Posted on April 13th, 2008 in Uncategorized
If you haven’t gotten in on the contest yet, check it out and get signed up.
To say the participation so far in this contest has been overwhelming would be an understatement. Well over 50 people have signed up with Advaliant to try and win the xbox.
At this point, it’s still anyone’s game. It obviously takes a little while to get new campaigns researched and whatnot. The top people so far are sittin on a little over $100 in commissions. So if you haven’t gotten in yet, you still have a chance. Just keep in mind, the longer you wait, the more time Nickycakes has to sharpen his A-game in COD4, so the utter schooling you’ll receive will be that much worse.
Keep it real.
Published by nickycakes //
Posted on February 29th, 2008 in Uncategorized
Alrighty, Nickycakes is back from Vegas. It was awesome to say the least. Having never been to Sin City, it was pretty overwhelming at first. Nothing ever really closes, and it’s very hard to keep track if time, or even what part of a casino you’re in, so the entire week seems a little like one long ass day.
The airline related drama continued as United airlines proceeded to lose Nickycakes’ girl’s luggage. It ended up going back to Boston rather than Vegas, and stayed there till last night when she was able to pick it up. That meant a day of shoppin for new clothes and stuff at the outlets.
Anyway, here’s an overview of what happened at ASW. The Cakes wasn’t able to take as many pictures as he’d like, but there are a few here, and some are stolen from Andrea.
Day 1 (Saturday):
Nickycakes arrived in vegas around noon or so on Saturday, took a cab to the hotel after finding out that the retarded shuttle bus could take up to 2 hours to get there. Gold Coast hotel was a little on the ghetto side compared to some of the big expensive ones, but at $60 a night, with a bingo hall and bowling alley, you can’t lose. Met up with the girlfriend who had been on vacation for a month or so, made up for lost time, hit the Gold Coast buffet. Vegas buffets are awesome, btw. They will do pretty much anything to get you into their casino and spend money, so the food is always really good and really cheap. Had to go to the outlets to grab some clothes for the girl since united airlines lost her luggage, and then went out to dinner.
Geoff and a few other guys from Advaliant were nice enough to take Nickycakes and his girl out for dinner Saturday night at Nove Italiano. Food was bangin, and Cakes’ girl got sloshed off of 2 drinks. Chatted about affiliate type stuff like customer service and what factors set an affiliate network apart from the rest, which would set the theme for Nickycakes’ discussions with pretty much every other network for the rest of the stay in Vegas.
After dinner, Cakes headed back to Gold Coast to meet up with Nate, one of the dudes that hangs out on Wickedfire and IRC. Word on the street was that Eli from BlueHatSEO and Andrea from PlanetAndrea were hanging out at the Venetian, so thats where the crew headed. The Venetian is awesome, and kinda overwhelming at first. It’s got huge Sistine Chapel style ceilings and tons of fake sculptures and fountains everywhere. After meeting up, everyone ended up playin some video poker at some random bar while trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the night.
(nan,nick,eli,andrea,nate)
(nan,nick,eli)
(nick,eli,nate,andrea)
Nate, Eli, and Andrea ended up doin’ a bunch of jagerbombs before hearing that about 10-20 wickedfire people were hanging out around the Rio or the Palms which are basically adjacent casinos about a mile off the main strip. After spending about an hour trying to track them down, it was obvious they weren’t going to be found, so everyone just ended up in this lounge near the entrance to the Palms. Cakes and his girl stayed there and hung out for a couple hours before packin’ it in and heading back to the hotel for the night
Day 2 (Sunday):
This is the day the actual conference started. Nickycakes woke up about noon, grabbed some brunch with the girlfriend and Nate, and headed over to the Rio for the conference. They had the “Meet Market” going on all day, which was pretty much a bunch of fold up tables in a giant room where the networks and merchants could pitch themselves to the affiliates. Pretty much just a bunch of networks telling you they have the highest payouts and best customer service. Great. How about something original for a change. Give affiliates a real reason why they shouldn’t just go work direct with the merchant. It was really cool to meet with all the networks Cakes had been doing business with already, though, and there were a few networks that he will be signing up for as a result of meeting them there at ASW, for sure. At 2pm, there was an impromptu Wickedfire meetup, but it was a little disappointing, especially after learning that Jon (owner of WF) had gotten in a car accident on the way to the airport, was in the hospital, and wouldn’t be able to make it to the conference.
After the Meet Market, everyone pretty much headed back to get changed or whatever for the parties that night, and there were plenty of them. First on the list was the Copeac/WF private party in the G suite at the Palms. It was pretty nice. Pool table, open bar, stripper pole…pretty much everything you could expect in a dream condo. Overall very fun to hang out with those peeps.
Most everyone from the Copeac party headed up to Ghost Bar, but Nicky was fcking starving, so he headed back to the hotel room to grab the girlfriend and go get some grub at Ping Pang Pong, a chinese restaurant in Gold Coast where they serve Dim Sum like 24/7.
