It’s official!

Microsoft announced today that they have struck a deal to power Yahoo’s search, while at the same time Yahoo will be powering paid ads on Bing.com (Microsoft’s new search platform…formerly known as MSN).

You can get all the details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-29release.mspx

…and here:

http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/Default.aspx

So why is this good news for marketers?

It’s simple. With Yahoo and Microsoft now a team, Google finally has some competition in the search market. This means:

1. Ad costs may go down, and…
2. Google may stop being such enormous jerks to their advertisers (which could mean less “Google Slaps”)

Obviously this is just my speculation, and the deal doesn’t go final until 2010 so don’t expect anything to change overnight, but competition is (almost) always a good thing for consumers, so for now, at least, I’m chearing this deal.

Comment below and let me know what you think…

-Ryan

CLICK HERE To Register for the FREE TRAINING WEBINAR with Frank Kern:
“13 Ninja Mind Hacks That Make People Buy From You”

Watch the video below to see the 3 step filter that run all of my lead magnets through:

Get The Squeeze Page Template That I Use At:
http://www.googlefriendlylandingpages.com

On February 17th during the early morning hours our server literally died. It didn’t crash, the hardware actually ceased to function. As a result of the hardware failure our daily back up was corrupted and we lost everything. Fortunately the last backup pre-hardware failure on the 16th was successful.

Needless to say we have now upgraded to a server that has all the bells and whistles with backups, more backups and then more virtual backups.

Unfortunately, all the customer support tickets submitted between the 16th and yesterday around 3:00pm Eastern have been completely lost. I sincerely apologize if this has inconvenienced you in any way.

My team has literally been working around the clock to rectify the situation and get everyone taken care of. It has been all hands on deck since we figured out what happened.

Thankfully the majority of the tickets were answered but if you needed further assistance please re-submit to our new customer support system Zendesk, that we’re now using to ensure this does not happen again.

You can submit your questions here from now on:

support@drivingtraffic.zendesk.com

Thank you for your patience and level of professionalism in handling this situation. I consider myself to have some of the most savvy clients and consider myself very fortunate to work with you.

Thank you and please accept my sincerest apologies,

Ryan Deiss

P.S. For those of you who are contemplating housing your customer support system on your own server, Zendesk is a solution you may want to check out as well. Having scripts like our previous customer support ticket system can make life much more difficult.

Needless to say I’ve been researching this even before the death of our server, and Zendesk is a great online application that does not hinge on nothing ever going wrong with your own server.

To learn more about Zendesk you can check it our here (this is not an affiliate link):

http://www.zendesk.com

I  figure if you can head off any possible fires by learning from our experiences then this while very untimely and inconvenient was an educational exercise.

My buddy Ed Dale made a dramatic and controversial decision to “unfriend” all his Facebook friends and start over. Watch this video I made to get all the details, and let me know your opinion.

Read Ed’s post at: http://tubbynerd.com/2009/02/10/its-not-you-its-me-my-goodbye-to-facebook-friends/

I am re-opening the “Your First $1000″ program.

You can get more info by going to: http://www.YourFirst1000.com

Due to the “one-on-one” nature of this program, I’m only able to take 25. Because of this, the first one sold out in under 5 minutes and the waiting list has ballooned to over 2000 people.  And needless to say I’ve had a lot of requests to do it again.

So, starting THIS THURSDAY (January 29th) at 3:00pm eastern that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Again, you can get all the details by going here:

http://www.YourFirst1000.com

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment and I’ll do my best to respond between now and this Thursday.

-Ryan

P.S. There is also going to be a webinar this Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Time: 8:00 PM Central (9:00 Eastern). You can sign up for the webinar here:

http://www.yourfirst1000.com/theplan.html

Google is running one of their promotions where they give new advertisers $250 in ad credits. In other words, you can get $250 in free traffic just for signing up.

I’m sure there are all kinds of fine print and mumbo-jumbo, but I’ve utilized similar offers in the past and they’re legit. If it still seems too good to be true, though, you can CLICK HERE for the Google $250 offer details.

If you’re ready to dive in you can Redeem Your Google Coupon Here or just use the link below:

http://budurl.com/redeem

(And no, that’s not an affiliate link. The real link is long and ugly so I shortened it.)

WARNING: This offer is only available until January 31, 2008! If you’re looking to do some testing with a new product, affiliate offer or whatever here’s your chance to do it on Google’s dime. Take advantage of this while you can because it doesn’t happen very often.

Here’s my buddy Perry explaining how he makes money with social media.:)

If you’re ready to get in the game, follow me on Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/ryandeiss

…and follow Perry at:

http://www.twitter.com/perrybelcher

UPDATE: This video has received such rave revues that I’ve convinced Perry to do a free training webinar on the topic of “Winning At Social Media” on Thursday, December 18th at 8pm eastern.

To register for this free event, go to:

http://www.winningatsocialmedia.com/?page_id=3

The fact is, most business books kinda suck and would be better off as 15 - 20 page reports. Personality Not Included is definitely an exception…

The author, Rohit Bhargava, spends the first half of the book explaining the importance of incorporating personality in business. It’s good information, but without the Part 2 of the book it would be “just another business book”.

But in Part 2 he includes exercices and turnkey techniques you can use to actually put his information into action. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in an expensive home-study course!

My advice: Buy this book, read it, and implement the techniques in your own business.

It’ll probably be the best $15.61 investment you make all year…

Although I wasn’t personally named, anyone can tell that this post is about me and my Continuity Blueprint training program. Normally I don’t respond to these sorts of things, but I take offense when the word “LIES” gets thrown around.

Watch this video and judge for yourself…

NOTE: You can read the original post here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/23161-lies-about-continuity-membership-income.html

CLICK HERE to get the TRUTH about Continuity Blueprint…