Internet Marketing and Google Adsense Expert Joel Comm is in final production of an Apprentice-like Reality Show called - Next Internet Millionaire. Joel is a New York Times best-selling author (Adsense Code), internet guru, and international speaker.

While I’ve spoken at various conferences with Joel over the years it was only recently during Affiliate Summit - Miami that Joel and I had lunch and discussed some of our latest projects.

Joel asked me if I would fly to Loveland, Colorado and shoot an episode of Next Internet Millionaire - his latest venture. Since the production of the show is still underway I’m not at liberty to give specifics about my appearance, although I will say that it was a combo co-host / guest appearance and that it was one of the coolest experiences of my internet marketing life!

The Next Internet Millionaire is the first reality TV show that will be broadcast entirely over the web.

Similar in theme to other reality shows like American Idol and America’s Got Talent there was a multi-week open audition where thousands of contestants submitted videos, which were posted on YouTube for the world to see, about why they thought they should be the next internet millionaire, win $25K cash, and a multi-million dollar marketing partnership with Joel Comm.

After receiving thousands of videos, Joel cut the contestants down to the top 50 and then chose 12 finalists that were flown to Colorado for taping.

During each show, much like Survivor and the Apprentice, contestants compete in various tasks (again, I’m not yet allowed to say much here). However, the show also includes a really brilliant educational component where Joel flies in leading internet marketing experts from around the world to share insights on how to make millions of dollars online. In short, the show is like Apprentice with a hint of Survivor with the goal of finding (or creating) the Next Internet Millionaire.

When I arrived in Colorado I was amazed to find out that Next Internet Millionaire is being taped in an amazing 50,000 square foot warehouse / production studio - honestly, the venue felt like I was on a Hollywood set with multiple cameras shooting in every direction at all times.

For now I’ll say that I’m expecting to be on show seven (7) - this was the last week of production and the first show of the Next Internet Millionaire series will air LIVE around the middle of August 2007 - to learn more visit nextinternetmillionaire.com.

Stay tuned for more info!

Make sure to tune in to the show starting in mid August!

Here is a Preview of The Next Internet Millionaire (crank up the sound):

Aaron Baker (VP of Sales & Marketing), Ken Mohn, Jr. (VP of Search) and I (President & CEO) will be headed to Washington, D.C. on Sunday for eTail 2007.

eTail brings together more than 1,000 executives to discuss and debate industry perspectives and best practices relating to the online retailing channel.

Other than the fact that we are exhibiting and sponsoring the search-engine marketing portion of the event (called “Search Day“) the coolest part of the trip is that I will be speaking on a roundtable with the CEO (Spencer Chesman) of long-time Pepperjam client, igourmet.com.

To learn more about eTail visit - http://www.wbresearch.com/etail/index.asp

See you there!

News broke across the internet earlier today that MediaWhiz (parent of Text-Link-Ads) purchased AuctionAds for an undisclosed sum of money.

Congratulations to Shoemoney and Dillsmack on this absolutely incredible accomplishment. In my opinion, AuctionAds was the most impressive new product launch of 2007 - in less than 5-months the product, which is an eBay ad network widget, gained over 25K users, served nearly 1 billion impressions, and sold for what I imagine is millions of dollars.

I have to admit, I am honored that I’m in Vegas for this weekend with Shoemoney and Dillsmack for my bachelor party (more on that in a future post….maybe!)

Best of luck to MediaWhiz on this very intelligent acquisition.

It looks like Robyn
isn’t the only one here at the pepperplex losing her tagging virginity!
 With the help of my friend Kat Dempsey (Seen here in photo), I have now
lost not only my tagging virginity, but also my pepperjamblog virginity. That’s
right - Kat got me twice! I am very excited about being able to share a little
bit about myself and I will do my best to keep this short and sweet…not exactly
my strong suit, but we will see how this goes.

1-    I have one tattoo that I love. I get happy
every time I look at it. It is on my foot, even though I happen to think feet
are gross. Can anyone say walking contradiction?

2-    I really did graduate college magna cum laude.
And I almost dropped out my sophomore year.

3-    I am in the process of changing departments
at Pepperjam.  After a brief stint in affiliate and a longer one in
Search, I am heading over to another Pepperjam department. I am thrilled about the move and
I plan on being the biggest cheerleader for my new team (any questions about my new top secret project feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call - you’ll just have to sign an NDA before we talk!).

