We’re growing fast. If you’ve ever wanted to get in on the ground floor of an exciting startup, here’s your shot.

Here’s what we need. Are you a fit?

Analytical – You look at data as well as designs and pick out concrete, value-added changes and opportunities.

Adaptive – You respond to changes in priorities well and can bounce from task to task. You have no problem working between Growth, Sales, and Dev helping with tasks vs. having one large project to focus on.

Articulate – You can explain why. Designers substitute as copywriters pretty often, and mockup designs should have a natural, relevant language. Preferably you maintain a blog or contribute to content sites regularly.

Driven – Most things a designer will do at AppSumo will have compounding effects on the bottom line; you seek out that extra 1-2% and take it upon yourself to implement ideas.

Pride > Ego – You put full effort into small tasks and ensure it gets done right…but you aren’t “married” to your work. You’re willing to see a non-performing piece removed.

Your Skillz:

• Photoshop/Illustrator
• Speed
• Understanding of Grid Systems
• Errorless Work
• Consistency in Design
• Taste

You understand the concept that design is:
more problem solving, less “creating pretty things.”

“Okay…that’s totally me. But why AppSumo?”

You’ll get freedom. We don’t believe in the 9-5 thing (and business casual is NOT a term we throw around here). Our focus is on productivity and innovation. We get our work done, and enjoy doing it— ‘cause nobody’s micromanaging our time.

You’ll love going to work everyday. We have a sweet downtown office on Sixth Street (google it)…the best food, shops, and bars are within blocks.

You’ll grow, quickly. You’ll be working with the smartest people in Austin. Our team pushes each other to sharpen and do better. There’s no such thing as “bored” or “stagnant” here.

Oh, and you’ll get $50/month to spend on self-improvement (anything you want!) and access to ALL AppSumo bundles. Money!

Come join us. E-mail hireme+style at appsumo dot com with the subject Design Sumo. Answer this question: what inspires your design?

Who are we?
We are the best Web resource you may not have heard of yet, unless you’ve read the articles about us on TechCrunch, LifeHacker, Wired and other Internet-centric publications.

AppSumo.com was started because founder Noah Kagan (Facebook employee #30/Mint.com employee #4) wanted his next venture to do two things: 1) surround himself with smart people and 2) bring knowledge and learning to people who want it.

Enough about us, what about you?
You see a lot of correlation between problem solving and lion-taming. You look at a big problem and say, “Here kitty, kitty.”

You’re super nice. (This is important–you’ll be the point of contact for our awesome customers. You’ll communicate A LOT with Sumo-lings via email, chat, Twitter, Facebook and by phone.)

You don’t let things fall through the cracks. You follow up and solve issues as soon as you can–or offer an explanation as to why it’s taking you a while.

You make it happen. When you finish with a customer, they’ll want to Yelp a 5-star review about you.

Why AppSumo?
You get to learn a ton. You will get to see the ins and outs of how a small startup has grown to be the leader in e-commerce for entrepreneurs with nearly 700,000 members. You’ll get a lot of responsibility and be prepared if you ever want to venture out and do your own startup. If you are looking for “just a job” then this is not for you.
Improve. You get $50 a month to spend on however you want to improve yourself. Learn origami, pick up cooking or take a guitar class. Bonus: You get access to all of our AppSumo deals.
Be your own boss. No more checking in or having to be at the office at a certain time (though with a sweet office right on 6th Street, you’ll want to come in). Everyone here is treated like a grown up.
Unusual benefits. Work with really cool, really smart people. The team is handpicked for fun so there’s a high probability you’ll like your co-workers and be a part of something that people love.

Interested? Come join us. E-mail life@appsumo.com with the subject Support Sumo. In the body of the e-mail, tell me about the last time you made someone really happy.

Do any of these things sound familiar? The truth is, they happen, and they cause sleepless nights for PPC enthusiasts. At some point or another, every PPC specialist/coordinator/manager/director/VP will hear about one of these types of instances occurring. Whether you’re working on paid search in-house or at an agency, you will inevitably be a part of a launch/program in which something was missed, forgotten or overlooked.

