Just kidding linkbait title!

No, they’re not the latest hires at your favorite affiliate network. They are the Go Go Dancers for the upcoming Affiliate Ball.

It is going DOWN!

Sorry I am delayed on this… I’ve been laying low from the industry, pretending to be busy.

Get Tickets and Details at AffiliateBall.com

Hot off the presses via Dullgasm (this pimp actually) comes an amazing ‘how to maker the money online’ video. Seriously, this guy knows what he’s doing. When Alex Fraser isn’t bagging groceries at the supermarket or sitting quietly on a park bench gazing at the playground children, he’s making Wagenheim-esque videos for the internet.

Seriously, if you don’t know, now you know, jiggaaaaaa

Alex Fraser has a few other quality videos. Do you want to know how to get your ex back? Look no further, because Mr. Fraser is an international swinger that specializes in love-making and relationships. Cheggit out:

Below is a press-release slash Letterman Top 10 list from the good peoples at Adsimilis. Holler at them for great international offers focused on dating and games, among other things (like the sexiest staff in the Affiliate Marketing game :: winks at Sean ;) :: But more importantly, read about the meetup!:

Adsimilis will be hosting Europe’s first Meetup August 6th! We felt it was time to bring the affiliate meetup to Europe, and what a better spot than infamous Amsterdam? You know it’s been on your “To Do” list so why not stop putting it off and take advantage of networking in one of the world’s biggest party cities with like minds and then writing it off as a work expense?

Top 10 Excuses to Throw a MeetUp in Amsterdam:

• 10. Float that boat. Amsterdam is famous for it’s canals, and the particular weekend of the meetup coincides with one of Amsterdam’s biggest boat parade parties! Since we’re never one to sit out on the fun, we’ve reserved our own boat to join the party and cruise the city in style.
• 9. You snooze you lose. Time’s running out to “space out” at one of Amsterdam’s coffee shops, which will be closing to tourists in 2012. Go on, Google it if you don’t believe me.
• 8. Brew Ha Ha. Beer lovers, listen up…with over 1,200 diverse and vibrant pubs, Amsterdam is one of the unofficial beer havens of Europe. When you’re not pub’in it (get it?) you can tour the Heineken brewery. Shoot whisky like a real man? Try De Stil, Spuistraat 326, which stocks 150 different single malt whiskies. Stay thirsty my friends.
• 7. Window Shopping. Come see the infamous Red Light district. The “merchandise” can be interesting, but checking out all the skeevo’s taking pictures are also worth the visit. I’m looking at you Barman. (Editor’s note: I don’t pay for sex!)
• 6. Unleash your inner nerd. Before there were computer geeks, there were history and museum nerds. Release your inner nerd out by perusing the many museums Amsterdam has to offer from the Anne Frank Museum to Van Gogh museum. Savvy up and soak in a little culture by the famous Rembrandt and Vermeer, checking out the set of Oceans 12 or catching a world famous DJ set.
• 5. Party Hardy. The parade festival is all week long and culminating on Saturday August 6th with the 2nd biggest street party of the year. Some of the best DJs in the world are flying out for the event, and the city is jammed packed with festivities. And let’s be honest, the city doesn’t even need an excuse to throw a good party.
• 4. Get your Carmen San Diego on. Amsterdam is perfectly situated for you to jump off to Paris, London, Brussels (all of which are a short train ride away via high speed train/chunnel), or on to Italy, Spain, Germany or a multitude of European destinations to work on your “international relations.”
• 3. Sleep’s overrated. Being so far north, the sun doesn’t start to go down until 10pm and the Dutch take advantage of their long summer days and bring the party into the night, and Amsterdam has no shortage of nightlife or bars!
• 2. You know how you always tweet about your Gucci, Louis, Fendi and Insert Logos here that end in “ee”, but actually never leave the confines of your home office (read: ‘rents basement) and dress semi homeless? Now’s your time to actually get some sunshine, show off that swag and pick up some new European goodies.
• 1. Dutch chicks dig interweb nerds. Well, perhaps the verdict for that is still out, but you don’t know until you go!

All publishers are welcome, we have a great lineup of speakers from advertisers to legal to affiliates from around the world. You can find out more information and sign up here: www.adsimilis.com/meetup. Act fast, and we’ll throw in a pair of clogs free with shipping and handling.

Is it just me or is June the fastest passing month of the entire year? Like i remember it was early June and now it’s July… wtf?

Teh Shoutouts

Here’s the part where I link to the generous advertisers who buy space on this shitty blog. If you want to advertise here, use this link to see whats available.

