CHANCE TO WIN $100K
Six Lucky Players will be selected to Roll Dice Six Time for a chance to Win $100k from Leadsix.com
Caesar Palace Augustus Tower Senator Suite – Location TBD
Tuesday, January 10^th, 2012 11 a.m.
Go to www.leadsix.com for event location

Why Should You Go? You need to be present in order to win. LeadSix wants You to win.

Crush Ads Presents: MailerForum.com Football Sunday
Legasse’s Stadium @ The Palazzo Hotel
Sunday, January 8^th, 2012 1:30 – 4:30 p.m.
RSVP HERE

Why Should You Go? Gourmet Legend Emeril will have a buffet present. Also for those football lovers that have to watch your team in the playoff, will get to network, while watching the game.

The Mailer Meet Up
at Kingpin & Palms Resort & Casino

Sunday, January 8^th, 2012 7 – 10 p.m.
RSVP: mailermeetup.com

Why Should You Go? This is the perfect event to get your night started. Not many events are during this time so everyone will be there.

The Three-Peat: Tip Off Party III @ The Hardwood

Sunday, January 8^th, 2012 @ 10 p.m.

http://thetipoffparty.com/rsvp.html

Why should you go? It will be held the massive 10,000 square foot Hardwood Suit located inside the one and only Palms Hotel and Casino. This is the third time around, which they claim this will be over the top and the best one yet.

W4’s Affiliate Summit Party: Club Marquee

Monday, January 9^th, 2012 Doors Open @ 12 p.m.

Limited guest list, please contact you’re Affiliate Manager or RSVP without delay to: rsvp@w4.com.

http://www.w4.com/events/affiliate-summit-west-2011/

Why Should You Go? This is an exclusive party with a limited list at the prestigious Club Marquee. RSVP as soon as possible

Max Bounty Presents: Affiliate Ball

Monday, January 9^th, 2012 Doors Open @ 10 p.m.

http://www.affiliateball.com/

Why Should You Go? Grammy Award winning American rapper and actor will be performing some of his greatest hits. “Our parties this year alone have had over 5,000 guests attend. We are by far the largest industry party.”

Affiliate Fight Night

Monday, January 9^th, 2012 @ 10 p.m.

https://www.facebook.com/events/182370205192842/?ref=notif&notif_t=event_invite

Why Should You Go? Not only will you be able to see live MMA fights, but you will hav a chance to meet MMA champions, and the Affiliate Go Go Dancers. There is also open bar with Transportation to and from.

As more parties arise we will inform you about them and ad them to this list for easy reference. So please feel free to check back from time to time to help you organize your trip. Good luck and we hope to see you there.

Would you like to see your party listed here? Tell us!

Google has made tremendous stride towards becoming the leader of advertising sales. They are the number one search engine, and also own the second leading search engine, YouTube. Amazon cashes in at around $300,000 dollars daily on goods alone. Research has shown that this past year they reached “282 million visitors in June, or 20.4 percent of the worldwide Internet population”. They have built a tremendous rapport with the industry and is one of the immediate website’s people are going to for goods. How does Google plan to overturn them?

Not only do they have the leverage of YouTube, but Google plus is really beginning to make its mark on internet marketing. Your profile offers many features to build relationships and combine your efforts directly to the Google search engine. Google will combine those websites with their already overpower advertising dominance to help build and drive their product search campaign. They will offer a service for one day shipping if you buy a product their product search option. They are reported to be in major negotiations with a shipping company and major retailers like Macy’s

Will this result in Amazon’s declining? Will bidding for keywords, and ad space becoming more tedious and/or too expensive for the small business owner.

» That might also explain how Samsung eked Apple out as the world’s leading smartphone provider in the last quarter. [Bloomberg Business Week]

» So what did Bill Gates tell some college students lately? That being a billionaire is overrated. [GeekWire]

» Three top-notch universities are currently bidding to turn unlikely areas of NYC into bustling tech-based hot-spots. [Betabeat]

» Do you think comment spam is illegal? Lately, Facebook messages–from private messages to wall posts–have been lumped in under CAN-SPAM guidelines. [Performance Marketing Insider]

» Facebook’s prepping an iPad app. [USA Today]

» Is your purchasing power influencing the propagation of “bad news”? [Seth Godin]

