Early 6 AM view of the marina.
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California weather’s not so bad :) I got in this morning, breezed through immigration and checked in at an undisclosed hotel in the Marina del Rey area. The view of the marina is spectacular. Reminds me a lot of Manila bay and Subic. Just hope I don’t freeze to death when I head over to Las Vegas and NJ.
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Congratulations again to Jay-Arth A. Lorbes (groovy shirt man), seen here with Kristine del Villar, HR Manager for Lakeside Technologies, Isulong SEOPH and Ituloy Angsulong premium sponsor. For those who don’t know yet, we’re giving away six (6) iPods for those who are joining the Isulong SEOPH raffle contest.

It’s not too late to join. There are 5 more iPod Video (80 GB) units to be given away! If you didn’t join the first contest, you’re still qualified to join the raffle, as long as you have the required Lakeside SQL links up on your contest page.

It’ll be nearly two years since Google, Yahoo!, MSN and a host of blog CMS providers got together to launch the nofollow initiative to combat comment spam.

From a link building point of view, I’ve always wondered how nofollow treated mass link building efforts like the ones we bloggers experience firsthand everyday. If the big 3 search engines say the nofollow tag is a step in the right direction, why is comment spamming and all its whitehat/grayhat variants still considered a valid link building tactic by some.
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Here’s an actual case of a friend who lost her AdSense check worth P20,481.45 in the mail. Now I’ve read horror stories before of AdSense publishers losing their checks but what really struck me was that somebody actually succeeded in depositing and encashing this “lost” check.

My friend was generous enough to allow me to do a case study. So I’m publishing select email correspondence between her and Google (sanitized of course). Let’s start with Google’s reply to her initial email inquiry (I won’t publish that anymore).
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I have two advertiser campaigns running on CJ. I need help managing these campaigns (publisher retention/acquisition strategies, designing promotions, etc.). If you’ve handled the CJ Advertiser interface, I’d like to sit down and talk to you before I leave for PubCon next week!

Please leave your resume at marc-at-macalua-dot-com with Affiliate Marketer as subject.

If you know how to work your way around AdWords, adCenter and Y!SM, I need you to help me run some very high-end PPC campaigns. Maybe we can even take the Google Advertising Professional certification test together :P and if you know Atlas Search, consider yourself hired.

Please leave your resume at marc-at-macalua-dot-com with PPC Addict as subject.

Need someone who gets/does textbook SEO, can write with the best of them and has the marketing smarts to distinguish fluff from fact. I have the budget for paid directory submissions, the best SEO tools/resources money can buy and the willingness and patience to teach. Now how’s that for a pitch? :)

You can reach me through marc-at-macalua-dot-com, put SEO Apprentice in the subject line.

I’m looking for a Web Design Guru, one who let’s his/her PSDs do the talking. I have a very good package ready for the lucky candidate. Please send me sample URLs/studies at marc-at-macalua-dot-com with Web Design Guru as subject.

Know any Manila-based freelancers who can help design/implement a direct marketing campaign via email? I assume they’ll be with the big ad agencies out there. I have the email service provider (ESP) and the list, I need help designing a compelling offer and kick-ass creatives to go with it.

Appreciate it if you can email me contact details of interested people. You can reach me through marc-at-macalua-dot-com. Please write Direct Marketer in the email subject line.