post from theenergyproject called battling your online addiction. All of these tips work, so start now!

Every productivity tip I’ve ever came across is mentioned in this post – Top 50 Productivity tips for Entrepreneurs. Apply one of these per day and in 2 months you will be 10x more productive.

Save brainpower by reducing the amount of stupid decisions you have to make: Being Boring is Productive. ZenHabits has a primer on full-screen living. Pure focus is the goal. But most of all – just stop thinking and lean into the pain (believe you can change). Get inspired.

The myth of doing “that one thing,” which boils down to that success isn’t just one event, but a process.

Dr. Charles Ngo (yes, he’s a real doctor, ladies) launched his new blog recently (He’s got a PhD – pretty huge … devotion to marketing.) Lots of great advice on productivity and success. This is a guest post called the 1% Difference to Achieving Success. What Can Fuck Over Your Business? And most recent, How to Setup your marketing Super Team ( its about outsourcing yo.)

Keeping with the theme of motivational Asian bloggers, we go to Asian Efficiency for a few posts. Do the right thing to keep yourself motivated. And forcing decisions to improve productivity, which has similarities with the “Being Boring is Productive” post linked a few paragraphs up.

How to be a productivity dynamo. I like this post because it’s just a good collection of links.

One more thing – don’t get addicted to stress.

Book Recommendations
Want to keep your brain busy for the next year? Here are 50 psychology book recommendations. I’ve read a handful of these books already, so I’ll definitely be checking out many of the recommendations in this post. Here are 18 life-changing books from OKDork that you might like as well. Good post from the same author called “How to get past being a one-hit wonder.”

Startups and their Merciless Leaders
ComScore is going to help accelerate Chicago-area startups.

“Growth hacking” is bullshit… God I hate buzzwords like this. Stupid hipsters. How is growth hacking so different from customer acquisition anyway?

How can a scam company raise $76 million in Series B funding?

Huge in-depth guide on how to get media coverage for your start-up or business.

Want to build a start-up community in your area? Here’s what makes it possible. Seriously, forget Silicon Valley, just build your startup where you live.

Great interview with Chris Sacca on This Week in Startups. This guy has a crazy history, a ridiculous story when working at Google, and great advice once he gets back on his feet.

Why do a lot of startups suck? They’re not really solving a problem. There are way too many free tools and resources out there. Everyone should be starting a business. Here’s some startup advice from DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg.

Good read (depending on old your are because the author is giving life advice at 25) on lifehacker “Are your goals holding you back?”

Great series of interviews from Kalzumeus. This interview has a lot of good discussion (market research specifically) for almost any business – Getting your first consulting client. Haven’t listened to this one yet, but here’s Part II.

35 people give their best advice on public relations. Shopify has 12 “must watch” Ted talks for entrepreneurs.

People Ask James Altucher a lot of questions. Not gonna lie, sometimes his blog is depressing to read, but he always lays out some good advice. In this Part II post, there’s some good stuff at the bottom, especially the “fastest way to make a million.”

Mandatory interview with Elon Musk. Elon is a legend.

That should keep you busy for the next month. Show your appreciation and vote for Barman here in this King of the Bloggers contest which does nothing but stroke my ego.

Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Drunk off Titty Milk

Well today, we learn – via techcrunch – that WhatRunsWhere gets itself a mobile ad spy tool. With the huge growth of mobile advertising, it’s great that WhatRunsWhere is staying ahead of the curve. As far as I know, there are no other mobile ad spying tools available (There were a few private self-hosted ones floating around). I had an account on MobAdSpy – great data, Rob is a good developer, but a mediocre UI. From what Max tells me, they’re going to integrate it all together. Everyone wins!

WhatRunsWhere still lets you try it for a $1. If you’re looking for media buying ideas for your own or affiliate offers, I can’t recommend WhatRunsWhere enough. And now that they have a mobile database, you can dominate on desktop and smartphones. AWww jeah.

