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Well, another Affiliate Summit has come, and just as quickly as it came it’s now gone. It really flew by (well the two and a half days I was there), they were days of 2 hours sleep and 2 meals. No food + no sleep + craziness all day = craziness. Anyways, I’m going to talk a bunch about how the event was, what I learned, things I did, opinions I have, etc. I also have a few pictures that I’ll be posting up for you guys to see.

The first thing I want to say is that it was AWESOME to see all the UberFans that were there. I got a chance to chit chat with so many of you, and you were all names I recognized from either blog comments or emails. It was really fun getting to meet you guys and just makes it more motivational for me to blog more. Now let’s talk about the summit…

Night 1

Well as you know I wasn’t there for the first day (Sunday), but I did get in Sunday night and I went straight to the CX Digital party. I’ll let you all know…it was a sick party and I’m pissed I wasn’t there for the whole thing. Here’s a pic of a group of us just hanging out :

After the party some of us went back to the Rio and I so sadly enough had to watch my friends all gamble (which I couldn’t because of my age). Lucky I’m legal in Canada so I’ll be going up there this weekend for sure to get my gambling craving out of me.

Day 2

Day two was my first official day at the summit. I woke up nice and early (after sleeping for 2 hours) to go to the keynote speech. Don’t get me wrong – I love Affiliate Summit it’s my favorite event and it’s great, but I never like going to any of the sessions. I walked in and the keynote speaker was Jason Calacanis. The first 30 minutes or however long it was, he basically just talked about how affiliate spamming is bad and we all shouldn’t do it. If someone is going to spam, a keynote speech isn’t going to change their mind. I’m not saying I spam, which made it more boring for me because I don’t even spam Squidoo or do malware of any of that. He was a funny guy and I laughed a few times, and maybe he talked about more, but I was in the expo hall by then.

The expo hall was cool, my managers from CX Digital, Copeac, and CPA Empire were all there so I got a chance to talk to them. CX Digital had my vote for the best booth, it was the tallest, coolest, and right smack dab in the middle. So I walked around a little and just socialized with some chaps, and then had a lunch meeting. Came back from that and floated around the expo hall some more, and then headed back to my room to hop on my laptop for a little and relax before the coming night. Nighttime came and first I stopped by a private party that Copeac was having at the Palms. There was an amazing view of the city and I just relaxed and talked to Mike and some of the Wickedfire guys. After that we headed to Affiliate Bash, where Blue Man Group was performing. Here’s where the night just kind of tanked down. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to even get into the bash because I’m only 19…I tried a few different ways and none of them worked. So I went back to the Rio and ordered some room service because I was starving, hopped on my laptop a bit and then met up with some people down at the casino. I heard Affiliate Bash was crowded and BMG only played for like 10 minutes, so it was all good I guess.

Day 3

Now the final day of the Summit had come. I woke up early to hit the expo hall up a little more and meet with some people. Then came the only session that I actually wanted to go through and sit through all of it. It was the Super Affiliate panel with John Chow, Zac Johnson, Amit Mehta, and moderated by Kris Jones. Given the fact that these were all highly popular affiliates, I thought it would for sure be interesting…and it was. Since most of these guys are followed religiously and people take every word they say as a fact, I’ll break down each speaker and how I thought they did.

Kris Jones – Kris was the moderator so he mainly was kind of just asking the other affiliates questions to start some conversations, but he did some answering of his own. I know him personally and he’s a really cool guy and definitely knows what he’s doing in this industry. He’s a great public speaker and can connect with the audience and I thought did a great job as the moderator.

John Chow – John Chow is who he is, and I thought he did a decent job on the panel. I don’t really think people think he’s some PPC Super Affiliate, his specialties seemed to be content sites and then blogging. He didn’t give any PPC advice and he tried to relate some of his experiences to the questions about PPC arbitrage (which was the most talked about topic). Which I thought was a good thing, because he wasn’t trying to be something he’s not. Do I think he would be better on a BlogWorld panel than an affiliate marketing one? Yeah. Did he do a bad job? I don’t think so.