4-    Music and Food have the ability to make me
happier than I could possibly express in words. One day I would love to open a
restaurant with my Mom and Sisters where I could plan the menu and name dishes
after some of my favorite tunes and artists. (A Don’t Drink The Water Martini,
Bens Fold Five Dollar Friday, G-Love’s Special Sauce Chicken Sandwich,
Taste(Phish) Seafood Gumbo, a Jimmy Buffett’s Last Mango In Paris for
Desert…)

5-    I am one of 5 children- I loved growing
up in a big family.

6-    I met Dave Matthews while he was on a jog
in Wilkes-Barre
before a show.  And while we spoke for several minutes, I was so star
struck I honestly hardly remember any of it.

7-    My guilty pleasure is The Girls Next Door on
E!, My favorite episode is where Hef gets peacocks and names them Casa and
Blanca, romance is alive and well my friends!

8-    My Claim to fame in the Pepperplex is
that very soon after getting my job here I drank three redbulls and one mt. dew
in fifteen minutes for a crisp $100.00 bill from Kris Jones. And I would do it
again without hesitation.

I now tag

 Ken Mohn

Ryan Campbell

Jesse Cooper 

I was recently interview by Wendy Piersall, a writer for the Entrepreneur.com Blog Network. START READING!

HERE IS A LINK to the interview, which focused on how to successfully launch an affiliate program.

This is a great interview by an extraordinarily excellent human being - Wendy Piersall.

Learn more about Wendy:

eMoms at Home
$hoe$tring$marts
WomenEntrepreneur.com

Forbes.com broke a story today entitled, “Click Fraud Goes Viral.” The article was written by Andy Greenberg.

The article is based on a recent study by Click Forensics that revealed that the percentage of clicks on online ads that were fraudulent climbed to 15.8% in the second quarter of 2007, an increase of a full percentage point in just three months. And the volume of fraudulent clicks found on online content networks like Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network is more disturbing: 25.6% of those clicks were bogus, compared with 21.9% at the end of last quarter.

I was quoted and Pepperjam was referenced several times in the Forbes article. Check it out HERE.

Thanks to Andy Greenberg for using me once again as an authority in his excellent articles!

Today’s article comes off the heels of an article earlier in the week featuring Pepperjam on CNNMoney.com - that article delt with making money from search arbitrage.

I’ve had the displeasure of meeting “Mikey,” the founder of FabulousSavings.com, at numerous affiliate marketing conferences over the years. I only use the word displeasure because the guy comes across as extremely arrogant and has always treated Pepperjam Affiliate Managers with disrespect.

I believe that treating others with disrespect is unacceptable when it’s without merrit.

Personality conflicts aside, I’ve always wondered why FabulousSavings.com has practically dominated the organic search results over the last 12 - 18 months, especially for merchant trademarks.

Linkshare honored FabulousSavings with the coveted Innovative Affiliate Of The Year Award in 2006. Linkshare gave the company another award in 2007 for Fabu.com.

Honestly, I give Mikey a lot of credit for being as aggressive as he is and for building a very large affiliate marketing company.

I don’t claim to know Mikey and I certainly wish him and his business well. My negative opinion of him is my own and has nothing to do with the real point of this blog post, which I’ll dive into right now….

I just completed reading a blog post written by Rand Fiskin, an industry friend and very well-known search engine marketing expert about Michael Yack “Mikey” and FabulousSavings.com. Rand documents the fact that FabulousSavings is employing a number of unethical link farming techniques and other search-engine optimization strategies that are clearly in conflict with every major search-engine’s terms of service.

For those of you who don’t know him, Rand speaks at conferences around the world and has addressed elite academic communities, including Stanford University. Rand’s clients include NPR and Geosign, among many other notables. Rand’s blog - SEOMOZ - is arguably the authority when it comes to search-engine optimization. I highly recommend SEOMOZ as a daily read.

Rand’s blog post about Mikey and FabulousSavings.com can be found HERE.

I’ll let Rand’s post speak for itself - “Michael Yack, Link Farmer, Makes it Big with FabulousSavings.com in the Toronto Star.”