They grow up so fast ::sniff::

It’s nice to see the Wickedfire (dysfunctional) family getting all “start-upy” on us with Techcrunch mentions. LeanMarket got itself a piece last month. How long before SerpIQ gets its buyout by Compete or Quantcast? I met the Knowem creator (although breifly – your business card has been floating around my desk forever – how’s that for a late follow-up?) at the Dirt Nasty party. I’m positive there are some I’m forgetting.

Hell, I think it might be time to do some stories on the people moving out of the affiliate marketing game and creating long-term businesses. If you or someone you know created a real business but got your start on WickedFire, holler in the comments or with an e-mail. Might as well start collecting names now and see if we can do some real journalism on ppc.bz.

One such group of scummy fraudsters is a network known as LeadCola. Our friend .hack has been sitting on this information for quite some time now and decided to finally post it recently to the Wickedfire forum. There’s a good chance you don’t read Wickedfire anymore, but you’ll have to make a return visit to read all about LeadCola’s 35% Scrub rate and other antics.

.hack single-handedly ruins their reputation. They scrub. They lie. They probably engage in underage sex-traffiking. LOOK I DON’T KNOW. Just read the thread.

One person writes…

Leadcola also employs Jared Petersen to start facebook forums and try to extort money from companies they have sent fraudulent data to. He owns the forums and is the admin and doesn’t allow the companies he is doing this to into the forum so they cannot stop the slander nor defend themselves. I have seen this done to FOUR companies besides my own.

Leadcola, in our relationship with them, has done more fraud on our offers than any other network. They are terminated and have changed their name yet month after month I continue receive their pixels through other affiliates or networks wanting to defraud more offers through our network. These people are the blight of the industry and not a thing they do has shocked me. I am glad to see them outed finally for their awful behavior. Hopefully they will disappear forever now!

If you work with LeadCola, well, this is what you fucking get. Their goddamn name is GOD DAMN LEADER OF COLA. What did you fucking expect?

While we’re at it… Let’s call bullshit on AffPaying. Do you want a bad review removed? Pay up and it’s like it never even happened! What a huge fucking circle jerk of the affiliate industry. People write reviews when they’re pissed off at something. Every review looks like some non-english bro wrote it- “Place of affiliate network is good of time!” Why are there only good reviews on Affpaying? Because newbs go do their newb research, then sign up to the best affiliate networks looking networks and Affpaying makes its referral commissions.

It’s clever that they applied the “rip-off report” model to affiliate networks. I’m not trying to knock its success… but affpaying is sketchy at best. Why does LeadCola have a good rating? All of this shit could have been prevented if AffPaying wasn’t paid off to remove bad reviews.

In other breaking news: Inside sources tell me that Pace Lattin has no friends. Not a single one. His own cat shits in his loafers.

General Internet and Affiliate Goodies

Going to Affiliate Summit East? AffPlaybook is having another “Mastermind” and here are the details.

It’s been said that greatest minds of our generation are not curing cancer or solving world problems, but rather focused on getting people to click ads. This post from Finch kind of drives that point home. And finally – Finch goes in-depth about selling e-books vs print books.

Did you know that, unlike sex, free doesn’t sell. Finch explains why.

Profitapolis is back! Yay! Here’s a review of the Millionaire Fastlane, which I recommend everyone read. I agree with the point in the post where it should be required reading in every high school curriculum. We’d have a lot less entitled pieces of shit in our country, and a lot more people focused on real reaching their own success. And finally, How to fight the productivity demons.

Hey NickyCakesTV Numero 7 is out.

This blog post is just like 50 Shades of Grey. Shock Marketer has some David Ogilvy related goodness.

Have ad inventory to sell on your website properties? This article explains How to Find Advertisers to Buy Ads on your website. Not enough? A big ass infographic on how to monetize your website.

Perhaps you are looking for some WordPress themes for affiliates? Cleaning up affiliate feeds with Google Refine. I did not know such a thing as Google Refine existed.

Not using Google+ ? Sadly, you should be. Here are a whole bunch of infographics exploring the many benefits of getting integrated with Google+. So, what has the greater impact? Facebook Likes or Google+ 1′s ?

