Adam Jewell – Search & Affiliate Marketing

The summer is flying by and it is time to start thinking about WebmasterWorld PubCon Vegas 2009 already! Early registration for PubCon Vegas 2009 just opened today and if you register before July 30, 2009 you can get the full access pass for only $599.00 whereas if you wait to buy on site, it will cost $1,299 so book now and save a whopping $700.00!

It’s no secret Vegas is hurting. You can often do cartwheels down the Las Vegas strip in the traditionally busy evenings and not run into a soul. Combine the early registration discount with a town practically giving away hotel rooms (and probably show tickets and meal discounts) in an effort to get you to gamble and you can go to one of the best online marketing and social media conferences around on a shoestring, even if you can’t get company funding for it.

While you are there get discount Las Vegas show tickets at Tix4Tonight.com, go hit some great restaurants and maybe even try your hand at a hand of black jack or two. When you book your trip, the best deals can often be found on an Orbitz flight and hotel package. Make sure to look for Orbitz coupons as well. You can usually knock another $75 – $100 off your room and flight total with an Orbitz coupon. Get your bags packed and get ready to head out to Vegas for WebmasterWorld PubCon 2009, November 10-13, 2009!

After just a day of telemark skiing at the 2009 PSIA National Academy, I got hooked on it. It’s still skiing but a TOTALLY different set of movements and balance requirements than regular downhill (alpine) skiing.

The off-season is always the best time to buy anything. Buy shorts in September, leather jackets in April and buy your ski equipment when there is no snow on the ground!

A while back the K2 World Piste telemark skis showed up on TrackDock.com and I was able to claim a pair of those. Telemark boots must be in relatively short supply since it is still a rather niche sport so it was a bit harder to find those. It was impossible to find anything to try on locally. After searching and searching, I finally came across a company I never heard of before – MountainShop.net based out in Portland, Oregon. They have a simple site, doesn’t look like much effort has been put into promoting it and I managed to find it on page 10 or so of search results.

Since it was impossible to find any boots to try on locally, I emailed them and got a few very helpful responses and just ordered the Garmont Syner-G tele boots.

They were on clearance, ship free and can be returned if they don’t fit. They are the same ones I used out at the 2009 PSIA National Academy so they should, just can’t remember the size I used out there. Now that the boots are taken care of (hopefully) that just leaves the bindings which are much easier to come by.

Many thanks to Al at MountainShop.net for the help in picking boots! Here’s hoping they fit and we get tons of snow on which to use the tele gear this season!

Ever wonder when Google might develop new ad formats for the prime real estate on Google.com instead of innovating only on the content network? Google tends to tinker with things from time to time and for a while they’ve been playing with expandable AdWords ads at the top of the search results and down the side on the right. See for yourself in the screen shot below. It looks like a combination of old Froogle listings and AdWords. Unfortunately in the examples below, neither the standard ad or the products are relevant to the query but its just another Google experiement to collect some data.

Google Expandable SEARCH Ads