Oh ya………….Meet the Pepperjam Team has hit the quarter century mark - 25 videos!!!

This time around we interview Chris Thomas, a Pepperjam Senior Sales Account Executive.

I had the honor of interviewing Chris during our recent trip to Miami, FL for Affiliate Summit - East. Actually, the video was shot on Saturday - the night before the start of the conference - in South Beach from the Penthouse Suite of Hotel Ocean on Ocean Drive.

Chris Thomas is an amazingly passionate and high energy guy. When he’s not at work he is working out, boating, or spending quality time with his large and very accomplished family.

Here’s a picture of Chris with Dennis Rodman on the last night of the Affiliate Summit Conference - the picture was taken at the Delano in South Beach during a small party sponsored by Pepperjam.

Here’s Chris’ video:

For those of you who don’t know the “rules” behind the Meet the Pepperjam Video Series, here they are:

Every Friday Pepperjam will post a new video interview of a member of our staff - everyone will be included - affiliates managers, executives, search-engine marketing managers, directors, software engineers, assistants, online media buyers, and interns. The person being interviewed won’t know he / she has been chosen until about 30 seconds before the interview - this way you’ll get an unrehearsed, real world look at the employee…hopefully, this will make it interesting and non-corporate, which is what we are known and respected for across the internet marketing industry.

Why are we doing this? Well, I am proud of our team and I think you’ll find them as interesting and intelligent as I do. Also, I’m a student of viral video and the social media space and I want to test the waters as it relates to what corporate america is doing (and not doing) to spread buzz and build next generation work places.

Finally, I just thought it would be cool to put some people in front of a video camera that have never done so before, have a little bit of fun, and see if Pepperjam can spread some additional buzz about why we are the leader in online marketing.

FYI - all videos will also be posted to YouTube. If you think what we are doing is outside-the-box and interesting please blog about it and share the story with the world.

Our previous videos include:

Maura Goodwin
Tara Lou
Dean Karasinski
Kim Noler (dated YouTube founder)
Stephanie Yachim
Roxy (Pepperjam’s English Bulldog)
Kris Jones
Katharine Dempsey
Ken Mohn Jr.
Mandy Foley
Tara DeGiusto
Robyn Martin
Kate Sarnak
Aaron Baker
Michelle Foley
Mike Jones
Maggie Oldziejewski
Daehee Park
Leslie Stewart
Trevor Brennan
Brock Siegel
Sarah Hohol
Matt Bradley

Other fun Pepperjam Vids:
“What would you do for a One Year Supply of Energy Drink”
Naked Crazy Man Video
Pepperjam Adds Ping Pong Table to Pepperplex
Roxy with the Tony Robbins Beach Ball

Seven members of the Pepperjam Team, including myself, Michael Jones (COO), Brock Siegel (VP of Bus Dev), Ken Mohn, Jr. (VP of Search), Aaron Baker (VP of Sales & Marketing), Robyn Martin (Director of Affiliate Marketing), and Maura Goodwin (Assistant Director of Affiliate Marketing) recently attended the 2007 Linkshare Golden Links and Symposium.

Special thanks to Brigade Quartermasters, a valued Pepperjam client, for sponsoring us at the Golden Link Awards and for spending time with us at the Symposium.

Here are the PICS - Enjoy!

CLICK HERE to see Pepperjam’s Affiliate Summit - Miami Pics!

Affiliate Summit 2007 - Miami was without question the best affiliate marketing conference ever held. The host venue (InterContinental Miami) was an excellent choice, networking opportunities were abundant, and attendees included some of the most influencial leaders in both e-commerce, direct marketing, and internet marketing.

Special thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for constantly improving Affiliate Summit and for making sure that this event was the best ever.

Team Pepperjam was in full force with seven (7) members of our staff, including myself, Aaron Baker (VP of Sales), Brock Siegel (VP of Business Development), Robyn Martin (Director of Affiliate Marketing), Maura Goodwin (Assistant Director of Affiliate Marketing), and Kate Sarnak (Super Senior Affiliate Manager).

We had an amazing time with many of our industry friends, including Shoemoney, Kevin (Income.com / John Reese), Lee Dodd, David Adams, Shmuel Tennenhaus (YouTube Celeb), Asif Malik, Joel Comm (Next Internet Millionaire), Josh & Ken from DentalPlans.com, and too many more to mention.