Amit Mehta – Amit definitely whored the mic the most, but that was because 90% of the questions had to do with PPC or landing pages, and none of the panelists could really attempt to give a solid answer except Amit. I kind of disagreed with some of the stuff he said and thought he fluffed up some things and made them sound easier than they really are, but I do think he’s a good public speaker and is good at communicating with his crowd. He was outgoing and wanted to answer all of the questions, and I think he satisfied most people with this answers.

Zac Johnson – The last one on the panel was Zac Johnson, and this is where I was mostly confused. Dating a while ago back when I started checking out his blog, I always had the impression that he was a PPC super affiliate and that’s where he made his cash. His most famous post is even titled “The Super Affiliate’s Guide to PPC Marketing”. So I found it a little surprising when he said this (it is an exact quote) :

“I don’t really thrive in the pay per click marketing area.”

I was just kind of like…huh? If you admit you don’t thrive in PPC marketing, why are you a self-proclaimed PPC Super Affiliate? At least that’s the impression I got when somebody writes a post by themself saying “The Super Affiliate’s Guide…” Not to roast the guy because I haven’t even personally met him, but he didn’t do a good job on the panel. He kept freezing up when making his introduction and there were moments with just 30 seconds of silence. Then he just kind of talked about his big Myspace site (where the check he posted came from 2 years ago) and that was pretty much it. I don’t really remember him answering any other questions except for when he said the quote I posted above.

That was the main event for me at the Summit, and although I didn’t learn anything new, it was interesting.

After that it was more time at the expo hall just hanging around and talking to blog readers. I did an interview with Wes from Tracking202 along with another interview with me and the guys from AffSpy. I’m personally really good friends with all the AffSpy guys and they had a great conference. The meet market went great, affiliates were interested, networks were interested, and they won the AS Road Rally and got a free booth in Boston this summer. Here’s a pic of us with Kris from Pepperjam :

I went with some people to the casino again, then headed back to the room to get ready for a big dinner.

Dinner plans were with a bunch of guys, including John Chow, Zac Johnson, Mark from 45n5.com, Ian Fernando, Andrew Wee, Greg from BCMBlog.com, my friends at AffSpy, and others. We went out and had some BBQ and it was really good, there were so many of us we needed two big tables. Here’s a shot of most of us with our stomachs nice and full :

And here is an exclusive photo taken from my phone. It’s a picture of John Chow taking one of his famous meal pictures. Wow I should sell it on eBay.

That pretty much concluded my ASW. I headed up to my room and then grabbed a limo to the airport. I flew allllll night long, my flight left at 11:50pm and I arrived home at 12:15pm the next day. I really hate flying for long lol so it was pretty bad.

All in all Affiliate Summit West 2008 was a great time. I got to meet a lot of you faithful readers, put some faces with names, have a couple important meetings, and most importantly have a good time. That’s why I really went, other than one meeting I needed to have, I didn’t really have any reason to go other than hanging out with my friends and having a good time. That’s what I did and I can’t wait for Vegas when I’m 21 hah. Next Summit coming up is this August in Boston, so I better see all of you there. I have more things to expand on concerning the Summit, as well as posting the interviews I was in, so make sure to stay tuned for them. Now go make some money.

P.S. if you went to the Summit let me know what you thought of it.

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Due to some minor medical issues (don’t worry I’m fine), I had to reschedule my flight that was supposed to take off this morning. To book the flight later in the day would have cost me over $1,000, so I had to rebook the flight and it’s not getting in until Sunday night at 11:00pm. Pretty much sucks I guess, I’ll miss out on affiliate dinner, the entire first day of the conference, and then half of the first round of parties. At least I’ll be there Mon-Tues, and I’ll catch you all at some parties on Sunday night.

So this means I won’t be at the meet market table tomorrow for AffSpy, sorry guys.

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Affiliate Summit is approaching fast – it’s almost here. I have more than enough to do to get prepared over the next week, and I’m sure you do too. Here’s a quick checklist of things you make sure you bring with you/are prepared for.