Adsimilis – They’re having a meetup in Amsterdam next month. See what it’s all about here and how you can win a free trip!
OJQ Affiliate Network
BlamAds Content Locking
EWA Network
Above All Offers Affiliate Network
Aff Buzz Marketing News
NDemand Affiliate Network

Teh Stats

Anyway, here are June’s traffic stats. I have highlighted many of the comical ones. There are definitely some fucking gems this month, worthy of a “lol” or two.

» Read more: June Traffic Stats 2011

(This post contains affiliate links. Its OK. Don’t cry…)

So there’s been a lot of hype about the IMGrind Forums from the dudes at Convert2Media. “What’s their end game?” “It’s probably bullshit!” “Ruck’s gone guru!” they cry from their mother’s basement.

Should “I” Join the IMGrind Forums?

I’m going to make this as little “sales-y” as I possibly can so let’s just get to the point. There seems to be an awful lot of forums launching in the internet marketing space. Is IMGrind any different?

Ruck and Ryan Grey, for whatever reason, have been working on their IMGrind Forums for a few weeks and finally launched it today. Last night I got hooked up with an account because I am internationally known webblogger like Perez Hilton except not gay and not internationally known.

I checked it out and this pretty much sums it up:
IM Grind Community Statistics
Threads: 519
Posts: 536

That’s 500+ threads before launch. There’s only about 15 posts in the forum that are replies to threads. So in between doing P90X and shooting guns, Ruck (and Ryan) have dropped 500+ threads of content before the forum has even launched. Imagine, all that forum posting with no one to respond to it!

Now, the 500+ posts aren’t all groundbreaking information. In fact, a good amount is very newb-friendly step-by-step stuff. But the forum categories cover everything in the online marketing space- from lead gen to being your own advertiser to Facebook. So if what you want isn’t covered, ask away and the sages will respond. (Instead of “guru,” I will call Ruck a “sage.” Thanks Final Fantasy 7, now they can’t say that video games never taught me anything.)

Most people know Ruck and respect his knowledge. He’s forgotten more about internet marketing then most people will ever know (I think I used that line before…). Basically, IMGrind is a Ruck and Ryan Grey brain dump. I think that’s worth a lot, no matter if you’re a complete newb or a fledgling advertiser. Somehow, someway, these two dudes seem to know almost everything when it comes to online marketing.

This post is here to give the IMGrind Forums the Official PPC.bz Seal of Approval. Even before the launch, IMGrind is already miles ahead of the legendary Nick Throlson Marketing Forums, and that’s saying a lot.

Apparently people will not shut the fuck up about American Express offering Facebook Advertisement Credits as a redemption option. “Oh glory be to Jeebus! I have a lot of points- I’m gonna get me so many FB Ad Credits!”

No. There’s a reason you shouldn’t be doing this. It seems obvious to me but as it turns out, everyone is a fucking idiot that doesn’t understand elementary math.

The industry standard for earning points with most credit cards is $1 Spent = 1 Point. So for the sake of clarity, you spent $10,000 in a month to earn 10,000 points.

Now where the credit card companies get you is with the Redemption Options. They say it’s effectively “1% Cash Back on All Purchases,” but that’s not necessarily true. In the example of Amex Facebook Advertisement Credits redemption, it’s 6,750 Points to earn $50. If it was 1% Cash Back, then that $50 should only cost 5,000 points.

If this Excel spreadsheet above I made is any accurate, you’re losing about 26% of your points because you’re stupid. From my own point redemption adventures, the “sweet spot” for getting an actual 1% return seems to be around 25,000 = $250. My credit card (Visa from BoA) has tiers. So the more you redeem, the less fucked you get. Amex does not do this. You pay 6,750 per $50 no matter how much you buy. $250 in Facebook Credits will cost you 33,750 points! Fuck that!

Granted, I’m arguing over a few measly dollars here. But when you spend 5-6 figures a month on advertising, it adds up. Plus, I hate giving credit card companies any more money then deserve. The average person gets fucked by their credit card company because they think they deserve the American Dream! Can’t afford it? Charge that fucker!

An intelligent individual gets paid 1% to use a credit card by never carrying a balance, and using rewards points wisely. Stupid people pay their credit card companies god knows what xx% because like to buy shit they can’t pay for.

