Day 1 (Tuesday)

Tuesday was the first day of the conference. The line to register was INSANELY large, guys were standing there for over an hour just waiting to get their badge holder (the actual line for the badge itself was easily twice as long). I only got an exhibit hall pass so I showed up a little later on.

The first couple hours were just spent walking around catching up with all the people I talk to on the internet but never really hang out with in real life. I hung out at some network booths, met up with my friend and new business partner Jon Volk.

Had a couple meetings, checked out some booths, don’t want to bore you with that sort of stuff. At night it was time to roll to the PPC.bz party, which was wild. I got out of the cab in front of the club and there was affiliate rap battling going on. Enter inside and we have crazy people, girls dancing, and acai jello wrestling. I got front row seats next to my best friend Cakes and paid the price, jello splattered all over me.

After the party went back to Harrison’s suite and chilled with some cool people.

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Woke up a bit later on Wednesday :) and headed to the exhibit hall. Did the same thing, caught up with people, met up with friends, had lunch, blah blah.

Wednesday night was really cool. The night started at the Tracking 202 meetup/party. I liked this “venue” the best because there was a much higher concentration of just affiliates, and a lower concentration of ad agencies and boring corporate people. I actually got a chance to speak along with Volk, Dennis Yu, Ruck, and Larby. It was actually pretty fun. Afterwards we went to the Clickbooth party at some club. They had some Cirque du Soleil chicks performing a show, along with a show where some dude was eating fire. Pretty sweet stuff.

Day 3 (Thursday)

By now, the actual conference was over. I got up, then got some lunch with Volk, Nick, Dennis, Larby, and Wes.

Afterwards (I think, not sure when we actually did this), Larby, Dennis and I went to the San Fran Google office for their “Spring Training”. It was basically some boring presentation thing that was targeted more towards local advertisers. Since it didn’t really have anything to do with me, I ended up doodling and eating candy the whole time. They had a pretty sick kitchen with bulk candy dispensers.

Days 4-6

I stayed a full week in San Fran, so I was probably the last affiliate standing. I spent the last 3 days hanging out with some local friends like Wes from T202. I went to his house and hung out for a bit, and we actually did a 20 minute interview on becoming an advertiser (something I’ve just started). Once his video guy gets back from Australia, we’ll get that up. It was a pretty good interview I think.

Lessons Learned

You guys don’t care what I ate at the Cheesecake Factory (Kobe burger and piece of original cheesecake), so I tried to spend as little time as possible on that. What really matters is the things I took from the conference. What did I actually find out?

Going to events is powerful.
It’s the truth, every time I go I’m reminded of how good of a choice it was. For starters, in real life people say about 100x more than they would online. I’m victim to this myself. I’m a lot more lax about talking about where I get my traffic, what my pages are, things like that. Keep in mind these are with closer friends, but in general people talk more in real life. I learned a TON of information that I’m directly applying as we speak, and making more money as a result.

The event itself…not powerful.
To be honest, the actual ad:tech itself wasn’t that great. It’s the same as every other conference, a million affiliate networks all trying to get your traffic. “You should really look at our offers, blah blah”, that whole thing. Most of my time and about 99% of my productivity took place outside the actual conference center. Keep in mind when reading this though, I’d still 100% recommend going to these conferences. The free exhibit hall is enough of a pass for me though.

Take what you learn and apply it.
This is what I talked about when I briefly spoke at the Tracking202 thing. So many affiliates go to these conferences, talk to people, get all hyped up…and then get back home and they don’t act on it. Getting all pumped is great and all, but only if you actually put your new knowledge to use. I used to go to conferences and get psyched out of my mind and when I got back home, I just picked up where I left off. That’s not the way to do things. You have to learn all of this information and apply it right when you get home, or else the fire just burns out and soon you won’t even remember what you learned. I waited a few days too long to make this post and I’m already feeling like I’ve forgotten things.

The definition of “baller” just keeps going up and up.
Every conference I go to, I feel like the “super affiliate” category just gets bigger and bigger. At the first conference I went to 3 years ago (Affiliate Summit Miami), I thought 50k/month was ballin’. A year later, people thought I was ballin’ for doing 3,000 True leads a day. 15-20k/day revenue is laughable if you say “Yeah he’s one of the biggest affiliates out there.” I’ve heard of affiliates that have done over 20,000 sales on acai in ONE day. You figure he’s getting a nice $39 payout or something…that equates to almost $800,000 in sales…in ONE DAY. Ballin’.

I’m sure there’s more I learned, it’s just hard to remember when writing a big post like this. Alright here’s some pics I snapped :

Here’s the line to sign in at ad:tech.
 

The view from Harrison’s suite.
 

The view from my room.
 

Volk, Cakes, Me.
 

Jello wrestling time.
 

The PPC.bz party.
 

Alcatraz with Mike from Firelead.
 

Dude eating fire.
 