Landing Pages

More from Unbounce – 50 posts that every lead gen business should read… or at least, skim over. Always a goodie – 25 lead gen landing pages reviewed with tips on what to keep and what to change.

Here are 6 Tips to Make Landing Pages more effective. Hint: Add Oprah. Here are some examples of “portal” style landing pages.

10 Best Practices for Mobile Landing Pages from SE Watch. Usually these kinds of posts are drivel, but this one isn’t too bad in terms of helpfulness.

The evolution of the Basecamp landing page.

Conversions

9 Psychological tricks that make users convert. Some “Influence” stuff in there.

How moving the Call-to-Action Below the fold increased conversions 3x. Test er-thang!

Here we have 8 Habits of Conversion-focused copywriters. Here’s an infographic about conversion rate optimization from SEOGadget.co.uk.

Great post from Conversion Rate Experts on how they helped topcashback.co.uk become the 5th fastest growing company in the UK. Basically, the nuts and bolts of conversion rate optimization.

So you go the conversion – now what? Post conversion strategies for lead generation.

BoostCTR always has good posts backed by data. The “Curse” of knowledge in PPC ads, via BoostCTR. What’s the End Goal? is a case study in helping a searcher achieve their goals.

RADically re-thinking your Calls to Action. Not sure if I posted this before but it’s a good read.

Link Building and SEO and Such

15 handy link-building tools. More from SE Watch – 5 PPC Keyword Research Tools. Here we have an article about SEO for images.

SEO Theory says SEO is simpler than ever. Your content just sucks! Also, some ‘SEO’ trends that will waste your time and money. LOLSEO. So… shut up about your SEO tactics.

Neil Patel has these 5 Rules Every SEO Should Live by. Got forms? 5 Ways to Improve Your Contact Form Conversion Rate. And finally, how to build authority without cheating.

The war on free clicks aka SEO is dead or dying. Google wants money for its clicks. Don’t act like you didn’t see this coming since its been years in the making.

Google Adwords and Facebook

Google AdWords now takes device type into account when coming up with a Quality Score, says CertifiedKnowledge. Great interview with Brad of CertifiedKnowledge – Affiliate marketing and Google Adwords.

A slide deck about Getting the most out of Google’s Content Network.

Singular vs plural search queries and what it can tell you about your customers.

A behavioral targeting case study.

Facebook has a shitton of ad units so here’s an explanation of those ad units.

Facebook launches mobile ads for apps. Oh my. Also, Subscriptions are now available. Oh my again.

What do desktop users on Facebook do compared to Mobile users? Facebook is close to a billion users. And what’s going on with that Instagram deal?

Advertising on Facebook (or any other social media network)? Here are some ideas for customizing your image creatives. Here are a few posts on what NOT to do with your Facebook ad images- Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Why do you care about your images? Chicks get clicks, man.

9 Tips on getting those Facebook ads to actually work. A lot of good advice.

BevoMedia Blogs about the Battle for 1 Cent Clicks on Facebook. They do exist.

A nifty PDF report from AdParlor about Facebook Mobile Advertising.

Trends in Commerce

A whole lot of data about US online advertisement spending.

An interesting infographic from Match.com data – the Dating Olympics.

Here be some more infographics from EConsultancy – some good ones about shopping APIs and other things (There are 300+ shopping APIs available). ECon then asks if m-commerce will overtake other payment options. One thing is for sure, shoppers love their smartphones. Maybe you should build an e-commerce site with the Shopify API? Here are 28 examples from Canada, eh!

Physical mobile commerce is about to change with this deal between Starbucks and Square.

Ebay sees a huge surge in mobile shopping.

How to bundle products without reducing value.

It’s car buying season according to AdCenter. Honestly I didn’t know there was a season for car-buying, but hey, good to know.

Design, Development, Services, etc

Common colors and what they mean in website design from UX Movement.

Neat domain tool – Search 5 letter domains and 6 letter domains that may be available.

Need to post a job to every single job site out there? There’s a Zip Recruiter for that.

