The blogger’s best tool for affiliate marketing, 123Linkit, has just announced its acquisition by Netline, a B2B content syndication network. 123Linkit will be integrated into Netline’s suite of offerings.  Yasmine, 123Linkit’s founder, will help with the integration and join the team at Netline full-time.  123Linkit is providing additional revenue to tens of thousands of blogs and is the realization of Yasmine’s own desire to make affiliate marketing simpler and more scalable for bloggers of all types and sizes. This has definitely been a story of hard work and dedication to a vision that we are pleased to see come to fruition.

Yasmine at 123Linkit writes:

We have been working hard to help bloggers make money from what they are already doing since early 2010. We believe by seamlessly transforming product and brand keywords into money-making opportunities, we enable bloggers to effortlessly build passive income from their published content.

After integrating our software with tens of thousands of blogs, we believe now is the best time to expand our efforts with another team that shares our vision of enhancing the online advertising process. We’re excited to announce that we have been acquired by Netline and will be joining their RevResponse team to continue creating an enriching and unobtrusive advertising experience on the web.

What does this mean for you? Continue using our product as you normally would. Stay tuned for more improvements to your blogging monetization experience. For feedback or suggestions on how we can progress, do not hesitate to reach out to us at any time using our GetSatisfaction page. You can also email us your questions atyasmine[at]123linkit[dot]com.

About RevResponse: RevResponse is a B2B ad network that enables publishers to generate revenue with free business resources such as trade magazine subscriptions, whitepapers, eBooks and software trials.

Happy blogging,

Yasmine Mustafa
Founder & CEO

A few of weeks ago, Start Philly took the opportunity to check out Swarthmore College’s annual Lax Conference, entitled “Sailing in Any Wind: Risk and the Entrepreneur.” The agenda was an exciting one that included a plethora of round table discussions, panels, presentations and opportunities to network.  A surprisingly large turnout included a mix of current students, budding entrepreneurs, and founders/creators of successful start ups.

The conference opened up with a keynote speech by Peter Schwartz, Co-founder and Chairman of the Global Business Network, and a partner of The Monitor Group. The speech, both dynamic and engaging, encouraged entrepreneurs to look at risk in new ways. Mr. Schwartz asserted that entrepreneurs would have to learn how to “embrace failure” while noting that  one of our biggest cultural barriers is the idea of “instant success” which is becoming increasingly hard to achieve post-1990s. It was hard to feel discouraged as he maintained that future successful entrepreneurs would be those that had a willingness to persist.

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This post originally ran on Technically Philly. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a previously announced partnership.

Josh Kopelman is angry.

When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.

“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”

After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.

Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.

First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.

“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”

Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.

We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.

Read the rest here on Technically Philly.

If Max was happy to read about local companies expanding a few months ago, he must be absolutely overcome with joy now as myYearbook.com continues to grow rapidly, recently announcing that it reached 1 million updates per day and 1 billion page views, largely driven by its Chatter feature launched in November.  Chatter, which is basically a stream of content recently posted by other users on the network (and described as a “free, never-ending photo conversation”) works hand in hand with other features that have been introduced; like Rate Me and Ask Me, which are mildly self explanatory.

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When I originally started this column early this year, my idea was to spotlight women-owned startups. As a member of the National Association of Women Business Owners Philadelphia chapter I know there are plenty of women who are not only doing well, but are happy and even eager to mentor others. I thought this would be a great place to showcase their successes and inspire other entrepreneurs, women and men alike.

Yet, when I sent out emails looking for women to publicize their work, even marketing and public relations mavens, I received little response. I was surprised, to say the least, and after a few weeks of chasing, I gave up.

My column has languished since, even though I had also offered to write on media relations. I thought it would be better for me to spotlight others’ businesses because I wasn’t comfortable with labeling myself an “expert.”

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This post originally ran on Technically Philly. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a previously announced partnership.

Austin Lavin is excited.

During his phone conversation with Technically Philly we can nearly hear the 25-year-old smile through the phone. His excitement is well-founded.

Austin, along with his 19-year-old sister Celeste, just sold their first company: myfirstpaycheck.com.

The siblings founded the Ardmore-based Web site in 2007 when then-15-year-old Celeste Lavin began looking for her first job. The family noticed that, in an age where teenagers spend increasing amounts of time online, there were no career resources for teens.

The duo built a job board that also featured career resources for young people, a niche popular enough to attract the attention Phoenix-based Simple Employment Solutions.

We sat down with the Penn grad to ask him what it felt like to sell, his advice for others and when he will be buying his yacht.

Read the rest here.

(This guest post was written by Barry Hannan, start-up enthusiast)

Senator Dodd’s financial reform bill, which was created to impose heavier regulations on big banks and Wall Street, has now attached language that would bring entrepreneurism, innovation, and angel investing to a screeching halt.

For almost 2 decades Regulation D (Rule 506) has been the most effective and reliable avenue for start-ups to seek and acquire angel financing. The bill that has been presented before legislation will give the SEC power to delay or hold up funding based on their decision (if they get to it) before sending down to the state securities commissions, along with increasing financial expectations on “accredited investors”.

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