#1 – Business Cards

Pretty much a no-brainer here. I went to ASE last July when I was a noob and didn’t bring business cards. I had to go to some ghetto place in Miami and get them printed within two hours. If you don’t hand them out like a whore, 250 should do. I got 250 for ad:tech and I probably only handed out 50 or so, but I pick and choose I guess.

#2 – Cash

It’s Vegas baby. You’re either going to need money for two things : casino or strippers. For most of you, you’ll probably need cash for both so bring a lot of it.

#3 – Cologne

Please don’t smell bad, please…

#4 – Game Face

Naw I’m kidding. You’re probably going to network and try and make connections, and the best way to do that is just relax and have fun. That’s pretty much what I’m going for, just to hang out with all the people I talk to online but never really see. I’m also going for the very informative lessons!

#5 – Laptop

Who shows up to a nerdy internet convention without a laptop? Last year I brought mine to take notes on, I won’t be doing that this year but I’ll still have it in the hotel room. You don’t want to miss one of your campaigns tanking, you need to be there to hit the pause button.

#6 – Nice Shoes

I still get made fun of to this day for going out to a club at ad:tech wearing my Nike sneakers. I had shoes with me, just didn’t feel like wearing them lol. Make sure if you don’t have a decent pair of black shoes, pick them up.

#7 – Pen

Seems small but it’s always important to carry a pen with you. If you’re talking to somebody and they want more information about you, you should have a pen ready to write whatever they want on a business card. My business cards only have my email address on them because that’s pretty much all I want people having, but for a few people I meet I’ll jot down my full name and phone number.

#8 – Game Face

This time I’m serious about it. A lot of you are probably going to check out all the booths and visit the bajillion affiliate networks out there. Put on your game face and ask them what they can offer you that is unique. They’re probably going to say something like “Oh, so what verticals are you in?” You’ll say something like “I do a lot in the financial industry.” Nine times out of ten they’ll say back “Oh, we have some great offers in that area and really think we can find something perfect for you!” Ok that’s great, I’m not going to make any big decisions without more information. Ask what specific top performing offers they have, if they have an exclusives, what the conversion rates look like on those offers, what they can do as far as payment terms. Unless you want to be annoyed, don’t give your card out to every network you visit, or else one week later you’re going to be getting a phone call every 20 minutes asking if you’ll run offers on some random affiliate network that you can’t even remember the name of.

Alright that’s pretty much all I can think of now, will post more things if I can remember any. Have a good weekend, I’ll be talking to you Sunday probably when I’m going to make a pretty big post about something really new and cool in the industry. Stick around.

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So now that I’ve had a little time to breathe after getting back from ad:tech, I can blog about it a little. I apologize if this post doesn’t seem structured enough, I’m just going to be randomly talking about different things and I may go off on some tangents. What I hope to provide you is with what an event is like (I’ll be talking about it on a by day basis), and my honest review of everything there. So let’s jump into a life of a traveling affiliate marketer…

Monday : Prepare for Liftoff

Monday was Day 1 of the conference, and the day I actually came in. I had to wake up at 6am and pimp myself out, then head to the airport for the short 1 hour flight. I met up with one of my partners that I spent most of the trip with and we had lunch. After lunch we headed into the expo hall. Don’t I look stunning?

The jolly green giant of expo halls.

Compared to Affiliate Summit East, ad:tech was a pretty big monster. Four (I think) PACKED floors of all types of booths, from affiliate networks to law firms. Crazy amounts of people and business going on. It’s also a lot more corporate than Miami was. I had to wear a sport coat instead of shorts and a t-shirt or polo..dressing up really isn’t my thing. Now let’s talk about my impression of the actual expo hall and all the different booths there.

Tangent #1 : are they all the same?

My initial impression after checking out a couple of the floors was : what is different about any of these networks? There were SO many networks out there, and to me they all looked the same. If a network doesn’t stand out to me, why will I take interest in doing business with them? I mean honestly, it just looked like a bunch of average networks trying to compete with the giants, only they have nothing special to offer. Here’s an example of a booth I stopped by: it was an affiliate network and I won’t give the name out not because I care, but because I simply can’t even remember what it was called. The girl starts talking to me asking me what I do. I tell her I’m a publisher, and she tells me that she’s an affiliate network (how original). It’s even better because she’s speaking Spanglish and couldn’t understand what I was saying. Here’s exactly how the chat went :

Me : So do you guys have any exclusive offers?
Her : Do we have any online offers?
Me : No, ex-clu-sive offers.
Her : Online offers? Yes we have some.
Me : Ok cool, have a good one.

