I’m cleaning, organizing, emptying out the inbox, dealing with things that I’ve put off for weeks. So, today is the day that I put everything out on the virtual blog curb and hope someone picks it up…

On yesterday’s Affiliate Thing podcast my co-host Shawn Collins and I talked about all the new podcasts that debuted this week. There’s The Jeff and Sam Talk about Marketing, Tech, TeH Internets and Other Stuff (Beta) Show (with Sam Harrelson and Jeff Doak) as well as Video Ninjas (with Jim Kukral and Steve Rosenthal). Very exciting stuff.

I love to shop and very often there are specific items I’m looking for, but just as often I like shopping just for the sake of shopping.

Although I have friends that do all of their shopping online, it’s just not an activity that I find all together enjoyable and it’s not for lack of trying. I feel like it’s bordering on blasphemy in this industry to admit this aloud.

For those of you that have not yet made the full-time leap into online marketing or affiliate marketing here’s an interesting piece on the pros and cons of working at home and for yourself. These are important factors to consider before making the jump.

I’ve been tagged by Sam Harrelson to share the Five Things I Learned Affiliate Summit. Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom started this meme.

For me this event was really about the people in the industry. So here’s what I learned:

If you stopped by the Revenue booth at the Affiliate Summit in Miami you know we were passing out advance copies of the Web Crawler column written by the Spider. We were giving the column to those who filled out a qualification card for a free subscription to the magazine.

The most common question asked of me is, “when are you going to write an article about my company/product/service/me?” I must have heard that inquiry at least 100 times during the recent Affiliate Summit in Miami.

My very frank answer is usually “never” since we don’t do stories on specific companies. Instead Revenue covers broad ranging industry issues and timely topics. This response usually is met with a look of shock – sometimes outrage – but mostly shock and disappointment.

There’s never a dull moment when it comes to which companies are merging, who’s acquiring who and speculation on who might be snapped up in the online marketing space.

This week kicks off with ValueClick agreeing to acquire comparison shopping site MeziMedia for $100 million in cash, plus earn out. The deal could be worth as much as $352 million in cash. ValueClick officials say they expect this acquisition “to add scale to its Comparison Shopping segment, enhance search engine optimization, marketing capabilities and to give a formal presence in China.”

Finally! I know, I know, I’ve been late in posting my photos from Affiliate Summit Miami 2007. Not too many made it after the threats of legal action and threatening to post reciprocal shots of me enjoying myself. Anyway, here’s the G rated version.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that our Senior Editor Eric Reyes was quoted in the Wall Street Journal talking about the book he co-wrote with his wife called “The Perfect Baby Name.”

Since then several media outlets have interviewed Eric. He was featured on NPR as well as a local Bay Area radio station. Now he’s moving on to the big time. On Friday, he and his wife, Whitney, will be on a segment on NBC’s Today Show. So, set your TiVo and check out our burgeoning Revenue celebrity.

Here’s a photo of Eric and I at the Revenue booth at Affiliate Summit - back when he had time for the little people (wink, wink). Congratulations, Eric.