I belong to Internet Marketers of New York. It is a local group of guys and gals that meets once a month so I have an excuse to leave my apartment and socialize with people face to face. Since we are a local group and Search Engine Strategies is coming to town we figured we should have a party to celebrate.

Since everyone throws parties we wanted to do something different. So we decided on a Charity Party. On April 9th, at the Town Tavern on 3rd St and 6th Ave we are asking everyone to join us to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House. It is $40 donation at the door (all of which goes to charity) for a 3 hour open bar with cocktail food and raffles. Come on and help do a good think while having a good time.  Everyone is welcome to come.
In case you were wondering Best of The Web and Text Link Ads are covering all of the costs, so your donation at the door can go all to charity. Finally you have a good reason to go out drinking. If you don’t go drinking, children will die. Well maybe not, but seriously Ronald McDonald House helps alot of kids going through a really bad time. If you can’t come then tell your friends and have them go.

For complete information go to http://www.im-ny.org/events.html

In case anyone has forgotten (which I doubt is possible) way, way back I made a fau pax when I innocently said something about a certain lady in the industry and her hair.  I was trying to be nice and needless to say that is not how she took my comment.  I am regularly reminded about this at the search conferences.  Since SES NY is fast approaching I figured I would take no chances and took my usual incredibly looking hair over to Arrojo Studios (thanks nevdull for recon).  In case you don’t know Arrojo Studios, that is the hair salon that is on the TLC tv show “What Not To Wear”.

Here is the before and after.  Victoria (my hairstylist at Arrojo Studios) gave me a bed hair style.  Which is actually not very different from what my looked like before.  I’m starting to wonder what I paid for.  I work from home in my pajamas and I just paid an expert to make my hair look like I am fresh out of bed.  Still trying to understand it.  Anyway  Enjoy my extra incredible new hairstyle and try not to get jealous.

If you are interested in upgrading your own hairstyle check out Arrojo Studios and ask for Victoria.

I use Yahoo alot, as in I use Yahoo for business and personal most hours that I am awake.  Which is why I am surprised that I didn’t notice all of the small little changes they have been making.  After taking a step back and giving the Yahoo SERPs a fresh look I noticed there are alot of changes.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

Yahoo removed the links to the Yahoo Directory.  So if your site is in the Yahoo Directory, users will no longer see a link to your category under your site snippet. Yahoo also added a “near you” local feature.  Now when you search for McDonalds you can click on “near you” and use Yahoo Local to find one.  They also added quick links to key pages on a site.  So for all of the bigger websites out there users can skip a few clicks and get right to the where they want to be.

Personally I think these changes are mostly good.  Of course I am one of the few die hard directory fans out there and I wish they allowed me to personalize the serps and add back in that link.  Often when I am searching for a hard item, it is helpful to find a site in Yahoo’s search engine that is a near miss and then check out the related sites that are in the same Yahoo directory category.

FYI These changes did not happen just today.  They just slowly sneaked up on me and I didn’t realize it.  Now I am blushing with embarrassment for not being more observant and rethinking if I am up for my next poker tournament.  If Yahoo can make multiple changes without me waking up what hope is there for my poker game?

Microsoft Vista gadgets are a new thing.  Imagine a sidebar that is about 2 inches wide on the right side of the desktop screen of all Microsoft Vista users.  These users can pick and choose what gadgets they want in there.  Like a clock, calculator.  Gadgets can use live feeds so you can have a gadget that shows the daily news headlines or stock prices.  Gadgets can also be automatically updated.  So if you release a gadget then you come out with version 2.0 of your gadget you can update your pre-exisiting users.

Microsoft expects 200 million Vists users within 2 years.  If you get 1% of those users to be interested in your gadget and download it you are talking about having real estate on 2 million computer desktops.  Now do you understand why everyone is interested in this?

Currently there are few gadgets out there.  It is easy to stake a claim and become the incumbent force.  Don’t wait too long since sites like http://www.gadgetspark.com are building gadgets for anybody with $600.  If you have a business and dont know how gadgets can help you, I am going to offer my brainstorming ability.  Just post your details in the comments and I’ll respond with what I would do.

Last week on my Internet marketing radio show GoodKarma I was discussing affiliate managers and the concept of skimming (the act of not paying affiliates for all valid sales). It seems I might not have been clear and some people might have misunderstood what I meant. My position is that every affiliate manager should know what skimming is NOT that every affiliate manager is skimming. There are many good affiliate managers that DO NOT skim, are very HONEST and are nice enough people I would take them home to meet my mom.
Affiliate managers have a hard job. They need to make sure the affiliates are promoting the program and not damaging the brand reputation. They also need to make sure their technical team is properly tracking sales and paying affiliates on time. Not to mention the many other things a good affiliate manager needs to do.

If an affiliate manager does not know what “skimming” is they can not keep an eye open to make sure it is not occurring. When an affiliate contacts them and wonders why their conversion rate has dropped with no obvious reason, the affiliate manager better know what “skimming” is and be able to truthfully say that is not the cause. I am lucky and have found several really good affiliate managers who do a great job running their programs and proactively finding sales that accidentally fall through the cracks and paying me for them. I have also found the occasional “rotten apple”.

The most humorous incident of dealing with a bad affiliate manager was when my conversion rate kept falling for 3 months until it was almost exactly 1%. When I confronted the affiliate manager, the person claimed to not even know what the concept of skimming was and said it was impossible for me not be receiving credit for all my sales. The next month my conversion rate rose to almost exactly 2%. And he still claimed he was not manipulating my affiliate account. Needless to say I stopped sending him my traffic and spent more time working on projects for the good affiliate managers that I know.

I am very happy to announce that after several months of work SEO Class has been officially launched. SEO Class is an internet consulting workshop that is being presented by Rae “Sugarrae” Hoffman, Michael “Graywolf” Gray, Todd “Stuntdubl” Malicoat, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker and myself. It will be very intimate to ensure our attendees all have a chance to speak with any presenter.

Our first event on March 23rd in New York City is going to be a Pro Bono SEO Workshop - that means it is free but only available to valid non-profit organizations. That’s right we are going to swallow the entire cost of the first conference. Don’t worry we will be charging for the next SEO Interactive Workshop on May 17-18 which is also in Manhattan, NY.

I’ve always been impressed when I worked in the past with Rae, Todd and Michael. I really think this will be a good opportunity to sharpen your skill set and also discover new ways to be successful online. Besides when can you get all of us in a room and be able to ask any question you want to and actually get a detailed answer.

Joost formerly known as the Venice Project is a fun thing I have been beta testing. They are trying to build a television platform on your computer with streaming video clips. Conceptually it is very interesting, especially the social aspects of it. As with all “cool” beta projects it is by invite only. I have a few invites that I can giveaway if anyone is interested in checking it out. Getting get back to watching more tv using Joost.

Follow-Up I’ve given out all the Joost invites I currently have and will let you know when I have more.