Want to build cross-browser extensions with JavaScript and jQuery? That’s what CrossRider does. Here is how they got to over 100 Million users.

Want to improve your skillset? Broaden your horizons? Now, you have NO EXCUSE! Yes, a list of websites where you can learn anything, free. Here are some more collegiate resources for free education. Fuck college!

Specifically, if you want to learn Javascript, JSBooks has a giant list of free JavaScript books. Awwww snap! And here – a ton of great HTML5 resources for developers.

Need to process images in PHP? Check the PHP ImageWorkShop Library. The Facebook blog re-visits the HTML5 Canvas element. Here be an HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet for your viewing pleasure.

Then, a very good post on how to use Appcache Manifest for faster HTML5 apps and websites.

All Things Mobile

If you’re looking for some really nice app store insights, check out Xyologic, which recently revealed a search engine to improve mobile app discovery. As of writing, it’s a closed Beta – but easy to get in. Check it out!

Mobile marketers should focus on mobile moms and more M words. Check it out – old people get technology too. They’re like, hip to the scene and shit. Young whippersnappers!

Neverblue launches a Game Performance Network, a “full service growth machine for game developers.” Interesting to see how this plays out.

A/B Test your App name to increase downloads on iPhone. If you’re an Android developer, AppFlood looks like a cool way to cross-promote your app. App-o-day looks like a good way to get your paid app out there for iOS.

The Olympics blow up mobile search. Then, Google explains the difference between a mobile website and a responsive design, and which one you need. If you’re going the responsive design route – here’s a huge interactive guide on responsive design.

How to emulate Phonegap / Cordova in your desktop browser. Really cool.

Some decent tips on monetizing mobile apps, before you develop them. Here are some tools to help you with mobile app monetization.

Here’s an interesting study regarding some big mobile ad networks – AdMob accounts for 50% of total share but has the worst engagement of these ad networks. I wonder why this is?

Who’s winning the apps race in mobile shopping?

SEOBook takes a look at the opportunities in mobile SEO.

The growing “mobile-only” audience. And then some data on the “multi-device” audience. What’s the most popular mobile activity? It’s true – SMS keeps growing. With that said, 5 examples of SMS marketing the right way.

More data on who is using all those smart phones.

A ton of data from Adfonic about the $5.3 Billion mobile advertising space. Get the report! Here are some of the highlights.

Goodies from Mobaff (although these appear to be reposts from an earlier date): Hey bro I heard you liked push ads, so here’s a case study on push ads from mobaff. Un-tapped cheap mobile traffic opportunities. Finding mobile strategies that work. Ad planners for international mobile. And finally, some angry thoughts from the Angry Russian on mobile marketing.

400,000 Apps in the Apple App Store have 0 downloads. This is due to people putting out shitty apps (copycat worthless apps) and / or not knowing how to market them. Maybe these people should have read App Store Optimization for Beginners? Check out this post from Invantory titled App Store SEO: The tools we used.

Estimating App Demand from Publicly Available Data. I haven’t read this yet, but it’s like, a scientific research paper or some shit. Yeah! Science bitch!

Techcrunch article on marketing tactics used to get a very niche mobile app past 10 Million downloads.

Mopub is growing and making new hires. Also, Google is putting the smack-down on “spammy apps” which have started to become a huge problem.

What developers can learn from top mobile apps. Kind of fluff but decent ideas.

APIs, Startups, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, and Everything Else

The future of web APIs and a bunch of handy links. Planning an API? Here are the best 30 APIs to take a look at to see what they are doing right. The App Economy is really the API Economy. Basically, most apps make calls to or rely entirely on APIs.

The US Census Department releases an API. Twilio SMS goes international to 150 countries.

Speaking of APIs, if you’re looking for a job that deals with API, api-jobs is for you.

Pretty cool way to reward your customers when they refer people to your service or product.

Always one of my favorite things from Kissmetrics: Learning how startups become successes – this time its Quora.

Bootstrapped, profitable, and proud. Profiling profitable companies that were built from the ground up, without outside funding. Stories of failure and redemption from 18 startup founders. Not every one ends up successful, but interesting to see how people fuck up.