I mean why in God’s name send somebody there that can’t even speak English? It’s just another network with nothing to offer.

Another booth out there was offering web hosting. They had a guy standing out front with the company info card just saying “Web hosting? Web hosting? Web hosting?” to every person that walked by. I was inclined to say, “Yes, I have web hosting, do you?” Seriously, what is going to draw me into considering business with this company? According to them, their sales pitch is that they offer “web hosting”. I have web hosting, no need for more.

To spark real interest, you need something to actually draw people in – whether it be something about the business, or something simple like a box full of floating money that you can go in and grab.

Alright, tangent through. I stopped at a couple booths and got to meet a couple of my affiliate managers which was fun. I actually got to meet my very first affiliate manager who I’ve known since day 1.

I went back to my room and got ready for dinner. We went out to a small bar with Azoogle and had some nice food. The Azoogle peeps are always a good time. After that it was party time…or my attempts at it. We went to one of the parties and of course they were ID’ing people (keep in mind I’m 19). Somebody ended up getting an ID of a guy with a fat head…looked nothing like me. Of course that didn’t work so I was shut down. Then we headed to the main party of the night at Pacha. Luckily they scanned ID’s and didn’t even look at them, so I was able to get in. There was some weird shit there…they had mascots dressed in animal suits running around dancing, I felt like I was in a crack house or something. The party was pretty good, then headed back to the hotel and crashed. Here’s a crappy iPhone picture to illustrate how crowded a party like this is. People reaaaally want to network here.

Tuesday : Day 2

Woke up, got some breakfast, then headed back to the expo hall to meet more people. I think this was the day I got to meet Diorex. Cool guy, smart guy. We got to talk about some things, and eventually I got to set him up with a deal for something with one of my contacts. Networking is key boys and girls. It was another exhausting day of meetings and meeting new people, but in the end it was pretty productive. Tuesday night I had dinner with CX Digital (formerly Incentaclick). We went to this really nice place called Asia de Cuba, they had great food and got to network with some other people at the dinner. Did I say networking is key already? One of the guys I met ended up sending me a huge file on how to save money on taxes (in legal ways), as well as possibly set up a direct deal for an offer.

Google booth? Mmm, no.

Google had a booth, which means we all got to ask the Google team our questions and they could help us out, yayy!! Hardly. Every time I asked a question about Adwords, a “specialist” would walk me over to a computer and look it up with me on Google’s help page. In the end, they always ended up saying “give us and email and somebody will get back to you.” No real surprise there, that’s what happens every time I have a problem with Google. With the amount I spend you think they’d be able to expedite the process of getting a dedicated account rep, but I guess not. Aside from the $50 Adwords vouchers, the Google booth deemed itself to be pretty useless.

After dinner came more parties. I tried getting into the club I had gotten denied at the previous night, and it didn’t work again. We then headed to the Rubicon party and got a table there, it’s was alright. There weren’t that many people I knew there so it was pretty much hanging out with the people I went with.

Wednesday : Day 3

Wednesday there was no expo hall, so it was more of a relaxing day. I went out with some people from CX Digital as well as others I knew around the city. We went to the Museum of Modern Art, it just wasn’t really my thing. Here’s a picture I took of one of the pieces :

Yes…that’s a blank canvas.

After that we walked around shopping. I spent more money on a wallet then any man ever should, but I was peer pressured into it so ah well, all in good fun. That’s pretty much the only thing I bought. Wednesday night was dinner with Neveblue, we went to this jazzy place and had some good steak. Here’s a picture of us waiting in the cold for our limo to swing by and pick us up.

After that we went back to the Hilton and waited for Jon and a bunch of Wickedfire people to arrive. We hung out there for a little and then went bar hopping.

