Seth Turin is developer of the UBot automation software, which enables you to compile internet marketing processes, such as niche/keyword/offer research, campaign setup, optimization, into executable scripts (also known as “bots”). While bots are most commonly associated with the search engine indexing GoogleBot and the blackhat SEO’s bot spamming/bot networks, savvy marketers will find lots of uses to enhance their business through the process of automation.

I invited Seth to come on the podcast to share his insights on how technology can be used to expand business activity and ultimately increase sales and profits.

During the course of our conversation, Seth also talked about:

• How he got started in the industry, including early spamming efforts
• How you can use technology effectively and a strategy to plan out the process
• What types of tasks you should automate
• How UBot was developed and how it works
• Ideas for creating your own bots

Check out the podcast below:

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Links:

• Ubot on Twitter
• Ubot secret coupon page [Use code “wiaw199ubot” to give yourself a  $46 discount).

Held in conjunction with the Affiliate Summit West tradeshow/conference, the Pinnacle Awards (the public relations industry has its own Pinnacle Awards which tends to dominate the SERPs…), recognize the best and brightest in the affiliate industry.

Here are this year’s winners:

• Affiliate of the Year – Mike Allen
• Affiliate Manager of the Year – Angel Djambazov
• Exceptional Merchant – CelebrateExpress.com
• Affiliate Marketing Advocate – Melanie Seery
• Best Blogger – Scott Jangro
• Affiliate Marketing Legend – Kellie Stevens

Nominations are being taken and close today (November 30th, 2009).

As Affiliate Summit co-founder, Shawn Collins, has pointed out, these are nominations, not votes, so there’s no necessity to rotate proxies a couple of hundred times and vote yourself in. You might do better to schmooze the Affiliate Summit advisory board who will review and vote on the recipients. Having said that, if you’ve flamed, insulted and challenged some of them to a fight, you’re not likely to win either.

Having said that, I won’t repeat the criteria for the 6 categories, and instead give my personal choices for the nominees.

Blogger of the year: It’s a close fight between Justin Barr’s AffBuzz (though it’s technically a blog/RSS aggregator vs a true blog) and Barman’s PPC.bz. Both are sites I visit almost every day to follow developments in the industry.

PPC.bz has distinguished itself this year by breaking the news that reputed con man Dennis Yu has perpetuated himself as being a reformed “scammy offer” promoter to going white hat, then being shown as using his local business promotion service as a front for adult/dating websites.

The man fronting PPC.bz “Barman” has said he’ll shed his anonymity and go on stage to claim the award if he wins. Then again, he might pull a Lady Gaga and throw a garbage bag over himself and claim the award through arm slits in the bag.

Some other interesting posts on PPC.bz –

• How Zac Johnson scores prizes for his giveaways,
• How to score with affiliate managers at conferences

And from the Barman himself, why you should vote his blog for various awards.

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Affiliate Manager of the Year: The winners in this category tend to be in-house affiliate managers or outsourced program managers for Pay-Per-Sale affiliate programs. Going outside Continue reading →

New and sometimes experienced internet marketers almost seem to go out of their way to sabotage their own success by taking the easy way out, even if they should know better.

A case in point – just because a forum allows you to post any question you like, and just because social media allows you to beep, chirp, tweet and post you like doesn’t mean you can avoid the routine of going to one of the search engines and attempting to find the answer yourself.

Remember the days predating the internet (meaning those of us born in the 1970s, 1960s and earlier…), when finding the answer to a question meant trudging down to your local library (or maybe local bookstore) and looking up the answer in a book? Whatever happened to that?

A lot of the growth of “content” on the internet is fuelled by the redundant questions asked over and over again. I bet Internet content would slim down faster than a power acai shake if the majority of excessive duplicate content were pared away, and redirects were added to the top 10 results for any query.

But laziness is not just limited to finding information to run your business, it’s sad that researching niches and marketing offers is given the lazy treatment, even when it has a direct impact on your income and ultimately your lifestyle. It’s choices like these that make it seem like too many marketers are driving at the first gear towards their destination (or goal). The problem is you might not reach there in this lifetime.

Here are some of the best forms of lazy marketing I encounter (and lead to this post being written…)

Clueless marketing: You’re new and don’t know anything. You’re too lazy to see what others are doing, or to consult another affiliate, merchant or affiliate manager. So you come up with some pretty abysmal Continue reading →

The end may be in sight for Facebook Application developers with Facebook’s recent and ongoing clampdowns on incentive CPA offers embedded within Facebook applications (about 99% are entertainment or game related). And with this latest move, is Facebook shooting itself in the foot?

Since 2008 I’ve had a hand in helping Facebook developers monetize their applications. The most common of which was selling “game gold” (or game character avatars, outfits, castles) primarily using Paypal as a payment mechanism.

The other forms of FB application monetization involved adsense (typically with a sub-0.01% CTR rate) or CPM ads (about $0.50 CPM). So it was pretty tough making decent money from your FB app.

Enter CPA offer-driven ad networks like Social Media, OfferPal, Super Rewards and Gambit, which offered CPMs of $10-20. In some cases, depending on the offer, CPMs of $50 were not uncommon. Not surprising that these were driven by Continue reading →