It has been done. I caught an email off the CJ (Commission Junction) Newsletter Wire this morning that stated the following:

After more than six months in the making and much customer feedback and testing, we are pleased to announce that Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) has recently updated its editorial policies and will now allow U.S. publishers to direct link to their advertisers. In the past, YSM’s editorial policy prevented publishers from linking directly to their advertiser partners and required that traffic be sent first to the publisher’s Web site. The new policy eliminates this restriction and opens a much broader search marketing opportunity for publishers.

This YSM policy change is the result of a strong relationship between Commission Junction and YSM. We have spent more than six months working with YSM to enact the new editorial policy and are very pleased that this effort has resulted in changes that are sure to create opportunities for our publishers and advertisers.

We find this policy change exciting on several levels. First, this is a significant shift for YSM and could be a great opportunity for your search marketing campaigns. Second, you heard it here first – YSM has asked us to communicate this change to the affiliate community. Third, the work we’ve done with YSM on this policy change is just another example of our commitment to listening to and speaking up for our publishers.

So do we jump up and down and thank the search marketing gods that Yahoo has finally introduced a method the ole Google Casher’s like?

Ok if you have missed this then you must have been under a rock this morning. You can read the full story here but:

Technology giant Microsoft Corp said on Friday that it had offered to acquire Internet media company Yahoo Inc for $44.6 billion in cash and stock.

Microsoft said it had offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, which it said represented a 62 percent premium above the company's closing stock price on Nasdaq on Thursday.

If this goes thru I see this as a GIGANTIC move on Microsoft's part. This would be nice if they could get their shit together and start putting up more of a fight with Big Daddy in the Search Wars. I like advertising on MSN when my stuff is running but I also like Yahoo as well. Combining them I dont know what would happen but I do know that Yahoo turned down the last offer so I am not getting my hopes up just yet. BTW – Their stock is shooting up.

Looks like shit is heating up. Copeac takes a stab on what we already discussed earlier. This industry is hilarious.

Azoogle (no I wont link to them) has done yet another thing that disgruntles me. See I like to test these CPA companies ALOT to see who’s on the up and up. So I gave Azoogle a taste last year by running some simple text links and banners on some sites I own:

Only $22K and change. Not a lot I know. The thing you have to realize is these sites run themselves. This is income for which I do ZERO, I repeat ZERO work for. In the beginning sure, it required work, SEO, traffic building and all that wonderful jazz but this is the payout from a few sites that run on autopilot. In case you forgot, autopilot income is better than sex. Yes, you can quote me on that.

Now here’s this whole story that actually turns out be one big circle jerk with me kind of eating my words this morning. You see, CPA Affiliates brought out the email this morning and I saw it on my morning blog rounds. So congrats to CPA Affiliates  for having the first dibs on this. (Proper credit is appointed to good bloggers).

My email is the same and here it is:

Dear Publisher, At AzoogleAds, we believe that some of the most valuable business relationships can be developed through word of mouth; we believe in it so strongly that we even have a program designed to reward such referral business!We are changing our program starting February 1st, 2008, and we wanted to give you the highlights:

You must maintain a minimum revenue level of $1,000 in your primary account on a monthly basis in order to receive any referral payouts for that month. As always, we’d love to hear any questions or comments that you have; please send us your thoughts at AZreferral@AzoogleAds.comSincerely,
Mitchell Richler
Vice President of Network Distribution

Viva La Youtorrent! For all you torrent hoodlums you might be interested to know that I have checked this site out and downloaded an illegal J/K, AWESOME download there last night. Supposedly YouTorrent boasts over 150,000 searches in its first 3 days launch. You really need to check it out because it is by far my favorite torrent site now.

Youtorrent is working as a meta search engine that is retrieving its results from other sites such as Pirate Bay, Mininova, ISOHunt,  and BtJunkie. It lists the torrents accordingly from most seeds and peers to least, ensuring faster download times for all users. Checking it out and taking a look at Tech Crunch’s story it was said that the site is on complete privacy and operating out of the Netherlands. Usually this is just a cover as most likely the owners are indeed in the US (who knows though). It will be interesting to see how long it lasts. As of right now though the site is rocking!

Just looking around a little more, according to TorrentFreak, Youtorrent searches 12 sources:

It currently searches 12 sources; Mininova, The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt, MyBittorrent, NewTorrents, SuprNova, Monova, Vuze, BitTorrent, LegitTorrents, SeedPeer and BTjunkie.

On a side note, while traveling my forum rounds yesterday there were people claiming that Rapidshare had been shutdown. Stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions if you dont know what your talking about. It makes you look stupid if you dont know the real story.

It seems that the FCC may soon be getting the plunger and wipes out to give Comcast one of the biggest lawsuit swirlies over net neutrality ever. It’s about flipping time too. Frankly, as I engaged in some of the easiest money I ever made, I had to waddle around the forums and listen to Comcast customers piss and moan about their connections and not being able to participate regularly on P2P Networks and Bittorent sites.

I still remember reading about the dude who sued Comcast because they were filtering him and his Bitorrent traffic. Supposedly at that time:

Comcast is using an application from the broadband management company Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. The application is installed at the cable modem termination system and breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds. This means that Comcast is not simply slowing down connections, they actually disconnect peer-to-peer transfers.

For a company so large you would think that they would have more sense. These people are complete morons.

I also caught this piece on Mashable, Directly from the suit:

Defendants have disseminated and continues to disseminate advertising, that they know or should reasonably know is false and misleading. This conduct includes, but is not limited to, promoting and advertising the fast speeds that apply to the Service without limitation, when, in fact, Defendants severely limit the speed of the Service for certain applications.

It further includes Defendant’s misrepresentations that their customers will enjoy “unfettered access” to all internet applications, when, in fact, Defendants not only fetter certain applications, but completely block them. Defendants know or reasonably should know that this advertising is false and misleading.

I hope they get taken for every penny.

I got a little goodie package the other day from Zac Johnson. Sorry for the delay, I just been super busy here in December. However, no good deed EVER goes unnoticed. Zac has been a true inspiration and I’m subscribed to his feed, and I visit his blog daily. Zac got to meet Mark Cuban at BlogWorld in Las Vegas. From recent posts it looks like Zac will be attending AffiliateSummit West 2008 at Las Vegas ( Feb 24-26). Unfortunately I won’t be able to make that because of my third child is due really close at the first of March. Zac is going to be on the panel “Super Affiliate Strategies that Work” along with Kris Jones (CEO of Pepperjam), John Chow (JohnChow.com) and Amit Mehta (SuperAffiliateMindset.com) who is also part of PPC Classroom in which I am currently enrolled and participating in.

Thanks for the package Zac!

Just wondering if anyone got burned with the fallout of Agloco. Mr. Chow was on top of it quickly with his post AGLOCO Joins The Dead Pool. To tell you the truth I have no effing clue as to what AGLOCO is all about. All I knew was that it included a toolbar (right?) and came off really strong as some type of shitty paid to surf program. Maybe some people at the top of the chain made some cash or you yourself did. If so, I am interested to know the details, so tell me!

When I was a member of the RJ forum I saw a ton of people to make money online concept pimping AGLOCO and I could do nothing but sit back and laugh. As a matter of fact, I am not for sure, but I most likely took a cheap a shot at some of them. Seriously what a horrible business model, a real time killer and overall waste of time. It’s shit like this that can really take the wind out of your sails.