Posts Tagged ‘affiliate-summit’
Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins has got the pictures from the professional photographer from the recent Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas last month (all 630 of them) and has mentioned them on the Affiliate Summit blog. You can check out the Affiliate Summit West Flickr photostream.
Here’re some of my favourites:
With the ShareResult affiliate network affiliate manager Julia Steat at the Great Affiliate Road Rally
With Notebook Forums‘ Laura Alter (yes, she is 6’ and wearing heels…)
After talking to him for about a year, I finally got to meet B5 blog network’s training manager Tris Hussey
At the social media session with Justine Ezarik and Tris Hussey
Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta at the Super Affiliate session
At the “Engaging the Media” panel session with Lisa Picarille, Anik Singal, Valerie Stevens and Jim Kukral
I don’t know about you, but I think Jim Kukral deserves some type of award for being the most photographed!
Be sure to check out the other pictures at the ASW photo collection.
Affiliate Summit as always was a blast (I still have about 500 of my own pictures to put up somewhere…).
If you’re keen to bring your affiliate business to the next level, be sure to check out Affiliate Summit East from Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.
During the recent Affiliate Summit West, I met Justin Premick who’s Education Marketing Manager at email marketing solutions company Aweber.
I think I’m doing more than 90% of the affiliates out there when it comes to incorporating email marketing as part of my SEO-based marketing campaigns, but some of the tips that Justin shared with me during the few minutes we talked before the Blue Man Group performance at the Affiliate Bash at Tao gave me a couple of ideas to test out in my campaign.
So I was looking forward to chatting with Justin when he agreed to come on as a guest on this week’s Friday Podcast. Some of the ideas and behind-the-scene stuff that goes on at your autoresponder operator will surprise you, and I uncovered some killer tips to use autoresponders to enhance conversions in your affiliate AND CPA marketing campaigns.
It was definitely worth waking up at 3am this morning (3pm EST Tuesday) to chat with Justin and the interview will be posted this Friday.
If you aren’t already using email marketing in conjunction with a PPC or SEO marketing campaign, you could be leaving quite a bit of cash on the table…
Here’re some tips which will help you get started:
- Content is and should be packaged differently across multiple platforms
Seems obvious, but you need to tailor your content to suit the medium you’re publishing the content on.
On a website you have the benefit of space and the ability to use multimedia generously (audio, video, graphics), while in the context of email marketing, people are used to seeing bite-sized chunks of info.
So unless it’s very compelling, it’s generally not a good idea to send out a 5-page email. Even if it does get read, you can expect to see a dropoff if you consistently send out long emails.
- Permission-based marketing
This was one of the major points during our discussion – email marketing is very much “relationship marketing” which plays by a different set of rules when compared to pricing/bidding strategies of PPC or the search engine algorithmn trustrank/pagerank strategies of SEO.
“Permission Marketing” by Seth Godin is a great primer. To check out 4 free chapters, visit Seth’s blog.
The reality is that even if (more…)
You might like to check it out at: Gyutae Park’s blog.
In my mind a “contest” has elements of skills and competitors have to compete.
The event that Gyutae has organized is more like a sweepstakes, where you sign up for his mailing list, subscribe to his RSS feed, post some linkbait back to his blog (via stumbleupon or blog about it) and gain chances to win some of the prizes.
It doesn’t hurt that there’s about $2,000 worth of cold hard cash to be given away, plus an all-access seminar pass to Affiliate Summit East in Boston later this year.
If you’ve been watching the Affiliate Summit website, you might’ve missed this little goodie, if you blinked:
Upcoming Affiliate Summits: Boston (August 10-12, 2008) — New York City (October 5, 2008).
I’ve known about Affiliate Summit East in Boston later in August, but “New York City”?
That’s news to me.
Is that going to be “Affiliate Summit East 2”?
My buddy, Loxly, aptly pointed out that the NYC event is just one day. So it could be a scaled down event?
I would have checked with Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins, but he looks like he’s away from his computer now.
Maybe we’ll see some updates shortly from Shawn.
I’m already making plans to attend the Boston event, though it’ll be interesting to hear what “Affiliate Summit East 2” in NYC holds…
With the Affiliate Summit just days away, here’re a few pointers especially if it’s your first time to the summit:
- Vegas Throat: Specific to Las Vegas, you will lose your voice very easily if you don’t take care of your throat. The dry desert air creates a lot of static electricity, it also dries out your throat and you’ll find yourself losing your voice at the end of day 1 or day 2 if you don’t drink enough liquids or take throat lozenges to give your throat a break. Also worth trying a a honey drink at the end of the day (real honey, not that cheap honey-flavored sugar syrup typically sold at grocery stores). I’m bringing a herbal throat syrup that I expect will do wonders (known in Chinese as “Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa”.