Saturday: Robyn and I were already in Miami staying in South Beach since Thursday - the rest of the gang arrived on Saturday afternoon…I thought it would be nice to reward my team by flying them a day early and showing them what South Beach is all about.

Needless to say, we had an amazing time in South Beach!

Sunday: We spent some time at the Affiliate Summit Meet Market, which was packed with people and was great networking. We were a bit disappointed that we didn’t have a Meet Market table since many people expected us to and were looking for us - I guess there was some confusion with the fact that we wanted a table and it wasn’t included as an exhibitor. Anyway, the Meet Market was definitely a good time.

Sunday evening we went to a party sponsored by ShareASale and ABESTWEB - the party was really, really fun and I had the opportunity to meet a few handfuls of new friends, as well as spend some time with my friend Todd Crawford from Digital River and others. The entire Pepperjam Team seemed to be having a blast!

Monday: We arrived at the Pepperjam exhibit booth around 9:00a.m. so that the booth was ready to go and the energy drinks were cold….

One of the highlights of our booth was the fact that we were handing out Who’s Your Daddy Energy Drinks for FREE - a special thanks goes to Dan at Who’s our Daddy, Inc. for sponsoring Pepperjam at the event - honestly, the energy drinks were a huge hit and everybody was talking about how they rocked!

Our booth was staffed with our booth babes, which consisted of myself, NOT, Brock, Aaron, Chris, and the girls (Robyn, Maura, & Kate) - at Pepperjam, unlike other unnamed companies, we are proud of the fact that our booth babes actually work for us! The booth was crowded with people all day - once again, it went down as one of the most popular booths at the entire show - it’s like a never ending party at our booth wherever we go….people stop by to see where the parties are or to get VIP tickets; people stop by our booth for free swag; people stop by our booth to say hi, and prospective clients stop by our booth and are blown away by our energy.

We had a ton of attendees come to our booth since we were handing out VIP tickets to the party we were co-sponsoring later that night at Mansion.

The party at Mansion, which was sponsored by Pepperjam, WebmasterRadio, Copeac and others was amazing! A really classy event at a great venue. The evening definitely turned out to be a highlight of the conference and we consider it one of the best parties we’ve ever sponsored! Check out our PICS from the party! By the way - we sponsored an after party along with Zanox at Tantra that was also a great time - thanks to our friends, clients, and prospective clients who attended the after party with us.

Tuesday: After a late night Monday I started off Tuesday with breakfast in my suite, while the rest of the gang was down at the booth meeting with prospective clients. I had a series of meetings set-up throughout the day so I didn’t spend too much time at the booth, but I stopped by long enough to see the mob of people surrounding the Pepperjam Team.

Prior to my own presentation I attended a panel that included Jeremy Schoemaker and Lee Dodd on making money with community forumns. I was very impressed with Jeremy and Lee’s ability to offer so many sound money making tips - if you left that session without 10 new money making ideas you must have been wearing ear plugs. It was an outstanding session.

My session, which I did solo, was on “the Confluence of Search-Engine and Affiliate Marketing” and it was very well attended. At one point I asked the audience how many of them had made more than $10,000 by either reading this blog or hearing previous speeches I’ve given - I was blown away when about 10 or so people rasied their hand - I was deeply honored and it allowed me to give what I thought was a very informative presentation. I should also thank Who’s Your Daddy again here since one of the highlights of my presentation was the fact that everyone in attendance got FREE ENERGY DRINKS!!!

On Monday evening I did two private meetings…my favorite being a sitdown with Shoemoney, Lee Dodd, and David Adams to talk about Elite Retreat among other things.

Robyn and I were leaving the next morning so we all went to dinner and then Robyn and I went back to the room the pack our bags.

All in all the Affiliate Summit was one of the best conferences ever!

Want more reviews of Affiliate Summit? Here are some:

Click Consultants
Moose on the Loose Affiliate Marketing Blog
Shoemoney
Revenue Magazine Blog
ReveNews
The Affiliate Summit Blog
Shawn Collin’s Blog
ABestWeb.com
WebPro News
Rosalind Gardner
My Netrapreneur
Zac Johnson
Super Affiliate Mindset