The $20 Piss

So we’re in this limo driving like 25 minutes to this place called Pianos, and I have to pee like you wouldn’t believe. We get there and I don’t get in (it was the only place that night that I didn’t get in). I have no idea where I’m going, but I really really had to pee. The bouncer told me that there’s this pizza place down the street where I can go. I find the place, and the guy is telling me “no public bathrooms” even though I’m telling him I’ll buy like 10 pizzas. So I leave and I’m walking down the street and see stairs heading down into a building that says “The Dark Room”. Probably a little dangerous as I had no idea what it was, but I went down there (that’s how bad I had to go). The bouncer doesn’t let me in, so I resort to desperate measures and flash a $20 bill (I was going to flash 40). He nods his head and let’s me in. I go in, take my pee, and then leave. He definitely thought I was going in there to buy crack. I left the dark room and immediately joined back up with the WF people. We walked into a bar next door where I had no problem getting in…and they had a bathroom too.

Thursday: The Last Day

The end was here, I didn’t do too much in NYC this day. I went and visited the Azoogle office for a couple hours, it’s going to be really cool once the massive construction finishes. After that I went shopping and bought something for my girlfriend, and then headed out. I went back to my partners home in New Jersey to work for the weekend on things. In the week I was away from home, we actually doubled our profits, so it was really productive. Thursday night we went to a Facebook Developers Conference in Philly, that was alright. I got to talk to one of the founders of Facebook, I wanted to ask what was up with their ad network. He said he really didn’t know too much about it and to email him. The conference was in some small building in the ghetto – it was over 200 people PACKED into this small room huddled around a Powerpoint presentation. Here’s a very crappy picture I took of it :

 
For the next 3 days I just got to do a lot of work, nothing I’m going to talk about here :). It was really productive though and we got some very nice plans for the future. That 100k/day mark used to not even be visible, but now it’s in sight off in the distance. I headed back home to a TON of email and backed up work, which explains the lack of major posts.

 

Was it worth it?

That’s the main question most people think of when thinking about attending an event. My answer is the same as the one I gave about Affiliate Summit : hell ya it was worth it. Aside from gifts, trip expenses came out to about $400 (flight, cab from airport, some snacks). My hotel was on my Starwood card and was free, along with all the food I bought there. I pretty much took a limo everywhere and that was paid for, as were the dinners with networks. Even if I had to pay for all of that, a few thousand dollars would still have been worth it. It was fun, and I got to meet a couple people that made the trip worth it. Spend the money and come and see me in Vegas this Feb.

Affiliate Summit vs. ad:tech?

The next question here would be : which conference did I enjoy more, ASE or ad:tech? Overall, I’d have to say that I liked Affiliate Summit more. I like the more laid back atmosphere, and I seemed to meet more actual affiliates there. The bars were a lot easier to get in to lol, and it wasn’t as corporate as NYC was. I liked meeting people during the day and then just going and relaxing on the beach. ad:tech was productive, but just felt so non-stop. By the time parties came I was beat and didn’t really feel like going anyways. I’d still recommend going to both, my personal opinion was just that I enjoyed Affiliate Summit a little more.

Alright, I got through a decent amount of information there. It takes a couple full weeks to process everything that went on in those few days, but hopefully you got a good picture of what it would be like to be there. If you attended make sure to post and let me know what you thought of the event.

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I have to get up in a few hours now (which means starting off with little sleep from the getgo…nice) to catch a plane to NYC for Ad-Tech. I’m going to be at the conference from Monday-Thursday, then I’m spending Friday-Sunday in New Jersey with a partner. During the course of this week I have a couple guest bloggers who have written up some nice posts. I’ll also be posting when I have time…maybe a quick video post if something big happens.

In the mean time, check out my popular posts again, re-read them, and think of ways to make money from what I wrote about. There are ways to it trust me, the information isn’t useless, I give away more than I should ;).

Once the event is over, I’ll make a little write up of what happened, what news was released, my experiences and who I met, etc. so you guys can get a feel of what going to Ad-Tech is like.

So don’t worry, I’ll still be here posting. I could never abandon this blog hah.

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