A long time ago I discovered this fundamental rule of the net — People come back to places that send them away. Places like Google, Yahoo, Craigslist, Youtube, even Twitter. These are the mainstays. You go there to get somewhere else. Sites that try to suck you in and hold you there, no matter how cleverly, go away. While it may seem like a good approach at first, long-term it’s a losing strategy. ~Dave Winer

I spent most of last week in NYC for Affiliate Summit East and in D.C. for HostingCon. I attended a few sessions and saw what I consider the good the bad and the ugly of presenting. In fact, I took some notes on the different presentation styles so I thought I'd share some tips on how not to suck at presenting: Don't brag about your hangover- yes, many people drink heavily at conferences but when speakers consistently talk about how hungover they are from the night before, it makes me feel like they aren't serious about their responsibility to impart wisdom. Be...

The only session I ended up attending at Affiliate Summit East was the Facebook advertising panel that Dennis spoke on with Alex Schultz, Zac Johnson and Shoemoney.  I thought the panel went well overall but they essentially covered most of the same topics from other Facebook advertising panels I've seen or read. Here's a few takeaways: Use Facebook's demographic reports- see who is clicking on your ads, target them, then take it a step further by using different ads with subids to look at who is converting. Create "new" accounts for demographic research-...

I just read on TechCrunch (through my Facebook feed) about Google connecting its Local Business Center with AdWords to form local ads. This new feature is called Location Extensions and is available to select advertisers today but will be rolling out in the next few weeks. Local businesses can now attach a physical address with their AdWords ads that will be shown dynamically depending on the location of the searcher. If Google is unable to determine a searcher's location or if there are no relevant addresses to show, they'll simply show your ad without an...