One of the Best Marketing Books of 2005

Jack Covert. president and founder of 800-CEO-Read, recently gave a very positive review of "Bag the Elephant! How to Win and Keep Big Customers" by Steve Kaplan, hailing the book "One of the Best Marketing Books of 2005".

The full article, which headlines Steve Kaplan's book over Seth Godin, can be found on MarketingProfs here.

The Bag the Elephant! book by Steve Kaplan is one of many Difference Maker products and services available. For more information about the DifferenceMaker.Com affiliate program, click here.

Lawsuit filed against 180solutions

Shawn Collins filed A class action complaint against adware company 180solutions (also known as MetricsDirect) on the 13th in an Illinois United States District Court. After the dust settled it turns out this was Shawn M Collins of the Collins Law Firm and not the Shawn B Collins that we all know from affilate marketing.

Anyway it's still good news and I'd like to wish Mr Collins all the best, and he really ought to hook up with Ben Edelman (if he already hasn't) to make sure he has a full truck load of facts to bring an end to 180's reign of canabilistic marketing.

The full story can be found on ZDNET Spyware Blog here.

Free Site Maker over on offer

Revenue Mag have a great offer on their Blog today, get a free site make over by, Pedro Sostre the president and creative director of Sostre And Associates. The value of the maker over will run to over $5,000 US based on the info provided, certainly worth a look.

I might even have to suggest it to a couple of our clients and hope they win, though I believe the focus is for Affiliates sites as Pedro is an affiliate in his own right working mainly with CJ.

It would of course make for a very interesting set of stats, revenue and traffic before and revenue and traffic afterwards, if it works ( as one would imagine it must with Pedro laying his neck on the line) then it'll certainly generate a lot of interest in how the site is designed.

Rakuten to buy LinkShare

Well it finally happened, long expected and forecast by many, Linkshare is being bought by Japanese firm Rakuten. While many might wonder at it being a Japanese based buyer, for me it makes sense. LinkShare Japan have had a solid run in Japan and have been doing very well, and for a Japanese firm looking to launch a wide range of products into the US market, they are going to look to a network they have tried, Linkshare being the only network that has a solid base in both Japan and the USA.

Many are asking, "how will this effect them", I don't see any major ripples coming out of this (maybe a Japan based Symposium if I'm lucky :) ) , other than the network certainly giving some bias towards Rakuten's propoerties... which does raise the question, which merchants in competing segments are going to want to be on a network owned by a competitor...?