Also, I do have an old Amex account so I logged into it to see all the redemption options. They fucking suck! The only gift cards I see are for Zynga games. My Visa lets me redeem almost anything: Best Buy Gift Cards, Regular Gift Cards (although its tough to find the 1% return ones), and a whole lot of other shit. Really Amex users? Zynga is your only option? (I’ve never dealt with travel and miles and stuff, so that’s a whole different story)

Or “I Read the Internet Marketing Blogosphere So You Don’t Have To” Let’s do the damn thang:

Affiliate Marketing

Love infographics and love internet marketing? Add 2 and 2 together and you might like this post. This one explains the mobile eco-system.

The rascals over at Convert2Media drop a good tip for improving CTR on certain types of advertisements.

Also Ryan and Ruck, or Ryanuck for short, launched a new blog called IM Grind. Some very solid posts so far in a short time frame. Definitely subscribe.

Keep up with NegBox’s war on Google. Same shit happened to me and they are absolute dicks about getting an account back if you cannot control the page you advertise (you’re an affiliate promoting someone else’s shit). They are fucking weasels and I’m sure a lot of people can behind the cause! FREEDOM!!!

David at PPVPlaybook has a few good posts. One about promoting CPS and another on being too loyal to your affiliate network. Split-test EVERY THANG.

Also LOL @ #5 on this “Your Aff Manager Might Suck if…”.

Mr Green has a fancypants Google hack for finding creatives. In another post, Nickycakes is called a dick.

Great guest post on BlueHatSeo regarding media buy basics.

Fight banner blindness with a few tips from ImediaConnection.

IMKazu has a post regarding POF advertising and there’s like math and shit.

Z6 Shares 10 tools you should be using. +1 for the free clickmap script.

This post is lacking irony so far, so here’s a link to Dennis Yu giving business advice. Funny, there’s nothing in here about treating your employees like dirt, not paying them, getting investigated by law firms, so on and so forth.

Let’s keep the lolz going with this Dupre’s post on how to profit off death. The kicker is “Well, I haven’t used this method for a long, long time, so I’ll be honest…” which amounts to “Hey all you newb asses that still read my blog: here’s something that I haven’t done in years, probably doesn’t work anymore, but shit, do it anyway.”

I gotta give Dupre credit though. His ratio of Great Headline to Useless Content is unparallelled in this industry.

Investing and IPOS and Startups

Got IPO fever? Then help make Mark Pincus rich(er). Semi-related: Valuating companies for investors. Bobby digital.

Betashop is a blog from Jason Goldberg (a Licensed Cheddar Shipper). I’m not going to link to a specific post but his last dozen posts or so chronicle his Fab.com launch, which include all sorts of traffic stats and numbers. Very cool to watch.

Pay Per Clicks

Really bored and want to read a lot about pay-per-click? PPCBlog does a Greatest Hits Collection.

Need some CTR tips for paid search? PPCHero has you covered.

For the Adwords peeps: Stay updated on changes to the rules and policies. Also, Learn to setup automated rules.

Landing Pages and Copywriting

Unbounce has a good writeup for Social Landing pages. I like the “Pay with a tweet” gimmick they discuss.

Although I read Copyblogger, I don’t usually link to it because the posts are for retarded mommy-bloggers. But this month, there’s two good guides: How to Make a Good Optin Page, and Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising.

Speaking of copywriting, The BoostCTR Blog is a great one to follow.

Givin’ some love to Ian Fernando for this guest post. I like copy-writing posts a lot, and this one is pretty good because it includes some solid links at the end.

WhichTestWon used to be a good blog to read, but now they stuck up a paywall. Fuck that, I WANT EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET FOR FREE!

Facebook and Other Social Stuff

The KissMetrics Blog has some awesome data about Social Timing for Facebook and Twitter. The second half provides good shit about dropping emails.

Advertising to non-fans is more expensive then fans. Pro-tip: Leverage your groups / apps to re-target people. For one, advertising to a FB property (app / page) over an external link is generally cheaper (this means a property you administer! Not a link to an app install CPA) From there, you could retarget your lists with similar types of offers. People make this mistake… they spend money to build up business pages or groups or whatever, but then forget about serving ads to the page members again. For example, you own brewery and got everyone in your podunk town to Like your page. Why aren’t you serving ads for weekly / daily specials? Or, you create a Page for car lovers. Why not re-serve them with “Chicks who can a spark plug” dating ads?

Using Facebook for SEO? Then you probably want to read these SEO tips for FB Pages. Taykey does something with real time ad targeting. Some stats about Page view data. And finally, not-so-shocking news about Facebook page shutdowns.

Here’s a kind of neat infographic breaking down demographics for Facebook. Did you know that Europe is now the biggest continent on Facebook?