With contributing factors such as client expectations, internal goals and quality score at risk, it’s imperative to mitigate any and all risk to the best of your ability regardless of what your role is within a search team. Often time’s mistakes are made due to lack of communication (PPC employees are notorious for living in their heads), process and understanding.  Implementing a disciplined “process” and having open lines of consistent communication isn’t always easy, however, it will teach best practices to a developing team and furthermore, may save you from losing an account down the road.

Below are the top 21 things to make sure you check off, and have sign off on before launching a campaign:

1. Goals – What is the purpose of the campaigns? Lead generation? Something else? If it is lead generation, are certain leads more valuable than others? If so, confirm cost per lead goals and make sure you’re starting with the end goal so that you can back into realistic cost per lead estimates.
2. Management – First of all, is this campaign manageable? As you’re building your campaign, at some point take a step back and make sure that you can manage the campaign. Maybe you’re testing too much at once, too many ad groups or keywords. Don’t impress stakeholders with the size of your campaign launch, impress them with results and then grow the campaign based on data. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with your campaign prior to launch, you can be 100% sure you’ll feel overwhelmed post launch and will have trouble truly getting comfortable in the driver’s seat.
3. Phone number – Is it on the website? Is it the same number on every page? Does it work when you call it? When you call, does the representative know what that the call is coming from a paid search campaign? Is the representative familiar with the website/messaging and properly prepared to handle an inquiry?
4. Form – Are all necessary fields present and accounted for? Are they all required? Does the form work properly? Does the form submit properly? Does the thank you page properly render?
5. Keyword approval – Are all keywords approved? Match types? Initial bids? Are all keywords in proper ad groups in appropriate campaigns?
6. Ads approval – Have all ads been approved? Display URL? Destination URL? Do the ads adhere to brand standards? Is DKI being used? Has Google approved the ads? Are there enough ads per ad group?
7. Landing page destination approval – Did you confirm the landing page for all keywords, ad groups and campaigns?
8. Bid strategy – Time of day? Day of week? Optimization timeline? Will you optimize each day, week every other week? CPA goal?
9. Ads – Have all ads been approved? Spell checked? Caps vs. no caps? DKI? Rotation?
10. Keyword destination URLs – Test them. A bunch of them. Make SURE your destination URLs are loading properly and are the correct URLs for your campaign.
11. Landing page (all browsers) – Test all landing pages and all functionality/links/forms/load time/videos…etc. Don’t forget to test in all browsers.
12. Conversion Tracking (form/phone) – How are you tracking phone calls? Clickpath? Mongoose Metrics? What about form fills? Google tracking code? Atlas? DoubleClick? Bid management tool? Are you just tracking cost per lead or can you see cost per qualified lead or cost per sale. The further down the funnel you can track your keywords the better. After all, keywords that are driving leads may not be driving quality leads and unless you can track all the way through you’ll be optimizing blind.
13. Analytics – If you don’t at least have Google analytics installed, hold off on your launch until you do. It takes just a minute to install and will provide actionable data for you when making
14. Keyword/Ad group/Campaign/Ad tracking – Make sure it’s working. Run test leads and do not launch your campaign until you can confirm your tracking is working 100% of the time.  There are few things worse than running a campaign without tracking.
15. Tracking expectations – Make sure all stakeholders involved understand the tracking capabilities clearly before launching. If you are can’t track keywords to sales, then say it EARLY and often so that it isn’t a surprise once the campaign is live. If you feel that you do not have sufficient tracking speak up before going live. It may not be what people want to hear, but it’s better to address the issue prior to launch rather than midway through a campaign.
16. Reporting expectations – When will reports be sent? Weekly? Bi-weekly? What will be included? Campaign/Ad Group/Keyword level data? Ad performance? Will data be sorted in your report by most efficient cost per lead or by spend? Make sure you confirm all the minute details so that you don’t waste time discussing how to report on a campaign when you could be spending your time optimizing.
17. Budget and billing – Confirm daily/weekly/monthly spend. Confirm who is responsible for billing.
18. Start date/End Date – Simple enough, so make sure you confirm.
19. Engine selection – Google? Bing/Yahoo? Business.com? SuperPages? Ask? Shopping.com? There are a lot of options, so be sure to confirm the benefits/risks of each before deciding where to run your campaign.
20. Channel/Device selection – Are your ads running on Google search? Partners? GDN? Tablets? Mobile? Hopefully, you’re breaking out your campaigns to have, for example, a mobile specific campaign or a GDN specific campaign.
21. Launch – Make sure you have an email that clearly gives you the green light. Once you’ve confirmed approval, go ahead and launch!

