Kowabunga, I got the job

The word is out this afternoon. Shawn Collins broke the news at his Affiliate Tip blog and the forums are buzzing.

Last week, I accepted the position of Affiliate Network Director at Think Partnership, (AMEX:THK - News) in Clearwater. I'll be working with affiliates in the Kowabunga/Kolimbo and Primary Ads networks.

It's a hot company to work for right now and I'm very happy to be here.

The old resume taped to box of Dunkin Donuts trick

I found the perfect position in affiliate marketing here in the Clearwater, Fla. area this week and applied through Monster.com. I didn't hear back right away so I sent a message through the contact us page on their site. Then I sent a LinkedIn message to connect with the owner of the company.

And then it came to me. I had to shamelessly bribe them. So I delivered a box of a dozen glazed Dunkin Donuts to their office and taped my resume to the top. The CEO's Executive Asst. took the resume and thanked me for the donuts. She promised to hand deliver the resume to the boss.

Now I'm sitting back, waiting for the phone to ring.

How do you shop online?

As a blogger and an affiliate manager, I learned to maximize the two worlds and improve my online shopping habits. I'm a member of several affiliate programs, Linkshare, Commission Junction and Performics. So when I have a shopping need, I search for the right offers or join new programs to check out what they have.

Take Mother's Day for example, I checked the flower offers of several leading retailers about a week before. It was nice to receive an affiliate newsletter reminding me it was time to check the offers as well. I found what I wanted to buy, copied the html and pasted onto one of the side columns of my blog. Then I cleared my cookies, clicked on the link and purchased the flowers for my wife and mother. Wala...instant cash back and I took advantage of discounted rates, free shipping and free vases. Proflowers won by the way. I have no complaints about their products.

When it comes to pizza, I've also changed my habits. I don't scrounge through the coupon drawer looking for fresh pizza offers. I do it online now. Papa John's and Pizza Hut post coupons for your zip code online now. They are easy to find. And, for Papa John's, I can usually Google Papa John's coupons and find coupon codes from affiliates that I normally wouldn't be able to find. Then I plug in the code and order online. It's much easier than talking to a 17-year-old trying to take my complicated pizza order.

So do some research before you buy online. Use catalogs as reference material and try not to click on the sponsored ads if you already know what company you want to buy from. Use the natural search results and help them save some money....

New Design for Internet Marketing Gorilla Blog

I would like to thank Karen Rani for her fantastic work on my blog. Karen works for Swank Web Style, visit their site for more information.

If you visited my site before you noticed the old style Blogger template and a hodge podge of html code. Karen rebuilt the template and gave me a third column. She used the old gorilla image banner created by Brian Jones at Thompson & Co., whom I still owe lunch for the creative design.

Also, my new recruiter buddy Harry Joiner convinced me to purchase the domain InternetMarketingGorilla.com and use it as a permanent placeholder for this blog. Thanks for the tip Harry.