Planning on hitting the road this holiday weekend? You wont be alone, 28 million Americans plan to drive to their summer destinations, a 1.6 million-person increase from last year. With the nationwide average of gas decreasing $.10 per gallon and the average round trip airfare increasing 24% driving may not be a bad idea.

Auto Club AAA estimates families will spend an average of $809 on summer travel in 2010, compared to $876 in 2009. Most families are opting to stay close so they can avoid steep airline prices.

The Commerce Department stated that consumers spending was stagnant in April and it’s at its weakest level in seven months.

Many hotels and popular travel destinations are offering discounts on hotel rooms or special packages at amusement parks. The average hotel room is down slightly to $95 from $107 two years ago.

Until the job market improves people will continue to pinch pennies. What are your travel plans for summer 2010?

Believe it or not the increase in smartphones has also impacted the online gaming market. Emarketer is predicting the revenues for mobile gaming are going to see a 19% increase this year, versus last year. With the accessability of gaming sites and also the creation of mobile apps, many individuals AND application designers have made the move into this online industry. The free apps available to consumers will probably see more success, but the eventual move to more paid downloadable apps could see more joining the bandwagon (because there might be more perks with a paid application versus the free applications). So with more and more starting to utilize gaming sites, does this mean potential regulations of the industry like it is with casinos and such?

Looks like we all have yet another reason to get “addicted” to our phones!

Two words companies have been hearing more of in 2010. In February, the number of employees voluntarily quitting surpassed the number being fired or let-go for the first time since October 2008.

Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics starting tracking such data the average numbers of employees quitting their jobs per month has been about 2.7 million. In October 2008 this number dropped to 1.72 million but now that employees feel the recession is taking a turn for the better this number is steadily increasing. March 2009 showed 1.87 million employees voluntarily quitting their jobs.

Human-resource consultant Right Management conducted a poll at the end of 2009 asking workers if they intended to leave their job when the market got better, 60% said yes.

Experts say there are 2 reasons for this increase. First, the natural turnover of employees leaving to advance their careers by either finding a better position or furthering their education. Secondly, employees were reluctant to leave their current job during the recession, these hang-ups are disappearing.

The cost of turnover can cost up to half of an employees yearly salary after recruitment and training. Companies are trying to find better ways to retain current employees such as concierge services, discounted lunches and hiring bonus. But most employees are looking for less stress at work, improving work-life balance and creating more opportunities internal and externally.

For some employees it may be to late for these types of incentives. What would it take for you to remain at a job you were not happy with? Money? Promotion? Happiness?

Leadpile has recently launched it’s own Education portal! Inquire within to become a lead buyer or seller!

Twitter has made the decision to ban third-party advertisements on its site in an effort to keep control on the integrity and monetization of the site. According to PCWorld, Twitter is building a firewall that will block out the advertisments that tarnish the coherent “timeline”. As this change may help with the amount of “spam” you receive in your timeline, it also appears that Twitter would prefer to make money with its “Promoted Tweets platform” this change will restrict just anyone from posting their own advertisements.

Twitter has listed these 3 reasons as being behind this decision:

• Preserve Twitter’s unique user experience
• Focus on long-term monetization, rather than the short-term goals of third parties
• Ditch covering all costs of maintaining its network — third parties apparently shoulder little responsibility

Those who will be/will not be affected by this new change:

• Services that do not generate revenue, or do so without advertising (such as subscriptions), will not be affected.
• To pay, groups can establish a revenue split with Twitter or agree to license their data stream. Using Promoted Tweets is encouraged.

The fine details — such as minimum fees and revenue splits — have not been established and Twitter is likely to implement fees on a case-by-case basis.

LeadPile team members all have Twitter pages that can give you information regarding new or exciting offers before anyone else!

To follow us on Twitter:

LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/Leadpile

Mari Holt LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/mari_leadpile
Eugen Ilie LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/Eugen_LeadPile
Natasha Aronov LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/N_LeadPile

Spending on Internet advertising in the US should “almost completely recover” this year according to the IDC.

With Search and Mobile advertising seeing the largest growth.

Search revenue is expected to increase from 13.8 billion to 27.3 billion between 2009 and 2014. Mobile will see an astonishing growth of 220 million to 1.8 billion.

Currently Google holds a 64% share in the US search market with Yahoo at 18% and Microsoft at 12%. With Yahoo recently agreeing to outsource its search to Microsoft and Google’s proposed $750 million purchase of Admob it will be interesting to see how these big players affect online and offline advertising.