Well, that’s all folks. You may have more to add to this list, but you can be sure that checking off these items prior to launch will save you from potential disasters and ensure that your campaign launch goes smoothly. After all, there’s nothing worse than kicking off a new campaign and then finding out an hour later that you need to pause it. The most important part of a successful PPC launch is communication. It’s often helpful to have in person meetings to discuss any and all aspects of a PPC planning project and launch. While nobody loves another meeting, it’s always better to spend some time confirming logistics rather than spend time fixing a post launch problem.

Dan Slagen is Head of Paid Lead Generation at HubSpot, a marketing software company in Cambridge, MA. You can find him on Linkedin or follow him on Twitter @danslagen

Imagine: how would you feel working at a company that is becoming the Amazon.com of digital learning… and collaborating with an EARLY Facebook / Mint.com employee on building a successful startup?

That’s us <(AppSumo)> and we’re looking to bring on our next biz dev person.

We’ve found 2 key traits of a successful Biz Dev Sumo:

1. Reliability. Following through with partners and deadlines.
2. Attitude. Coming to problems with suggestions / solutions instead of just whining.

Most everything else can be taught… are you a fit?

So you’re at your next dinner party and some hot sexy person says, “tell me about yourself.” You’re…

o Flexible. Not Romanian gymnast flexible but enough that you can roll with changes that happen frequently at startups.

o Persistent. Ideally not as annoying as my Jewish mother who routinely checks-in still… I’m 30 years old!! You don’t let things slip and makes sure to follow up on all things. (Bonus points if you already use followup.cc.)

o Bored. Not challenged by your job? Are sales are a drag? Do you see all these crazy press releases about startups making money and want to get involved?

Why would you want to be a part of AppSumo? Good question!

Hans (who joined as our bizdev sumo) said this about working here:
“AppSumo is my Happy Place like from the movie Happy Gilmore. It’s basically Chuck-e-Cheese for adults.”
Okay, I wrote that quote:) Here’s what Hans actually said:
“It’s like working for yourself or with your best friends. You get to work on exciting stuff with cool people and have a lot of freedom.”

…He doesn’t even get paid to say that. (Sucker!)

Key perks of working for AppSumo:

1. Grow. You get to connect with top leaders like Eric Ries, Brad Feld and Dharmesh Shah. Learn advanced selling techniques that have helped us grow to over a million in revenue in less than a year and get the chance to make a name for yourself.

2. Freedom. Remember when you were a kid and had freedom? You got to explore, play and learn the things that excited you. That’s how we feel. We work from home but ideally are trying to hire more people in the great country of Austin (Texas). Note: Most of this article was written while in my boxers.

3. Metric decisions. You know that guy you worked with who said, “I feel we should do this?” We don’t do that. Yes, we have feelings, but almost all decisions are by objective facts (i.e. data).

4. Like A Boss.We have weekly check-ins where you say what you are going to do for the week. We have set goals that you decide and execute. (Watch this video).

5. Hustle. Everyday.

Bonus time! Books you may like if you work at AppSumo:

o Maverick by Semler

o Ultimate Sales Machine by Holmes

o Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey

If you are interested please send an email to life@appsumo.com with the subject SALES SUMO, pitching to Jason Fried from 37Signals why Basecamphq.com should be on AppSumo.

Ps. Great writing is one of the best indicators of how good you’ll be at sales.

Dan Slagen of HubSpot

Tell us about yourself in 280 characters.

I live in Boston, Massachusetts. Marketer by day, lover of staying athletic and being in the outdoors by night/weekends. I’ve benefitted as a marketer by working on both client and agency side, startups and corporations and am currently enjoying heading up paid lead generation on the HubSpot rocket ship.

