Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost dropped me a note earlier today letting me know that the controversial company is changing its name to “IZEA”. The site is live now, check it out. From the press release I found live on the site…

Effective immediately, the company will operate under the parent name of IZEAâ„¢ Inc., incorporating consumer generated advertising network PayPerPost.com and other Web sites currently operating under the PayPerPost, Inc. umbrella.

So the question is… Why change names now? Some will argue that IZEA is simply trying to remove the often scolded brand of PayPerPost from the equation. Other companies have done this in the past, and it has worked. Accenture anyone?

But in reality, it appears to simply be a restructure, with a launch of a new product that Ted has been teasing to show me for months now yet failed to deliver. Murphy may be a marketing genius, but he’s a darn tease too.

The name change comes just days before the scheduled unveiling of IZEA’s highly anticipated new service, codenamed Argus. An alpha version of the offering will be revealed on Nov. 10 at PostieCon, the company’s annual user conference. It will provide both bloggers and advertisers more visibility into social media and allow them to interact with each other and the public in more immediate, transparent and accountable ways. Access to the alpha version will be by invitation only through the end of 2007.

Full disclosure: I’m speaking at Postiecon in a few weeks, the day after the Blogworldexpo show. See you all in Vegas.

I have to admit, besides Best of the Web, which I’ve known for years, I don’t, or have ever, researched blog directories. I’m looking for some feedback here. If you own, or know of a blog directory, of any size, please go ahead and post it here in the comments.

Affiliate guru Shawn Collins let me know today about a great opportunity to save some bucks while attending two great conferences. Check it out on the SMX blog.

Affiliate Summit is excited to announce an exclusive opportunity: a half-price pass to the Search Marketing Expo - SMX West search marketing conference.

Through the Affiliate Summit/SMX West partnership, any attendee who purchases a full conference registration for Affiliate Summit will receive half off their full conference registration at SMX West; and any attendee who purchases full conference registration for SMX West will receive a 50% discount on their full conference registration at Affiliate Summit.

These are two shows you don’t want to miss, and now, you don’t have an excuse not to. I suggest you take advantage of the offer as I will.

Also, in the same announcement, there is now an affiliate program for signups to the SMX show. Pays out nice too, worth a signup if you can push that traffic.

SMX West producer Third Door Media also announced the launch of the SMX West affiliate program. Through this program, bloggers, webmasters, online marketers and content producers will earn $100 for every click-through their site provides that results in a full conference registration. E-mail smxwest@searchmarketingexpo.com to receive instructions on joining the affiliate program.

It’s official. Google doesn’t want paid links that are followed. More at Techmeme.com.

I pondered last week if this was a TextLinkAds.com killer? I don’t think it will be because the guys at TLA are pretty smart and should figure out a way to rebound from this brand assassination they are getting right now.

What do you think?

Update: Joel in the comments points to this information about TLA today.

.. we have just uploaded changes to our marketplace that should significantly increase the privacy of your ad buys. We will no longer be revealing pictures or URLs to our users. We feel moving to a more private marketplace will prove more valuable to you the advertiser in the long term. This way your competitors, or other market players, will not have any access to which sites are selling text link ads. In addition to more privacy for your ad buys, we have advanced filtering that will allow you to find the ideal ad fast!

Does “closing” the open marketplace work?

Update #2: Shoemoney points out how easy it is to see who’s running TextLinkAds on their sites. Just do a Google search.

Yep, all you have to do is head on over to Ian’s blog to find out how you can attend the show on him by entering his contest.

If you are an internet marketer and have never attended an Affiliate Summit, you are missing out! Simply put, Affiliate Summit is the most attended and largest affiliate marketing event of the year. It’s where top affiliate and internet marketers go to learn from one another. More importantly, it’s also a place to make initial contact with business partners and to strengthen existing relationships. If you have attended a previous event, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Here is a fantastic opportunity for any affiliate to receive a free full pass to Affiliate Summit West 2008!

Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland interviews me after our photo shoot the other day about our upcoming trip to the Blog World Expo next week.

Click To Play

It’s finally ready for eyeballs. In case you are new to my blog, you’ve heard me talk about my new online system called ScratchBack.com for months and months. Well, it’s finally open and ready for you to try it. Register for free and give it a run.

You can see a live TopSpot widget in action on the left of this page under my logo. Go ahead and tip me $1.00 for a place in my top spots!

I’ll be blogging about SB mostly over at the ScratchBack blog, so rather than me writing a giant blog post about it here, I’d much rather let you listen to what others have been saying about it.

Here’s a video that Shawn Collins did about it. He’s running the TopSpot widget over at the Affiliate Tip blog.

Rumor, or truth, nobody is sure, but speculation is that the recent Google pagerank drops are a direct counter by Google to “decrease” relevance on sites that sell text links. If true, that is a DIRECT frontal-offensive move at the TextLinkAds business model.

The reasoning on this make sense for Google (see Darren’s comments below), but the problem is, for TLA, that their business model is built on passing “Google Juice”.

I can understand the text link penalties though - people buy text links so that they can increase their ranking in Google. People buy AdSense because they want traffic. Google don’t want their search results manipulated so they work against text links. I don’t like it any more than you do - but I can see their reasoning.

Right. So how can TLA survive in it’s current business model if the rumors are true?

Furthermore, would you buy a text link from them if they had a “nofollow” in it?

I like the guys at TLA, but personally, I never did like the model of “passing Google juice” for cash. It always seemed very gamey to me.

More talk at Searchengineland. Original story from Andy B. Much more at Techmeme.

I did a photo shoot the other day, pic below, to promote that myself and 3 other Cleveland bloggers are taking the trip out the Blog World Expo show in Las Vegas in November.

Represent Cleveland! Want to learn more about the blogging industry? Sign up for the free event here in Cleveland on Nov 1st.

From our press release…

Cleveland lights up Vegas

Four Cleveland-based social media experts invited to world’s largest blog convention
Bloggers host public event on November 1

Cleveland, Ohio, October 24, 2007 Four Cleveland-based bloggers and social networking gurus have been invited to present featured sessions at the world’s largest blog convention, BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas on November 8 & 9, 2007.

Representing Northeast Ohio at BlogWorld in Las Vegas are: Jim Kukral (left) of Ask The Blogger an expert in the field of internet marketing, George Nemeth (center) of Brewed Fresh Daily, the region’s top blog compiling hundreds of sites and user comments in the areas of economic development & coffee, Thomas Mulready (right) of Cool Cleveland, an influential weekly e-blast focusing on arts, tech, videos, and economic development, and Eric Olsen (not pictured) of Blog Critics, an online magazine featuring the work of thousands of writers, reaching millions of readers monthly with critical commentary on music, art, sci/tech, books, sports, gaming and pop culture.