Patrick O’Keefe

This really isn’t my style. You have to push me pretty far to make me talk about this sort of thing in public, where I prefer to talk about it in private. But, I have had enough and people (from participants to sponsors) need to know about this.

Sports Legends Challenge is an upcoming poker tournament in the Bahamas. It is presented by Absolute Poker, and it has many noteworthy athletes attached to it, including Michael Strahan, Gale Sayers, Jerry West, Jim Brown, Ozzie Smith, Mike Ditka, Joe Namath, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Reggie Jackson, Julius Erving and more. Various professional poker players are also attached. I suspect that if they knew what I knew - some of them wouldn’t be.

I am so disgusted by what I have seen… I just can’t even describe it, so I am going to tell you what happened. I am going to leave out the real names of these people because I just don’t feel comfortable with that. But, I’d be happy to share those details with appropriate parties.

On May 28, I received an e-mail from someone with an e-mail address @sportslegendschallenge.com. We’ll call him Steve, so that this is easy to follow. Steve was asking if SportsForums.net was interested in affiliating with Sports Legends Challenge. Generally, we try not to associate closely with sites that have close ties to online gambling. So, I responded to him that same day, politely declining.

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On June 17, I reported that Amazon.com would be closing the Amazon Associates accounts for all North Carolina based affiliates due to what they called an “unconstitutional tax collection scheme” that was set to be enacted by the General Assembly of North Carolina. Well, they followed through.

This morning, I received an e-mail from Amazon.com informing me that my account has been closed as of June 26. They say that the tax scheme will be passed any day and will be signed by the governor. Because of uncertainties regarding the date the legislation will go into effect, Amazon says, they needed to take action.

If the change is repealed, the company would then be able to re-open the closed accounts. Once again, they provide links to both the General Assembly and the Performance Marketing Alliance for more information.

I went into my e-mail archive (I believe I have all of my e-mails dating back to August 2000) and the oldest e-mail I could find, from the Amazon Associates program, was on October 31, 2000 (it was a quarterly report). So, my account is, or was,  likely at least nine years old. That’s a long time!

For anyone affected by this, I’d recommend checking out Skimlinks (see my review). I feel for those that are being hit hard by this. Skimlinks could be a way to lessen the impact and allow you to continue to use the program. Best of luck.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Jackson has died. CNN has confirmed it.

As with so many others, he was definitely a part of my childhood. From time to time my parents joke about me doing “the Michael Jackson dance” when I was little. This basically meant I moved around in a sort of jittering fashion like a crazy person, resembling Jackson’s moves for maybe a second and by accident.

At EPCOT, I loved the Captain EO ride. I had the Michael Jackson sneakers from L.A. Gear (black with gold, metal circles). I was really young, so I didn’t really listen to or buy albums, but the big singles, especially “Beat It” and “Bad,” I loved. I didn’t end up buying any of his music until the past few years, which is when I got a little deeper into his older stuff and other tracks. I still need to go back and buy all his albums and I’ll do that one day.

So, today is a sad day. He was a tremendous talent, which goes without saying, and his accomplishments were immense. He inspired a generation of entertainers. He’ll be missed.

On June 12, the new “Must Be Love” music video by Cassie featuring Diddy premiered. I’m a bit fan of the record and the video has a really cool concept, as well. Check it out below.

I received an e-mail this morning from Amazon.com, informing me that they would soon be terminating all North Carolina affiliates (Amazon.com Associates) due to an “unconstitutional tax collection scheme” that the General Assembly of the North Carolina state legislature appears ready to put in place.

For now, all affiliates are still able to generate income from their links, but once the law is enacted it will go into effect immediately, and affiliate commissions will cease. Amazon.com says that could happen in the next two weeks.

The company says that they made their case to senators and representatives in Raleigh, including leadership in the Senate, House and both chambers’ finance committees. Apparently, Maryland, Minnesota and Tennessee had been considering “nearly identical schemes,” but decided against them. Amazon.com says this is because they had an “adverse impact on their states’ residents.”

The e-mail provides links to both the General Assembly and the Performance Marketing Alliance for more information and closes with Amazing pledging to keep North Carolina affiliates informed of the General Assembly’s further action.