Start up? Read up – Excellent ways to increase user engagement. 54 Quotes from Startup Leaders on how to improve conversions. Bet you didn’t know there’s much we can learn from the porn industry.

Advice I wish I could’ve given myself 5 years ago. 5 things young people don’t know. Is this your first time, Mr. Entrepreneur? Stop Fucking Around then!

Behind the scenes at fab.com. Somehow Fab.com always seems to make it into these posts.

Asian Efficiency has some thoughts on productivity and outcomes. You don’t have to be a fan of Will Smith to like this post on procrastination.

Good read from Wired.com exposes dirty tricks to get that investor money in the mobile app world.

Student debt is hitting the middle-aged pretty hard. What happens in 10-20 years when recent grads start reaching that age?

P90X is a huge now, but it took a lot of hard work to get it where it is today.

How our brains sabotage our goals. Scumbag brain! Finch asks where productivity ends and “staying busy” begins. So, why aren’t you delegating?

Good videos to watch – Entrepreneurial happiness TED Talk. And a great fireside chat with Elon Musk, a true badass of entrepreneurship and innovation.

How to achieve the “Flow” state. Much easier read than trying to get through the long and boring book “Flow.”

Since then, there have been a number updates and improvements to the Lots of Ads service which I’ll discuss shortly. But to refresh your memory, LotsofAds.com is database of … well, lots of ads, from a certain, very large social network. LotsofAds constantly monitors this social network and records the ads it sees through various “user accounts” broken up into different demographics. Over time, LotsofAds has managed to scrape data on hundreds of thousands of ads all over the world.

Lots of Improvements

Now Supporting 25 Countries – It’s no secret that advertising internationally is a great, wide open frontier for many affiliates located in 1st world countries where competition has ramped up. In the US and other English-speaking countries, you’re not only competing with affiliates, but with big brands with near-limitless budgets that have no concern for ROI.

With LotsofAds.com, you can see what’s being promoted in non-English countries.

On the flip side of seeing “what’s working,” you can also get insight into “what hasn’t even been tried.” Don’t see any dating ads in Papua New Guinea? Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Translate them shits and go! (assuming you can find a Papua New Guinea BBW dating offer…)

Check out Adsimilis for a ton of international offers (games and dating) and tell Mama Eleah that Barman sent you.

Advertising affiliate offers, internationally, isn’t that hard on a large social network platform. Millions of new users each day across the world – don’t worry about competition. There’s plenty for everyone.

It’s just work – setup, translation, and ad submission is grunt work but worth it when you can get sub-penny clicks. Don’t make it harder on yourself! See which images and copy are working in the US and UK (hint: Use the LotsofAds Frequency setting), then translate that stuff to another, less-competitive language and country. Submit the ads, cross your fingers, then submit 20 more. The most-eye catching ads that get stupid click-thru-rates are the ones that will make you money.

Lots of Spying – LotsofAds.com improved on their data by providing a whole “Ad Destinations” section which lends itself to some creative spying…

1. Find ads using your favorite affiliate networks by entering their tracking domain in the “Redirect URL” field.
2. Find ads running on popular affiliate tracking platforms.
3. Find all ads ran by a particular affiliate by plugging in their tracking domain.
4. View any campaign’s exact targeting by analyzing the subids being passed in the URLs.
5. Show only ads that have more than one redirect since these ads are more likely to belong to affiliates (select “>1 Redirects”)

Seriously, that is some next-level spy shit. This kind of data is good to have and fun to look at, but not a solid game plan. Don’t go around copying campaigns word for word. That’s amateur hour. If you do, the Son of Zeus will shit on you. Use the data create your own campaigns, or take the creatives and go do some media buying with it.

If LotsofAds.com sounds like Lots of Profit to you, definitely check it out. I rarely review stuff on this blog without shitting on it, but LotsofAds.com has continually improved since it came out. There isn’t really anything bad to say about it. What the shit are you waiting for?!

Use Coupon Code “PPCBZ” for 10% OFF of LotsofAds.com!