At one point or another we have all come across someone that is either loosing their home, lost their home, or on the verge of falling behind. We are all asking ourselves, at what point is this home crisis going to subside? It’s a scary thought to talk to someone who has been around a long time and to hear them state that this is the worst they have seen the economy in their lifetime. There seems to be no end in sight on when the economy is going to get better. NPR is stating that at least 10 percent of mortgage holders had missed at least one payment between January and March of this year, and 4.6% were in foreclosure. Hopefully, the second quarter of 2010 will prove to be a little more positive than this past quarter.

Is Facebook a friend or a fo? Recently there have been debates about the open privacy policy that the site has implemented. In Pakistan there have recently been public protests against Facebook due to content posted on a users page. The Pakistan government ordered Internet services to block Facebook recently over a user-posted page that promoted “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” – Islam’s Prophet Muhammad this act is prohibited by the religion and found offensive. According to Facebook, this page does not violate the site’s terms, but acknowledges that it may not be legal in some countries. Facebook’s terms and conditions make it hard to determine what is considered “hate speech” since the privacy has been adjusted and the profile information is no longer “private”.

Where do you think the line is crossed in free speech and hate speech? The first amendment leaves censorship to the province of the government, but also allows Facebook to govern what is posted. Knowing that your profile is no longer private, will this influence you to delete your information and no longer post?

Payday loan lenders are not going to be happy with the Wisconsin governor because of a recent bill he just passed. Unfortunately, this governor felt the need to pass a payday loan bill that will put tighter restrictions on the payday loan industry. In addition, he even threw something in the bill that is also going to put restrictions on the auto title loan industry too.
Each of these states putting more and more regulations on payday loans is going to leave consumers with no resources to help them. Where are consumers going to go now, in order to get help with small unexpected bills that come up?

In an effort to bring an advantage to Hotmail over Yahoo or Google Microsoft is completing upgrades to the free Web mail service , the changes expected to be available in July or August. According to the Associated Press, the upgrades will automatically sort incoming messages into different categories devoted to users’ key contacts and Internet social networks. It will also show a thumbnail preview of incoming photos or videos without having to open the attachment. The improvements are also going to make syncing Hotmail on mobile phones easier.

Currently Yahoo’s email service has 95 million U.S. users, Hotmail trails behind with 47 million and Gmail a close 3rd with 43 million.

If you have been losing sleep over the thought that your cell phone may give you brain-cancer, you may rest a little bit easier( although your not completely off the hook yet) as the research is so far inconclusive.

There have been questions regarding if using a cell phone for more than 30 minutes each day could increase the risks of developing these cancers due to the radiation. A 10-year survey of almost 13,000 participants found most cell phone use did not increase the risk of meningioma or glioma two forms of cancer. The authors of the research report have stated that further investigation is needed before they can with certainty conclude there is no link between cell phone radiation and brain cancer. Changes in uses of the mobile devices and many factors including handsfree devices and having the cell phones close while not making calls (pocket, or night stand next to bed) were not included in the study and still need to be examined.

The cell phone industry contributed almost a quarter of the $24 million required to fund the study.

For those of us who spend hours a day on our cell phones, we can take comfort in the fact that so far nothing has been proven to be harmful to our health, only to our wallets!

Are you up to date with the new offers and developments in the industry, especially from your competitors? If not, you will be missing out.

Your clients need an educated affiliate manager or salesperson to can guide them in becoming more successful. In this fast pace industry, it’s imperative to keep yourself up to date with the new offers and industry news.

Myself, being a Mac user and spending most on my time in Mail app, I found the following solution:

• Create your Google Alerts
• Create a feed for every keyword (example: Leadpile, Hydra Network, MediaWhiz, etc)
• Add each Feed to your Google Reader
• Group them in a Folder
• Add them to your preferred RSS reader – in my case, I have added a new RSS to my Mailboxes

Now I can get alerts on all the topics I am interested in, and they will show straight into my Inbox.

Do you have any recommendations as to what topics I should follow? Let me know!

In recent news there has been some attention on Craigslist and how safe is it to sell items online? Situations like the one that just happened in Washington is not something you hear a lot of, however it brings up a good question of when trying to sell items online, what is the best way to go about doing it safely? Experts are saying that people that are trying to sell online need to use common sense like you would in a situation of selling something offline. Use common sense with what information you are providing to the prospective buyers because you do not always know who you are dealing with.
This situation and others like it open up additional conversations about other social networking sites too, and what information you should be disclosing on sites such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Are people being to open about information about themselves that ultimately creates a potential issue with those that would abuse it?
What is the best way to potentially teach young children, and those that are not using common sense when visiting these sorts of sites or selling items online? If you think about it… would you really meet a stranger and then disclose your full personal information (including address, name etc)? I don’t think so. So why are people doing this on the internet? Kinda scary if you think about it…..