Ten years ago, Jaime lived outside Managua, Nicaragua, worked in a shoe factory and took college classes. The then-35-year-old did not own a car and shared a house, a TV and a stereo with his parents, along with his brother and sister- in-law. Both Jaime and his brother helped his parents pay the rent, and the rest of Jaime's paycheck went toward saving for a move to the United States.

Tell a friend: Word of mouth rocks. It's how many people find a dentist, a plumber, a pediatrician and a realtor, even a shrink. You tend to trust your friends. So when one of your close pals swears by her hairstylist, raving about what a "shear" delight he is, you are apt to give him a shot rather than thumbing through the phone book and blindly calling random barbers. Then you'll tell your friends. "

Small wonder this type of hype is highly coveted.

Until now online shopping has been a lonely endeavor. Think Sandra Bullock in "The Net," the 1995 film where she works from home, orders everything online and has few friends outside of cyberspace. Even 10 years later most people still shop online alone, sneaking it in during work hours or squeezing it in after everyone's in bed.

Website publishers are up in arms about the potential threat posed by employees at companies, who have access to their crucial data that could be used to compete with them.

Insiders have nicknamed the situation "Triple Jangro," after the catchy title of a blog post on Revenews.com by David Lewis, CEO of 77Blue. The title refers to ex-BeFree/Commission Junction product manager Scott Jangro, who left the affiliate network several months ago to become a full-time affiliate.

In early February, just six months after LinkShare agreed to be acquired by Japan-based e-commerce portal giant Rakuten for $425 million, the founders of the affiliate network have decided to step aside.

The resignations of Chairman and CEO Stephen Messer and President and COO Heidi Messer, who founded LinkShare in 1996, were not surprising according to industry watchers, but definitely signaled changing times in the performance marketing and affiliate marketing space.

It's not easy to combine all those passions but Marangu has managed to strike a good balance.

Marangu is the co-founder of Mall Networks, an affiliate that builds shopping portals tailor-made for affinity organizations such as school districts, charities, sports teams and consumer associations.

Noah Elkin is the director of industry relations at iCrossing, which was recently named Best Search Agency of 2005 by industry trade publication OMMA. iCrossing, started more than nine years ago in Scottsdale, Ariz., is jumping into new arenas, such as the mobile search market, and expanding client services to include content creation and website design.

Microsoft was late in recognizing the profit potential of online search. Meanwhile, upstart Google surpassed older search sites such as AltaVista, America Online and Yahoo to become the clear leader in search and, therefore, online advertising revenue.

Now that you've set up your search engine marketing campaign and it's chugging along nicely, how do you take things to the next level? You've picked out some good keywords, written some good copy and you're getting a reasonable ROI, but every time you look at your pay-per-click campaigns, you just know there's more that you could be doing to maximize your investment. And you know what? You're right.

While reviewing newbie sites, my heart sinks as I see the world's zillionth "How to Start a Successful Online Business" site. The aspiring netpreneur, whom I'll call Bob, has obviously sweat great drops of blood to build his first site, yet he hasn't seen a dime of revenue.

If only I could talk to him...

"So, what made you choose Internet and affiliate marketing as the topic for your first site, Bob?"