What 3 web services or software can you not live without?

As I deal mostly with lead generation for HubSpot, I am usually in Gmail, Excel and Hubspot!

What services or software do you pay for?

A few that come to mind include HubSpot’s Lead Management Software (well, I don’t pay for it but I would), eMarketer Total Access, Compete and Hootsuite

Show us your dock!

What’s 1 service you love most people don’t know about?

Trello’s mobile app keeps me focused but I must mention Triple J’s radio app, which provides me with all the music I need to get through a day.

If our readers could solve any problem. What should they build for you?

I see a lot of students graduating school and entering the marketing world with little to no digital marketing knowledge. I would love to see more learning software programs developed for things like paid search, SEO, display, mobile, affiliate, email and video advertising.

How do you stay organized / productive?

While it isn’t easy, I find that staying dedicated to project plans, daily stand ups, media calendars and extremely open lines of communication helps the entire team stay focused, on task and most importantly on the same page.

Img from www.thesecretweapon.org

I know I’m 10 years late in “Getting Things Done”, and I’ve covered a little bit about it in the last post here, but I just found something that I absolutely must share with you.

I’ve started using this hybrid system of David Allen’s GTD method and incorporating it into Ever Note.  That’s right, I just found what I believe to be the ultimate system in ACTUALLY getting things done.

It’s all thanks to guys at Brain Toniq who created an entire manifesto on “The Secret Weapon”, from why you should use the GTD method and Ever Note, how it helps, step-by-step instructions in setting the entire thing up, and power tips to get the most out of it.

I’ve used the system for about a week and a half now and I’m absolutely amazed by how much better I feel.  It truly does give you “Controlled, optimized throughput, with “no task left behind.”

If you’re like me, and I’m sure I’m like most of you, you have thoughts shooting like crazy throughout the day.  Things you need to take care, phone calls to remember to make, getting that particular item you went to the grocery store for.  The thoughts will pop up in my head when I least expect them and I always tell myself that I’ll make a mental note of it and come back to it.  It’s not that hard to remember.

Then I completely forget about it until 2 weeks later!  Bah!

In a section of Getting Things Done, David talks about our minds like a computer’s RAM.  We’re constantly filling it up with thoughts, ideas, to-do’s, and we have a finite amount of memory capacity to remember it all.  Not only that but when you use up all your RAM, your performance begins to suffer.  The ideal way to focus and seriously get things done is to completely empty your mind to reach your sweet spot in focusing on tasks.

Well…Brain Toniq can say it more eloquently than I…

This collection of stuff — uncompleted to-dos banging around in our brain — are all “Open Loops” which cause very big problems. Not only do lots of things gets forgotten, but more importantly, these undone and unorganized to-dos remain in the finite amount of memory in our mind, creating a background, ongoing noise that makes us much less productive.

When you make the decision to use a system that gets *every* idea and action item and to-do out of your brain and into a workable system like the one we’re about to show you, then your mind becomes more freed up to focus 100% on the current task at hand. This seems like an incredibly simple and obvious idea, but once you experience the results of what Allen calls “mind like water,” it feels like nothing short of a revolution. And that’s what we feel TSW is — a revolution in living.

But the only way to do that is to get everything out of your mind as soon as possible into a trusted system to refer back to.

6 Steps Of The Secret Weapon

• Identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
• Get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
• Create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
• Put your stuff in the right place, consistently
• Do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
• Review weekly

The 5 Steps From Getting Things Done

We (1) collect things that command our attention;

(2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and

(3) organize the results, which we

(4) review as options for what we choose to

(5) do.
Allen, David (2002-12-31). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (p. 25). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Basically you set up a few notebooks in Ever Note.

• Action Pending
• Completed
• Cabinet

And create a list of tags to quickly categorize your to-do’s into an easily searchable and manageable system.

Context (Tags) To Add:

• .What
• .When
• .Where
• .Who
• .Active Projects
• .Inactive Projects
• !Daily
• 1-Now
• 2-Next
• 3-Soon
• 4-Later
• 5-Someday
• 6-Waiting
• @home
• @work
• @ town
• Read/Review

I won’t get into the details of the entire setup when you should actually view it here or download the PDF and go over it carefully to truly understand and appreciate what The Secret Weapon will do for you.