Google kitchen.
 

It’ll be my first conference in what feels like a while, but I’m pretty pumped to hang out with everybody. Who else is gonna be there?

Make sure to say hey if you see me, I’ll be walking around the exhibit hall and then I’ll be at whatever parties go on at night.

See you all there!

So what is the AAB? Basically they flew 15 of the “top affiliates” in the industry with various backgrounds to discuss current issues in affiliate marketing and what we want from affiliate networks. I say “top affiliates” because realistically most of the wealthiest affiliates like staying under the radar and not going to anything. Needless to say there were some very smart PPC guys and mailers there. They also kept saying “this isn’t about CX”, but I mean comeon…yeah it is. Anywho, here’s what happened :

We woke up the first day and started the roundtable discussion at 10am. We talked about what’s hot now, emerging trends, and raised ethical questions in affiliate marketing (that was a long and interesting discussion). A lot of people were very open in sharing how they do things and what sort of niches they run. I was pretty open in saying a lot of what I promote and how I promote it because it doesn’t really matter if people know. Anyways it was more fun than anything for me, I just liked getting out of the office and talking about the industry with a lot of cool and young people (the mailers there were the oldest and by far the wealthiest hah).

Then they took us all out to dinner (they sent my gf to the spa at the hotel -really nice hotel btw- for the day) and it was another good time. There were 2 long tables and everybody divided pretty comically – all the affiliates were at 1 table discussing business and strategies and all the CX managers/owners/staff were at the other long table. My girlfriend and I were at the CX table and basically just goofed off True Tier 1 Gay style the whole time. Afterwards they took us out to a club and most of us got our groove on pretty hard. There ended up being a battle between me and Raj between 1 handed pushups and straight levitation. Good times for sure.

Next day we had the advisory board thing again at 10am…everybody was there on time…except for me. I kinda slept in until noon and got there when it was halfway over haha. We talked about building the “perfect affiliate network” and what we liked/disliked about networks. Then we went out to another really nice dinner, goofed off some more, and then most people were worn out from the first night so there wasn’t much dancing. The restaurant turned into a club and we stayed there for a bit and my g/f and I went back to the room.

Saturday comes along and we get to sleep in until noon again, and it basically was a free day. I went out shopping with my AM Fraser and g/f and CX bought me a really nice overcoat………..oh sh@t I have an urge to talk like Amit!!!

CX Digital took me out and bought me an AMAZING designer overcoat. The total cost with tax was around $1,500 and it was the absolute best designer coat on the market. I would not have been able earn such expensive things if I wasn’t the superest of affiliates!

……..

Erm, anyways. So then we walked around the city with some other affiliates/CX people for a few hours before dinner. Then we went out to another nice dinner, and as everybody left for the club my girlfriend and I drove home because we had to be home on Sunday. So I just wanted to make this post saying thank you to CX for bringing us all in and I’m already en route to making money with one of the guys I met. Here’s a few pics from the time :

Night 1 dinner, me, Jen, and Fraser.

Night 1 dancing, Mike (CX affiliate manager) and I.

Night 3 dinner, a bunch of people.

Take note of the creep guy in the middle (that is NOT me).

First off I’d just like to say that the setup of Affiliate Summit is retarded. Don’t let in a MASSIVE portion of this industry because a couple advertisers want to serve booze at their booth? At least give me a wrist band or something so I can’t drink. I guess Shawn doesn’t care because they “sold out” anyways, although if he had any brains he would just rent out a bigger place, let everybody in, and make a shitload more. Oh well, “tightening up” on security was a fail anyways because I knew a bunch of “kids” under 21 that got in. I won’t comment on whether or not I got in ;).

Anywho, I spent most of my time hanging around the summit, going to lunches, dinners, and parties. Not actually going to any of the summit provided to be pretty useful, as I got to sleep in and relax a lot more. 99.95% of the speeches don’t include any actual good information that affiliates need to know or don’t know already, so I made better use of my time at lunch meetings and chilling on my laptop/working.

I got to meet up and go out with some UberCamp peeps and that was definitely a good time. I was peer pressured to buy a MacBook Air at some mall…it’s pretty sick though.

Boston is actually a very nice town, I enjoyed being there a lot. Miami was a better spot just because of the beach and it being different from most cities, but I would definitely visit Boston again.

As far as work and networking goes, things went great. I had a lot of great dinners, people are so much more willing to talk about what they’re doing in real life as opposed to over the internet, including myself. Anybody that I hung out with that asked me what niches I’m running, I pretty much told them.

Very solid week though, next time around Affiliate Summit West I’m going to make a private recon in the same city for those who either can’t get into affiliate summit, or don’t want to be bored out of their mind, and just give presentations of my own. That would be pretty cool.

Anyways, definitely stick around this blog for the next week…been working my ass off countless hours on something I think you’re all going to like.

Until then…peace.