I’m definitely disappointed by this, just because I am a fan of Amazon.com, a shareholder and I use their program. It’s a very, very small part of my business, so I’m not so concerned about that, though I wonder how this could affect similar programs and other means of revenue generation. Perhaps Amazon.com’s move is part of a chess match and it’ll all work out. I hope so.

If they don’t, a solution that I would suggest would be that, if you are affected by this, it would now be a good opportunity to take a look at Skimlinks, who I reviewed on ManagingCommunities.com. Since they are not located in North Carolina, they likely will be unaffected by this and will still be able to pay North Carolinians who link to Amazon.com. I’ve been using them for a while and I am pretty happy with their operation. So, if you are in North Carolina and this ends up being enacted, I’d give them a look.

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A few days ago, I mentioned that I would be attending Blog World Expo 2009 in Las Vegas from October 15-17. I’m happy to say that I’ve got a coupon code to share that will save you 20% off of the current rate. When purchasing through their site, use the coupon code IFROGGYVIP. Their rates increase on July 1 (though the coupon will still be good after that), so if you are thinking of coming, now would be the best time to buy the ticket for the least amount of money. I hope to see you there!

I’ve just added this blog to the NetworkedBlogs Facebook application, making it possible to receive notifications of new posts through Facebook. If you are a Facebook user, please consider a subscription.

Thank you for reading and for your support.

Last year, I attended Blog World Expo (in it’s second year) for the first time (see my recap) and participated in two panels: “How to Deal with Trolls, Spammers & Sock Puppets” and “Avoiding Disaster: How Not to Use Social Media.” It was a lot of fun and a great experience.

I’m happy to say that I’ll be back at this year’s edition, which runs from October 15-17 in Las Vegas. I’m on four panel proposals, so I am hoping to speak, as well as do another book signing this year, if they’ll have me. I’m working with them to promote the conference on the iFroggy Network. Here are the panel proposals that I’m on:

• “Social Media: What’s Not to Like” with Amber Naslund, Wayne Sutton and Robert Scoble
• “”Shameless Self Promotion” Without Looking Like an @#$%^&!” with Brandon Eley, Twanna Hines and Darren Rowse
• “Saving Newspapers Through Community” with Julia Thompson, Nathan T. Wright and Jason Falls
• “Preventing Copyright Infringement on Your Blog and Community” with Jonathan Bailey (and two panelists, to be determined)

So, we’ll see if any of them get accepted, but it’ll be a fun event no matter what happens! On July 1, pricing will go up, so if you are interested in coming, now might be a good time to take a look. Hope to see you there.

I really like Fabolous’ new song, “My Time” featuring Jeremih. The video is cool, as well, featuring an epilogue with Ryan Leslie, who I’m a huge fan of, as well. Check it out below.

SitePoint has a new book out called “Online Marketing Inside Out” and it’s special to me for a few reasons. First, it’s co-authored by my good friend Brandon Eley, who I’ve known for like 7 of 8 years. The other co-author is Shayne Tilley, who I have talked to many times and like a lot, as well. I’m really happy for them and want it to do exceptionally well for them - I’m sure it will. Finally, I contributed to the book, working as an expert reviewer on a pair of chapters. This marks the seventh book I’ve contributed to in one way or another. My friend Ted Sindzinski served as an expert reviewer, as well.

All of that said, I’ve had an opportunity to read a good portion of it and scan various other aspects of it and it’s a great book, highly valuable to anyone looking to grow their online marketing knowledge. Not just that, but the book is also useful for rounding out and broadening online marketing experience you may already have. For example, you may be well versed in social media - but not in e-mail marketing. Or you may be an expert on e-mail marketing, but know nothing about landing pages. The book will help you to become more well rounded when it comes to online marketing.

All in all, if you have any interest in online marketing at all, I’d pick it up. You can pre-order a print copy on Amazon.com (I imagine it’ll be shipping soon enough) for $19.77 or you can  buy it directly from SitePoint for $29.95 plus shipping ($4.95 in the U.S., $6.95 in Canada and $9.95 to Australia, France and the U.K. and many other countries) and get a free eBook by the awesome Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. The eBook alone is selling for $19.95, so that sounds like a good deal to me.

You can also take advantage of the bundle deal if you purchase an eBook copy of “Online Marketing Inside Out,” which will run you $29.95, but will not cost any shipping. (You can get both the eBook and the print book for $39.90 at SitePoint, plus shipping of the print copy).