After dinner, it was a near-futile attempt to meet back up with the wickedfire people who went to the Ghost Bar. Being on the guest list for the Copeac thing meant free admission to the Playboy club in the palms too, so Cakes and girlfriend met up with Nate and headed up there. Tons of hotties, but really expensive and very few of the WF people ended up actually being there.
About to head back to the hotel, since it was pretty late, Cakes and the girlfriend decided to check out the Shareasale party. It was pretty much over at that point, which is good, because there would be nothing worse than partying with a bunch of douchebags like John chow and getting put on one of his retarded youtube videos. It was really chill. Nicky met up with a couple of the dudes from Advaliant again, and hung out for an hour or two. The owner of Shareasale was playing the grand piano in the middle of the lower level of the suite, right outside the swimming pool. There was a spinning bed, austin powers style, on the top level. There was a gorgeous view of the city, so after chatting with the Advaliant guys for a while, Cakes and the girl sat and looked at the city for a while before heading back to the hotel.
Day 3 (Monday):
Monday is when the actual booths went up in the conference. Kinda like Sunday’s Meet Market except many more networks were represented. Cakes rolled in late-ish and talked to a bunch more networks and picked up a bunch more free stuff. They generally all hand out t-shirts, hats, pens, etc.
There were a bunch of parties Monday night, but the biggest one was the RocketProfit one at Tao, a club at the Venetian. The Blue Man Group was scheduled to preform there so it seemed like the one to go to. Nickycakes went there a little late, after having dinner, and met up with a bunch of the WF dudes again. Everyone smoked some cigars and hung out until the performance.
(smaxor,tmoney,crypt,cakes,c0ck)
(cakes,nan)
So the Blue Man Group would have been awesome except for one thing. The place was really packed, and the stage was a little bit low, so it was already hard to see. On top of that, 7 foot tall John Chow was standing in the very front blocking everyone’s view and pumping his fist in the air like a retard the whole time. It wouldn’t be so bad if the dude didn’t have a 4 inch flat top. Imagine Guile from Street Fighter II. So yeah, with that ruined, everyone decided we needed something a little more enjoyable.
The crew went where anyone in Vegas would go if they were bored, head to the Spearmint Rhino gentlemens club. Definately worth hitting up if you’re in Vegas. Cakes’ girlfriend probably enjoyed it most out of anyone.
Day 4 (Tuesday):
Cakes wakes up to a call from Jon, owner of Wickedfire, asking him to go down to the exhibit hall and grab business cards from every single booth in the exhibit and mail them to him. Man, was that ever a pain in the ass. You couldn’t even just walk up and get cards from them without getting trapped and hounded by these people.
That was pretty much it for the actual show. Most everyone went home on Tuesday, and Nickycakes spent the rest of the time hanging out with the girlfriend and playing a little hold-em (ended up winning about $100 overall).
Day 5 (Wednesday):
Met with Jaeson from Neverblue for lunch before heading to the airport. That was pretty good, and he talked about some good offers they got coming up that would be good for promoting on Facebook Ads.
Overall it was great. There was so much to do, and so little time. Vegas is a great city, and there’s always something fun happening. There were a few people Cakes was hoping to meet but didn’t end up seeing. Paul from Uberaffiliate, Zac Johnson, and Wes/Larby from tracking202.
The next Affiliate Summit is in Boston apparently, where Cakes lives, so he’ll be at that one for sure.
Nicky would like to give special thanks to Advaliant, and especially his AM Geoff for being so awesome. After finding out about the airport drama the previous day with Cakes’ girlfriend, they offered to hook us up with whatever she needed in vegas, which was great. Thanks guys.
Keep it real.
Published by nickycakes //
Posted on February 12th, 2008 in Uncategorized
So first, a little back-story.
Nov 7, 2007 - Shoemoney posts about the Ringtones Bandit
You can see the post here: http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/11/17/flycell-ring-tones-adwords-domination/
Basically, this was the beginning of a months long campaign by some guy who figured out how to game adwords by getting the entire first page of google ads showing all his own nearly-identical ad copy. Shoemoney obviously bitter because it’s cutting into his ringtones biz, decides to try and shut it down by making a post about it to expose the guy (Fail. It’s still going on today.) The Ringtones Bandit at this point is using an Azoogle ads ringtones offer (Flycell), but no mention of Azoogle ads is made in the post.
Please note that shoemoney is “in bed” with azoogle. He regularly promotes them on his blog and is personal friends with the head guys over there. Also please note that this shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing for azoogle. They’re apparently a good company, and even though Nickycakes hasn’t personally promoted their offers, he knows people who do and love them.
