Zappos Acquired by Amazon!
Yep! It’s true! It’s a done deal. And what’s really amazing is that they are buying it for less than 1X revenue which is a really, really low (usually companies get 3X revenue at least). This is just another indication of the depressed M&A market.

According to the article at PCW, “Under the terms of an agreement announced Wednesday, Amazon will acquire all outstanding shares and assume all outstanding options of Zappos in exchange for approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock. Those Zappos shares are worth about $807 million. In addition, Amazon will give Zappos employees about $40 million in case and restricted stock.”

Google Slap for Product Review Sites
Dr. Glenn Livingston of Rocket Clicks, posting on the Perry Marshall.com website, says that he just “got word from several affiliate marketers that Google dropped the hammer today on affiliate review pages. Many pages went from quality scores of 10 —> 1 overnight.”

Scary Stuff : Google Banning Affiliate Left and Right
On his Super Affiliate Mindset blog, Amit Mehta says that one of his readers made an excellent point. He says “a LOT of affiliates are not only getting slapped recently, but flat out banned.” Amit goes on to point out that, “The fear of Google slaps and potential bans is what motivated me to diversify my business outside of PPC. (Ever wonder why affiliates claiming to make a $100k/day profit are launching info products?)” Amit makes many good points in this post, and it’s worth your time to read.

What You Need for Super Affiliate Status: July 2009 AC Magazine
Everybody is talking about the latest edition of the Affiliate Classroom Magazine. This issue is loaded with outstanding “super affiliate” articles by Mark Thompson, Katalin Torok, and David Long! Don’t miss this one.

Trade Show Strategy Overhaul: 6 Steps to 36% Larger Deal Size
There’s an interesting post on the Marketing Sherpa website. The writer says, “Event marketing is a prime target for budget cuts in a down economy, but some marketers have at least one big, annual show they just can’t skip” and then he goes on to tell you how you can get the most bang for the buck.