- Camera/Video Camera/Flip Camera: Do the touristy thing and take lots of photos during the summit. Better yet, take lots of pictures with people so you can remember what they look like. It’s fairly safe to assume that 90% of bloggers will look NOTHING like what their avatar looks like. (present company included).
- Business Cards: Yes, the reciprocity thing takes place. I give you my card, you give me your card. Generally a great practise, although if you live in the US, you can expect to get lots of follow up calls over the next week. The most important thing about collecting business cards is to follow up within a week after the summit, something that Stephanie Agresta (AKA Internet Geek Girl) is great at. On another note, if you’re like me and collect a couple of hundred business card each year, be sure to carry a pen and scribble “ASW08” on the back of the card, especially after you put it in the huge pile in your office later.
- It’s COLD: Expect a low of 32 deg F according to the weather forecasts, so bring a heavy coat if you get chilly.
- Networks ahead of the summit: Contact people and companies you’d like to meet, especially if you go through the exhibitors list, or if you know that a particular affiliate or blogger is headed over. Some of the people I’m looking forward to meeting: Heather Paulson, Stephanie Agresta, Sam Harrelson, James and Arlene Martell, Jim Lillig, NeverblueAds’ Samantha Brachat, Revenuewire CEO Geordie Carswell. I talk to many of these folks on a daily basis, but it’s always great to meet up in person.
- Take the shuttle bus: If you’re not in a great hurry, the shuttle bus at the airport costs $7 and goes to the major hotels. The taxi ride costs $20 and is a whole lot faster, but you’ll not see as much of the Strip as you would from the bus.
- Plan your schedule: There’s lots of exciting stuff going on at the summit at any single point in time, so you need to work out a schedule of where you want to be at what time. Else there’s a good chance you’ll miss a meeting or miss a workshop session because you were out on the show floor talking to people.
- Get enough rest: With the summit lasting three days, it’s not too bad. But by the morning of day 2, you’ll start to see people dragging themselves along, or mysteriously disappearing in the afternoon to catch some rest. If you rest up on Friday and Saturday, you should have enough energy to last through the event (even with some parties going on till 4am…)
- ***Most important***: Have a goal and an agenda in mind: Are you at the summit to check out a specific affiliate/CPA network? Visit their website, talk to other affiliates before you attend the show. Are you there to network with a particular individual or company? Visit their blog, find out if they haunt a specific forum and read their posts there. If I were an affiliate manager, and if I was motivated to recruit new affiliates, I’d compile a “hit list” of the top 50 (or if I was really motivated top 100) affiliates, I’d visit their blog or website, and check them out, make some notes. Contrary to popular belief, just having ONE canned presentation doesn’t cut it. Sad to say, but going to every booth and being told “we have the highest payouts, and we have many exclusive offers” makes for quite the yawn-fest. I think being able to present your product and your network in a unique fashion, helps pique the interest of experienced affiliates who’re already have accounts on 10 other CPA networks. So please, have a little pow-wow before heading to the summit, figure out a plan of attack that goes beyond “highest payout, exclusive offers” and you will definitely hook more than your fair share of super affiliates.
Does anyone have other advice?
One of the little-known events at the Affiliate Summit in Vegas next week is that there’ll be a competition with a first prize worth $4,995 being given out. I am pretty surprised that as of the last update, there’s only 4 (yes, FOUR) participants in the running for this prize.
If a 20% (1 in 5) chance of winning a $5,000 prize (and an opportunity to contribute to a worthwhile cause) doesn’t excite you, I’m not sure what will…
Enter the Great Affiliate Road Rally, where you get to race against other Affiliate Summit West attendees for a chance to win a booth at the Affiliate Summit East tradeshow/seminar Aug 10-12 in Boston, MA.
Yes, the prize is transferable, and I’ve got word from Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins that a second and a third prize might be added too.
It’s a “bring your own car” (BYOC) competition, so you can pick up a remote controlled car at Target, Wal Mart or order it from an online retailers like Amazon or a RC specialist.
The event will be held indoors, so only electric cars will be allowed and it’ll be conducted in the same room as the keynote address (seating capacity of about 1,000…!), so you can expect a pretty big room.
To separate this from being a pure drag race, Shawn says he will fiendishly set up obstacles along the race route, so it’s not just a matter of getting a F1 car or a Nissan Skyline and hitting the throttle as hard as you can.
I’ve noticed that Affiliate Summit founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins have gone all out to raise funds for a selected charity at every event and this Affiliate Summit is no different.
The beneficiary is the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation. Great Affiliate Road Rally participants can make a minimum donation of $100 at the Affiliate Summit link to Starlight to secure your entry.
I have my pit team already putting one of my cars through its paces…
Pit mechanics Bianca Wee putting the car through its final paces
So my team and I will (more…)