» After posting losses, The Guardian is now embracing a “Digital First” strategy. [Mashable]

» What marketers can learn from Weinergate, because well…why not? [AdAge]

» As affiliate marketers, do you sometimes wonder why your clients may be non-responsive? This survey says it’s because rude, pushy salespeople make people want to end a transaction before it’s fully realized. [AdAge]

» If you build a platform that enables consumers to share and save ads, will they come? [MediaPost]

» A look into how the concept of air rights is alive and well even in the digital world. [Mashable]

» And finally, if you can disregard her attempts at revisionist history, within Sarah Palin is an MBA course in branding. [Open Forum]

» Just yesterday, we asked the million dollar question: Can you afford to quit Facebook?
» Why excuses might be holding you back.
» Be jealous! Cloris Leachman was at BlogWorld Expo in NYC this week.
» Hottest bets for the summer? Vacation offers.
» BTW, Search Marketing is not advertising.
» Apparently Chinese prisoners play World of Warcraft in jail.
» And finally: Quick crickets die young.

With the shift of industry and commerce online, the buttoned-up corporate world is taking a backseat to a more colorful flow and exchange of ideas. The downside of this is that for the more naive, this means that critical branding errors are more prone to happen. But while the idea of having a buttoned-up Twitter profile is laughable–Twitter, in name, is already a casual sandbox of B2B activity. Perhaps it makes more sense if users critically determine what they’re trying to accomplish and tweet towards that purpose. It doesn’t have to be a concrete goal like, “I want 1,000 more followers by the end of business today”–because that sort of goal wastes time in pursuit of one of the most fickle social media metrics around.

Rather, any goal a user has in mind for his Twitter account should be centered around how to shape that account. There are over 200 million Twitter accounts–and even discounting the spam and inactive accounts, that’s a lot of potential competition. So if a user is trying to figure out what’s appropriate, she needs to figure out what kind of tweet will constructively make a brand more visible and set it apart from all the other players in the same segment.

It’s not that a user can’t negotiate “professional” and “personal” Twitter accounts–is that every Twitter account has the potential to inevitably become a professional account–one that becomes an unexpected source of revenue. A better way to look at it? The same people can manage multiple Twitter accounts with different goals in mind.

» Affiliate marketers may know this feeling all too well: The detrimental effect of self-sabotage and second-guessing on their own productivity. [Seth Godin]

» New York City wants to brand itself in the biggest way ever: By getting a .nyc domain suffix. [Betabeat]

» Several big social platforms–like Facebook and Google–vehemently oppose a new law introduced in California that would enforce stricter privacy measures. [AllThingsD]

However, a closer look at these updates does beg the question when the search engine giant had assumed the role of the content police. And if a user is simply looking for a service to get free quotes on window repairs, for example, does it matter if the accompanying content errs on the side of shallow? After all, window renovations, unlike politics or celebrity culture, aren’t exactly the stuff of thrilling blog dissertations.

SEOmoz has a great breakdown of the types of questions Google is asking website owners to consider when optimizing for its Panda update. The entire list of questions is here, but some of the more critical questions follow below:

- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
- Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

The intentions are good, but ultimately, they’re punitive towards SMBs. Most SMBs obviously lack the resources of big brands which, by virtue of age, may have had time to establish themselves as an authority and the manpower to implement systems to address these changes the search engine giant is suddenly focusing on.

But more problematic are the metrics that Google might be using to address content relevance: Credit cards? The identity of content creators? Ad placements? While stringent metrics might be necessarily to prioritize websites as the internet continues expanding, it seems like Google is playing a lot of weight on questions that attempt to legitimize the web. But in doing so, are they asking users and SEOs to consider almost arbitrary standards?

If a user wants to learn how to grow a particular houseplant and they happen upon sound advice from a content farm, should that advice be penalized because it isn’t packaged as well as similar advice from a branded destination? What the Panda update’s well-meaning guidelines might be overestimating is the necessity for a user to connect with a website; not every website is the New York Times and it may defeat the point of trying to rank on SERPs if everyone with a website is held up to such an unreasonable standard.

Perhaps then, this is where website owners can start looking at alternate search traffic sources: Namely Yahoo, Bing, and Blekko, which literally assembles its SERPs by hand.

And if you’re looking for a complete breakdown of how Google Panda has hit content farms, Search Engine Roundtable has an excellent recap.