Feb 4, 2008 - Shoemoney posts again about Ringtones Bandit
You can see the post here: http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/02/04/google-adwords-still-getting-owned/
Almost as soon as the Ringtones Bandit stopped using Azoogleads for his ringtones campaigns, Shoemoney posts again. Since his buddies were no longer personally affected if the Ringtones Bandit were to be stopped, he writes a much more biting attack. This time, rather than addressing the person responsible for making the campaigns, he goes after the network where the ringtones offer was being tracked, claiming that they are responsible for what is happening. Anyone who knows anything about affiliate marketing will tell you that this is some retarded BS since the affiliate network, in this case CPAempire, only acts as a middleman and doesn’t promote these offers themselves, in almost all cases.
When Nickycakes posted a comment on shoemoney’s post, saying almost exactly that, shoemoney replied saying that Nickycakes must be some kind of newb and that if he knew anything about the shoemoney blog, he’d know that shoemoney is most critical of Azoogleads out of all of the networks. WRONG…WRONG. A quick search of his blog will show exactly the opposite. In fact, the only time Azoogle is given even a hint of criticism is when Shoemoney posted about the $1mil settlement between Azoogle and Florida for ringtones scammyness in which Shoemoney made a full paragraph disclaimer about how he only felt compelled to post it because he promotes them so hard and they’re his friends and he doesn’t want to look bad.
Feb 5, 2008 - Jon from Wickedfire’s Epic Post
The post can be viewed here: http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/22584-john-chow-shoemoney-super-affiliate-mindest-camels.html
Ok, so in this post, Jon calls out Shoemoney, John Chow, Amit Mehta for being retards. There are some personal attacks that tend to dilute the quality of the post, but that’s how we roll on wickedfire. The bulk of the post is about Shoemoney, though, and sounds a lot like it was inspired by Shoemoney’s bash on CPAEmpire the day before. In the post, Jon calls out Shoemoney on the following points:
- Shoemoney is biased in what he posts, but tries to present himself as otherwise.
- Shoemoney lied about being wrongfully banned from DMOZ when in fact he was banned for trying to bribe them.
- Shoemoney mysteriously lost wickedfire’s referral revenue for Auctionads prior to selling it (over 100 referrals worth).
- He’s pretty much a giant crybaby for whining about being banned from Yahoo’s referral program for sending so many fraudulent links (says a lot about his readership).
- He’s the illegitimate love-child of Jared from Subway and Mr. Clean.
Feb 11, 2008 - Shoemoney, in desperate need of vagisil, takes it to the next level
News reaches the affiliate marketing wires that Shoemoney has actually sent a legal Cease and Desist letter to wickedfire. What a crybaby. Nickycakes is not sure of the specifics, but it sounds pretty retarded. The full story will develop in due time, at which point Nickycakes and his love for drama will inevitably post about it, so stay tuned
keep it real.
Published by nickycakes //
Posted on January 31st, 2008 in Uncategorized
If there’s one thing that’s for sure, it’s that Nickycakes has needed a new monitor for a long ass time. In fact, next month he was thinking about shelling out a few extra bucks for a new one. That was until last week when good buddy Yi Lu from http://www.findmeseo.com sent him a message about a 20″ flatscreen he was replacing.
Long story short, the thing came in the mail today from DHL complete with a metric fuckton of packing peanuts. So the Cakes threw it up side-by-side with his old 17 incher and is currently living in the new and exciting world of dual-monitor heaven.
The Nvidia card has decent support for dual monitors, however, to get things running right, you gotta install http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/. It adds a bunch of cool stuff like an extra taskbar for the secondary monitor and is workin’ pretty well.
Thanks for the hookup man, good lookin out. Keep it real.
Published by nickycakes //
Posted on January 18th, 2008 in Uncategorized
Here are a few sites that Nickycakes has found good information on recently. You should definitely check them out if you haven’t yet:
- Wickedfire Forums
If you haven’t signed up on this site, do so now. You will be hard pressed to find a better source for affiliate marketing and domaining information anywhere on the internet. Some of the ideas on this site will make you a thousandaire pretty quickly, and people are generally helpful unless you’re a complete retarded newb from digital point and act as such.
- Slightly Shady SEO
XMCP makes quality posts daily. Check him out, seriously.
- Smaxor’s Musings
Smaxor is the blackhat guide on Wickedfire Forums and, although he doesn’t post often on his blog, he knows his stuff better than almost anyone.
- UberAffiliate
Uberaffiliate was Nickycakes’ inspiration for getting into facebook ads, and has made a lot of good posts, although the quality has fallen off a bit lately. Hopefully he picks it up and starts posting the good stuff again.
- Earners Blog
While not exactly “hidden”, earnersblog’s latest link building guide series has been rad. The latest post on gaming wordpress mu for backlinks is a winner.
- BlackHatCrew
This is a new forum mostly geared to blackhat seo and adult web marketing. Poto is a good guy and there are a bunch of good ideas in the private section if you prove yourself not to be a retard and get access.
Anyone else have good reads to recommend?
Published by nickycakes //