The Results

So even after using TSW (The Secret Weapon) for only a week and a half, I finally see and realize that I’m actually NOT as busy as I thought I was.  Yes there’s still the act of taking care of the kids (just had our third boy this month) which takes up a big portion of my day, but everything else that I thought I never had time for…I suddenly do.  And it’s not that I created more time to do these things (like write this post, get copy out for AppSumo, or read a few chapters at a time from the many books I’m reading), it’s that I was too distracted with what I THOUGHT I had to do and not creating a systematic approach to choosing what was important to do right now and what could wait for later.

It has made decision making a bit easier, remembering things (duh), and has put me into inbox zero bliss.  Any action items that I get through email, I just forward to my Ever Note account for safe keeping, archive the email, and come back to Ever Note to attach (process) context (tags) for it so I don’t have to actively try to remember to do it.

Anyways, I’ll stop rambling on about this awesome system and let you get to it on your own.

Try it out…like TODAY, and let me know how it goes for you.

If you have any other tips and tricks in utilizing Ever Note or getting things done, let us know in the comments below and be sure to thank the guys at Brain Toniq for this.

1-up for projects

Sometime we just need a good old pat on the back when we’re working.  It doesn’t seem evident most days when we’re doing our thing, making progress, churning output, but it can be a morale booster — not to mention productivity booster — to have things around your desk of past accomplishments.

Genghis Khan did it, Black Beard did it, and so should you.

I’m talking about the spoils of your efforts.  Some people like to hang their Diplomas, certifications, or have little trinkets from travel sitting on their desk and it acts as a reminder to where you’ve been and what you’ve done.  And that you can do it again.

The guys over at LiveDev.net have a great article on using completed task lists as motivators or artwork.

The Great Wall of Accomplishments

If you’re familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method, then you know it,

constantly states that during the GTD sweep, it’s imperative that we throw away our crusty old tasks, projects, and even contexts once they’re spent.

But the people at Behance have a different take on it…

Instead of tossing away your task lists that you’ve put blood, sweat and tears into, why not put them on display to motivate yourself into action on future projects?

Why not decorate your work space with completed action steps? While we tend to surround ourselves with art and imagery that serves to inspire us in our work, is it more inspiration that we need? Most creative professionals report that they are not short of ideas, but rather the discipline and organization to make them happen. For this reason, consider surrounding yourself with testaments to taking action.

I don’t have to tell you that there is a sense of pride of and a bit of an ego booster to have a wall of all things you’ve done and to show them off to your family and friends (just don’t let it infect you and be an a-hole), but maybe it’s time to start building a wall of completed tasks and projects for those times when you’re spent on mental energy to take your next action step.

What other ways have you used to push you forward or motivate yourself to drive on?

I’ve started to discipline myself by having a reminder written down on a sticky note that reads,

“When you feel like giving up, push through for another 10 minutes, THEN take a break.”

It doesn’t always work, but that’s what learning discipline is right?

The question came up randomly during a conversation on ad blocking within Google. My initial reaction was that an all paid search engine wouldn’t work in this day in age considering social media, 25% of people are even paying attention to paid search and the negative connotations that are generally associated with paid search. As a paid search extremist, however, I spent the night thinking about it.

Imagine a fully transparent site, in which all ads/listings were paid listings. A place where paid search is held to a higher standard by not only the search engine, but by the target audience as well. It’s no secret that a well-built paid search program is well received by users as well as profitable, the problem is that these campaigns are few and far between. The majority of campaigns are too aggressive and/or not forthcoming with users in conjunction with needs and expectations across the pre and post click experience.

At the moment, Google +1 is viewable across paid search ads, but there could be so much more. Take Yelp or Amazon style reviews into consideration in which customers could rate their experience.

Experience could be rated in a few different ways, including the post click experience and if what was promised in the ad was consistent on the landing page. Additionally, reviews could address whether or not the landing page, response mechanisms and overall customer experiences were enjoyable or not.

