Mixergy is Andrew Warner's interview site where founders explain how they built companies like Digg, Reddit, and 99designs.
HN commenters recommend Andrew Warner's interviews as a source on startups and marketing, and one notes he once interviewed HN's edw519 and rms.
1) "Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer" (A/B Testing)
2) Aaron Wall's SEO Book - excellent primer for internet marketing and SEO - theory but with practice applied
3) The original Backrub/Pagerank paper
> probably with more emphasis on theory
Are you doing research for school? I know you asked for theory but you did say 'fundamental'. Just to throw it out there, fundamentally, I believe the independent people (not large companies - that is different) making more money than we'd like to know through Internet marketing don't think in terms of theory - theory is easy - they try and try many different ways until something works. For example, Shoemoney:
"So with this Cornhusker quiz, it’s a needed service because all these guys want to see where they are. It spreads virally, because they want to challenge their friends and see if they could do better than their friends. And the way to make money is, when they finish, if they score high enough, they’re presented with a free trial to Netflix. [with his referral ID of course]"
http://blog.mixergy.com/shoemoney-ads/
Here is another take on targeting a narrow niche from an interview by Andrew Warner (also about selling to bird lovers - an interesting coincidence):
"When Bob Dunlap of ClickBank told me that one of his clients made $500,000 last year selling an ebook about how to attract humming birds to your home, I had to interview him."
http://blog.mixergy.com/sell-ebooks/
The article for that post pretty much outlines exactly what parrotsecrets.com has done.
Important part of business like this is the role of affiliate marketing in driving traffic to these sites.
Affiliate costs (that can be very substantial) should be factored into how much these sites make.
A web developer does not outsource his pet project to someone else to code. He did not do any development on his projects. I've heard him talk about coding and he openly admits that he's been out of it for so long that he is no longer qualified on the subject.
About Digg's original code: http://blog.mixergy.com/pr-lies-destroy-your-understanding-of-how-business-really-works-owen-byrne-digg/
Here's an interview I did about how I got into the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc:
http://blog.mixergy.com/wsj-press/
I also wrote more about getting press for blogs/companies here:
http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/getting-traffic-for-your-blog/
Btw, I now write for Lifehacker occasionally, so if you ever have interesting startups, send me an email.
I second the stanford podcasts,
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/
http://videolectures.net/
www.ted.com
http://omnisio.com/startupschool08
http://blog.mixergy.com/
http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2008/london/content
all have interesting videos. id advise just going to www.google.com/videos and searching for those particular people if your interested in them.
Thank you, wallflower.
A few years ago, I did a Mixergy interview along with rms about Hacker News:
http://blog.mixergy.com/why-communities/
Andrew, if you're reading this, I would love to do another, not about my past projects, but about my next one. Stay tuned...
we could all learn from his b2b success
Hmmm, sounds like an idea for another ebook....