Assorted Goodies

Digital Moses has a good Q&A with Mista Walker from W4 about going “direct.”

Oh lookie, the US Government is dropping some domain names. Can you scoop them up for a link juice money shot?

Amazon starts an ad network. I’m pretty sure they already had an ad network / self-serve thing but this new offering seems to be using its own data to its advantage.

An semi-interesting inforgraphic from Yahoo. Thanks for making the text too small to read assholes.

The best posts this month from Marketing Vox: Want to Target Male Shoppers? A Roundup of display advertising research.

Roosh has a blog not related to internet marketing, but rather, banging chicks. This is a solid life advice post, although if you’re in internet marketing the “get rid of internet part” should be replaced with “get rid of doing useless shit on the internet.” This post is about banging chicks internationally and I’m only linking it for Ricardo.

So there have been some new developments in the Shoemonkey vs Barman fiasco. It’s kind of like the Mayweather vs Pacquiao, except fatter and more sloppy.

Fight Moved to Affiliate Summit Vegas 2012

While I may have jumped the gun by wanting to stomp on Shoe sooner rather then later, it turns out having this event in New York for Affiliate Summit East isn’t going to work out as well as Vegas.

This is why:
1. Shoemoney has other stuff to do during Affiliate Summit and is only in town for a day or two.
2. There are no nearby locations to the conference that make it feasible for a lot of people to attend.
3. Las Vegas is much more fight-friendly, MMA-friendly, gambling-friendly (You know you want to put $5K down on Barman), and overall, more exciting for such an event.

More people tend to go to the Vegas Affiliate Summit over the New York one (not official numbers, I’m making it up) so hopefully there’s a great crowd.

Official Names Needed and Undercards Needed

If successful, this event could turn into an annual thing. So we need a catchy name. Please post your suggestions in the comments. Here are a few that have been thrown around so far….

Super Affiliate Punch Out – personal favorite.
IMF – Internet Marketing Fights
Marketer Mayhem

Do You Fight or Are You Just a Masochist?

If want to get in on this action, holler at me or Shoe along with who’s ass you want to kick. This will be a much bigger deal if there are a few undercards. If you got the skills to kick ass, or just like getting beat up, then get in on this and start training.

Nick aka bb_wolfe is down to fight Ruck so that will be an entertaining card. Maybe Finch wants to take on Mr Green in a Funny Accent Showdown? Justin Dupre vs Nickycakes in a Ladyboy Fem Fatale?

For the Ladies

The casting couch is open if you want to be an Official Ring girl. Unless of course you want to slop around in a pit of acai-berry jello against some other broad you hate, that’s even better! Get your nails dirty girls!

Pending fight flyer….

We have some great news on the Affiliate Ball coming up for ASE in New York. Since you’ve previously registered for the last Affiliate Ball in Vegas, you always have the first chance to RSVP and get the latest details. You can RSVP on the site when you get a chance.

The great news is that we found a venue that is walking distance to the hotel of the show and it holds up to 1200 people. The Ball will be at 9:00 pm on August 22nd.

After throwing a super successful old school themed show during Ad Tech (Too Short and Digital Underground performed), we’ve decided to go old school again for this Ball. Considering this show is in New York we’re about to lock in Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick! I’ve done parties with them before, they’re a blast and they also do 20 minutes together as they transition from one act to the other. Don’t be surprised if we lock in Funk Master Flex later too.

Sponsorships are now available, packages range from $250 up to $20k for a main sponsorship for those looking for massive amounts of exposure and branding. The Affiliate Ball also has a booth at the Meet Market during the Summit, all guests can pick up their passes from our booth and sponsors will have another place to be seen. If interested in a sponsorship, please email us at info [at@] affiliateball.com or call 818 825-3972 and ask for Darren.

The Affiliate Ball also has advertising opportunities. We have a 3500 industry only newsletter and banner space on the website. Details are listed on the main page of the site http://affiliateball.com

Our venue has a VIP area which holds about 300 people, sponsors of our event will have VIP passes to entertain their clients and top prospects. Everyone will have a great view of the stage, this venue is perfect for live shows.

As we update you on upcoming news, we will provide you with the best offers in the biz. Always looking to help your business grow as we have fun together.

Also wanted to let you know we have a limited amount of reserved tables about for the Affiliate Ball, first come first serve. Tables come with a sponsorship package which includes VIP’s, site and newsletter exposure and your logo on the big screens during the party. If interested, be sure to email or call the info listed above in this email.

Thanks for reading, we hope you come to the next Affiliate Ball!

Darren Blatt