We are proud of the fact that Pepperjam offers students a hands-on, intensive internship program across all divisions of our company.

While most of our interns come in as juniors or seniors and end up becoming full-time Pepperjammers upon graduation, we were approached last year by a very intelligent, motivated, sophomore from Penn State Univeristy named Daehee Park. While we knew that Daehee would eventually return to school full-time at Penn State’s University Park Campus, we were happy to welcome him to our team. While an intern at Pepperjam, Daehee was interviewed as part of “Meet the Pepperjam Team” – the video is below:

Here’s a link to Daehee’s blog itmilk.com.

Daehee eventually left Pepperjam to return to Penn State. As part of Daehee’s studies he had the opportunity to work with Professor Jim Jansen – Prof. Jansen is one of the leading researchers in the United States on various aspects of internet search, including search engine algorithms and user behavior.

Daehee’s journey working with Prof. Jansen lead Penn State University to enter the “Google Online Marketing Challenge.”

The 2008 Google Online Marketing Challenge saw more than 1600 student teams from 47 countries around the world taking part in a global online marketing competition.

How do you think Penn State (my Alma mater) and Pepperjam’s former intern Daehee Park did?

They took first place representing the United States!!!!

In addition to Daehee and Prof. Jim Jansen, the Penn State team included Caroline Furey, Joe Lewis, Matthew Maisel, and Tonya Podkuiko – the team worked with a University Park (aka, Happy Valley) tourism and information site, www.happyvalley.com.

All the winners receive a free Mac Book Air, a trip to the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA, and most importantly – the title of CHAMPIONS!

Congrats to Daehee, Prof. Jansen, and the entire Penn State Team for winning the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

PRESS RELEASE:

Wilkes Barre, PA – July 10, 2008 – Pepperjam, the fastest growing full-service internet marketing agency in the United States, announced today that Pepperjam Network, the company’s celebrated next generation affiliate marketing network, added 177 new advertisers during the second quarter of 2008, including eBay, NetQuote, Auto Parts Warehouse, FRS Health Energy, HomeGain, 1&1 Internet, VistaPrint, and Angie’s List, among others.

The addition of nearly 200 new advertisers comes off of an announcement in the first quarter of 2008 that Pepperjam Network closed 175 new advertiser contracts.

Most recently, Pepperjam Network was recognized in a study published by MarketingSherpa for having very quickly positioned itself as one of the top 5 affiliate marketing networks in the United States. The MarketingSherpa study suggests “rapid growth” of Pepperjam Network and points to the fact that the next generation network has been able to penetrate 17.5% of the market since launching the network only 5 1/2 months ago (based on study data).

“Pepperjam Network shows no sign of slowing down. We couldn’t be more excited about the support we are receiving from the advertiser community. Expect more of the same moving forward with continued advertiser acquisition, rapid growth, and significant technology innovation,” said Kristopher B. Jones, President & CEO of Pepperjam.

Pepperjam Network launched in January 2008 and is considered the most significant affiliate network launch of the last 10 years (Electronic Retailer Magazine, June 2008). Pepperjam Network addresses the two primary shortcomings of other affiliate networks, namely (1) poor, unreliable communication tools and (2) lack of affiliate transparency. In short, with Pepperjam Network advertisers are empowered to better manage brand and minimize fraud through full and unfettered affiliate transparency, while also building stronger, more strategic affiliate marketing relationships through real-time communication tools such as Pepperjam Chat.

About Pepperjam Network:

Pepperjam Network is a next generation affiliate marketing network that provides advertisers and publishers with industry leading pay-for-performance tracking, reporting, communication, and payment solutions. Pepperjam Network is a division of Pepperjam, a full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine for the last two consecutive years as one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States. Learn more at www.pepperjamnetwork.com

About Pepperjam:

Pepperjam offers a full range of professional marketing management services in the areas of pay-per-click, search-engine optimization, affiliate marketing, and online media planning and buying. Since 1999 Pepperjam has developed a reputation for being one of the most innovative, aggressive, and effective internet marketing agencies in the business. Learn more at www.pepperjam.com

Hello everyone! My name is Ken Mohn, Jr., the Vice-President of Agency Services here at Pepperjam. I am ultimately responsible for the operations of our search-engine marketing and online media buying divisions. Before joining Pepperjam, I was also a very active affiliate marketer, so I try to bring a wide breadth of knowledge and experience to the PJ team. I am excited to announce the launch of PepperjamEDU, an online educational resource dedicated to helping both our clients and our followers attain a more advanced understanding of what it takes to be a successful online marketer.

A sample of topics you can expect to see covered here include:

• Keyword generation methods
• Creating search-engine optimized web pages
• Basic web site structure suggestions
• Advanced web site structuring
• The importance of content creation
• Benefits of creating communities
• Everything you could ever want to know about link building
• Analytics
• Social Media Optimization
• Optimizing PPC quality score
• Advanced PPC tactics
• And more..

Also, I’d like to extend to all of our blog readers the opportunity to send any PPC, SEO, media, or affiliate marketing related questions directly to me (ken@pepperjam.com), and I will do my best to answer a number of these questions every week on this blog. Please don’t ask anything that you don’t want answered publicly. Feel free to contact our sales team with those inquiries

Some of the topics already posted at PepperjamEDU include choosing a web site topic, finding your target audience, and setting budgets and goals. Expect daily updates, so visit frequently.