Great job on the video! Since your posts tend to be longer, and I don't always have a chance to get through them right away, video will really help me keep up with your blog.
Also, thanks for pointing out another great part of being self employed...the option to have a Guiness for breakfast. Mmmmmmm.
Broke the embargo? or heard from an insider?
Sam, you think Valleywag got a call from Ardis? I doubt it.
I don't know Jim, we'll see. I was going to mix some music in there. "Shipping up to Boston" by Dropkick Murphys, but it started to eat into my day too much. Baby steps.
James, thanks much. I've been watching these guys with their different techniques wondering what I could do. And actually, I've been thinking an video executive summary of my admittedly long posts might be a good thing.
Scott, it was a great first video. Nice work. The first time is always awkward, heh.
You need a jingle though. I just got one.
http://www.makemeajingle.com' href='http://www.makemeajingle.com">http://www.makemeajingle.com'>http://www.makemeajingle.com">http://www.makemeajingle.com
Jangro - not sure if this is a Google Reader thing or what.. but just wanted to let you know Sam tweeted this post 2 hours before it showed up in Reader for me. I've noticed that happens on my blog too. Not sure if there is a ping setting that can be adjusted, or if specific to Google Reader. Some blogs seem to update almost instantly, while others have a lag.
Thanks Jim.
Look at you acting all like you don't own http://makemeajingle.com" rel="nofollow">makemeajingle.com.
cough spammer cough ;)
© 2012 http://www.jangro.com/
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I'm a little torn up this morning about what's more important to talk about, the eBay and CJ news or that it is St. Patrick's Day. So let's combine.
eBay announced today that they are taking their U.S eBay and Half.com affiliate programs in house.
More details are available from eBay directly, but the short of it is that on April 1st, affiliates will be able to register for the in-house program with a goal of having the program migrated affiliate links by May 1st.
Yes, change out affiliate links.
A year and a half ago, eBay changed their links from standard CJ tracking links to their own "rover" tracking links on an eBay domain, specifically rover.ebay.com. The most obvious reason for this, or seemingly so, was that they could just cut CJ out of the mix once they had ownership over the tracking links. We've been waiting for this other shoe to drop for so long that it was all but forgotten. It's beyond me why they aren't leveraging this in the transition. Perhaps that was never the plan in the first place and it was always just about SEO as some others speculated.
I spoke to Dave Osman, Sr. Vice President of Operations at Commission Junction who told me that this has been in the works for a long time now, and has been factored into the public company's financial forecasts for quite some time. I'm sure CJ will be just fine.
eBay hasn't ended the relationship that they have with Valueclick and will continue to employ the services of the Medaiplex division.
From a purely selfish standpoint, I think this could be a good thing. First of all, I'm not a major eBay affiliate, so the fire drill doesn't affect me in any significant way. We'll have only a little bit of scrambling around to do.
eBay is the type of client that can essentially demand anything from a vendor. Custom requirements keep development teams from focusing on product improvements and are generally very disruptive. Hopefully this will allow the CJ product development team to focus more on non-ebay-specific requirements and innovate more in the way they should be.
Surprising news? Does this impact you?
I tried to have a story ready to be "First!" with the news, but it was scooped by ValleyWag last night, and my good friends Shawn Collins and Sam Harrelson were hovering over the submit button this morning. Be sure to read their takes on this as well.
And, you know what they say, if you can't be first, be better. Do they say that? I don't know. I do anyway.
So, I celebrate the occasion, and St. Patrick's Day with the inaugural video blog by yours truly.
OK, maybe not better. But different. It was fun for me anyway. A beer at 8am on Monday. Let me know what you think.
From the video: Shillelagh is the correct spelling of, well, "shil-lay-lee"