The compelling part about an all paid search engine would be that the highest quality companies would rise to the top while the chop shop style campaigns wouldn’t last based on negative ratings. It would be a place to hold paid search accountable and to the highest standard that it deserves.

Is it just a dream?

Share Content - Grow Your Audience

Content is king, content is king!  We hear this a lot (and if you haven’t then you probably don’t care).

The problem we face is actually finding and curating valuable content for our audience.

The nice thing about curating other peoples content is that finding valuable reads — in turn — gets your audience to start paying attention to your valuable content.  Win-win right?  Right.

I wish I had known about this earlier from Ian Lurie’s post Content Curation in 13 Minutes a Day (I should be paying more attention), but I’m able to share it with you now and I hope you can take this and get a little more optimization for yourself, in as little as an hour today, and 13 minutes each day afterwards to learn more about your users attention so that you’re not all over the place.

Lets Get Started

1. Get a Timely.is account.
2. Install the Timely bookmarklet in my favorite browser.
3. Sign up for Hootsuite
4. Set up Hootsuite to use your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
5. Sign up for Bit.ly Pro. You can use the free version, but Pro has slightly better analytics and lets me use a custom URL shortener domain.
6. Get set up with Google+
7. Set up Bit.ly in both Hootsuite and Timely.
8. Set up Google Reader.
9. Add my favorite blogs, news feeds and Google Alerts (I have a free ebook on using Reader as a monitoring tool here).

It should take you about 45 minutes (less if you already have some of these accounts setup) to go through these steps.  Simple right?

10 Minutes Every Morning

1. Review my Google Reader list.
2. If a headline looks interesting, I read the story.
3. If I think my audience will find it useful, I open the story in a separate browser window. The reason: You probably first read the post in Google Reader. You need to view the article on the publishing web site for the next step.

1. Click the Timely.is bookmarklet. You’ll see something like this:

2. Shorten the Tweet as much as you can, and add a comment of your own. You need to add some analysis/opinion/entertainment value:

3. Click ‘Add to Queue’.

Repeat this process until you’ve got 10 or so posts lined up for the day. Timely will spread them out through the entire day, sending them out at the best times. You can check your queue at any time on Timely.is:

3 Mintues Every Afternoon

Go to bit.ly and review how your tweets have done. If one really stands out—getting a lot of clicks and/or retweets—send it to LinkedIn and Facebook via Hootsuite. And repost them to Google+.

My thinking on this: Twitter is a place folks seem to expect a fairly steady stream of posts. In my testing, 10-15 tweets per day is very reasonable. On Facebook and LinkedIn, I usually see a steep decline in response after 2-3 posts. So I do most of my work on Twitter and push the stuff that gets a big response to my other accounts.

If you have more than one item suitable for Facebook/LinkedIn, schedule it using Hootsuite’s scheduling tool:

Side benefit: You learn the ebb and flow of user attention during the day. Then you can say stuff to clients like “Well, my testing shows that we get the best response at 11:15 AM on Tuesdays.” It makes you look very authoritative.

Yup, that’s all.  13 minutes a day.  I’m sure most of you can find 13 minutes a day to start curating content and growing your audience.

Try it out and let me know how it’s worked out for you in the comments below.

While you’re at it, check out Ian Lurie’s site Conversation Marketing for more great tactics on SEO, marketing, and When You Should Shut Up.

Jeremy Womack of Las Vegas Night Life Network

Jeremy is THE go-to source for Las Vegas Night Life info.  He runs the self named site, JeremyWomack.com alongside LasVegasNightlifeNetwork.com, and MyLasVegasEntertainment.com

Tell us about yourself in 280 characters.

I am a photographer based in Las Vegas with an interest in tech and the internet side of promotion. I added Social Media Consultant and Webmaster to my title, owning and operating several websites about Las Vegas.

What 3 web services or software can you not live without?

Facebook, Twitter, and ACDSee.

What services or software do you pay for?

I keep it simple and use GoDaddy.

Show us your dock!

What’s 1 service you love most people don’t know about?

I really like the Instagram services. I wish more people knew about it.

If our readers could solve any problem. What should they build for you?

You can build me an App, that integrates all the informational services I provide about Las Vegas in one convenient app.