Posts Tagged ‘affiliate-summit’
This week I had an opportunity to discuss the power of networking at live events with Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins.
Shawn Collins (left) with new Affiliate Summit intern Jack Collins
Shawn is one of the most experienced and friendliest contacts I have made since getting involved in affiliate marketing and I appreciate the fact that he’s a friend whom I consult over IM and through the email.
It was great to hear how Shawn got started in affiliate marketing in 1997 as an affiliate for Amazon, and how he’s progressed to founding the Affiliate Summit seminar/tradeshow with Missy Ward, manages the Affiliate Tip blog, Authored “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants”, his annual AffStat report, the weekly Affiliate Thing weekly podcast co-hosted with Revenue magazine editor Lisa Picarille, an Affiliate Manager forum and probably 100 other projects, including one which will be launched soon.
Here’re some of the topics we discussed:
- How to get value out of attending seminars and events (as opposed to staying home and reading blogs and forums)
- Important things you should do BEFORE and AFTER attending an event
- How to catch all the conferences free
- How to gain an unfair networking advantage at ASW
- How to get free consulting from industry veterans and experts at the event
The podcast can be accessed below:
46 mins 36 secs : 22 mb
Affiliate Summit West is from Feb 24-26 at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. Last year the tickets ran out and scalpers were having a field day on eBay.
And Shawn has given a special Affiliate Summit coupon code for my blog readers “ANDREW10” which will give you a 10% discount off your tickets.
Here’s the registration link: Affiliate Summit West.
Get your tickets early to avoid disappointment, and if you’re headed for ASW, I look forward to seeing you there.
Over the weekend, I stayed up till 1:30 am to plan my flights and get my hotel confirmed for Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s upcoming Affiliate Summit West, at the Rio in Las Vegas from Feb 24-26.
Unlike the past Affiliate Summit where I found myself hiking from Harrah’s (which has great prime rib) to Bally’s every morning, I was determined to get lodging at the Rio where the summit will be held.
Having said that, here’s some summit survival tips:
- Take the bus if you have time and like to see the city. It costs about $6 for a 1-way ticket and stops at most of the major hotels. It does take a little time to get around though because it stops at quite a number of hotels.
- Wear comfortable walking shoes as you’ll be pounding the show floor if you’re diligent about meeting merchants and networks (I only got through about 25% of the booths the last time round because I was talking to and got waylaid by people as I was walking around).
- Carry a backpack if you don’t want to be lugging your schwag all over the place. Especially if there’re booths giving out Plasma TVs, Xbox360s and Nintendo WIIs (I think most of us can go out and buy one, it’s just the ultra competitive streaks in every motivated affiliates that comes out when it comes to competitions…)
With that out of the way, and a 15 hour plane ride (I’m taking a direct Singapore-Los Angeles flight on a brand spanking new Airbus A380 this time) ahead, what’s in store at Affiliate Summit?
The fun begins before the event starts.
Anik Singal and his Affiliate Classroom team have organized Affiliate Classroom Live, a 1-day workshop for affiliate managers on Saturday 23 Feb. What’s more it’s free…Places are very limited though, so check out:
–> Anik Singal’s Affiliate Classroom Live
Chase the workshop with Brook Schaaf’s Affiliate Dinner. Expect to see a guest of honor. Expect to see the guest of honor roasted…What fun!
Is Affiliate Dinner a ponzi scheme? Here’s the answer…
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So day 1 of the summit kicks off with the “Affiliate Meet Market” from noon to 6pm. I missed this the last time because of a delayed flight, but I’m arriving a day early to make sure I am able to take part in the meet-and-greet and associated networking.
Here’s the floorplan for the Affiliate Meet Market. (PDF format)
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Day 2 kicks off with Jason Calacanis’ keynote.
With Jason recently refering to “Affiliate Spam” “polluting” the search engines at the Paris Le Web seminar, you can expect some fireworks during the keynote.
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One note about the presentations that follow. An overwhelming number of presentation proposals were submitted, with the result that about 4 presentations are simultaneously ongoing during each time slot. In many cases, you have great sessions going on at the same time.
I checked with Shawn and he mentioned that the sessions will be recorded and available for viewing later.
I’d suggest prioritizing your favorite sessions and making a beeline for them. In some cases I can see the majority of the crowd gravitating towards ONE session…
Forewarned is forearmed…
I’ve listed some of the sessions I personally am interested in attending:
As I’ve been doing a number of podcast and vlogging (video blogging) lately, I’m keen to check this session out.
I met Buy.com’s Melissa Salas last Feb at ASW, and she present a pretty great show for Buy.com over at Buy.Tv.
(As of last October, on the BuyTV MySpace page it’s mentioned that “BuyTV was just informed that it has been picked up for local programming via Time Warner, Cox, Charter, DirecTV, Echostar, Dish Network and others – Sunday mornings at 11:30am PST”)
And you have a panel of other video marketing/video blogging folks (more…)
It’s about 47 days to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s Affiliate Summit West in Vegas, and if you’re headed there, drop a note in the comments and I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for you.
I added a note to my Facebook profile to add a countdown alert (via the Top Countdowns application).
So some of the choices available:
I picked the 2nd from the bottom cos it looked kinda “slot machine-ish”. [You’d have to pay a hefty sum to see the cupcakes on my profile……….]
After I added it, I was thinking about unconventional uses, specifically guerilla tactics for Facebook applications for affiliate marketers…
(more…)
Two elements are critical to the success of any social marketing campaign.
The first element is one that just about everyone is good at – The size of your network.
I say everyone is good at this element because all it takes to massively increase the number of friends in your MyBlogLog, BumpZee, YouTube, Facebook or other community is hitting the ‘add friend’ button and doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.
But here’s where it gets interesting, the fine line between social marketing and spamming is drawn when the relationship and more importantly permission and consensus are factored in.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve datamined someone’s email, cell phone from the net, your attempt to game the social network for personal gain falls flat on its face if you don’t have the relationship to back it up.
You might be wondering if this is merely ‘theoretical’ or ‘hypothetical’ or how well it works in real life…
Look at what happened to me last year…
I’ve been active on the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum for some time, giving advice on my pet area of blogging. So having been invited to be a ‘Blogging Guide’, I spend more time on the forum and create an instructional thread on “Blogging For Bucks”
And one day I read a thread on the forum about this new Super Affiliate’s blog, Super Affiliate Mindset.
And after talking with PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta for some time, we decide to jointly work on a product, which eventually becomes the Super Affiliate Accelerator. (the site is being upgraded at the moment).
The project is intended to create a series of custom training to provide business strategies and PPC tactics to new and experienced affiliate marketers.
Part of the program involves inviting other established Internet Marketers in on some of the mastermind sessions we’re organizing.
So I ask my friend Wil Reynolds, founder of top SEO agency Seer Interactive, to join in on one of our upcoming calls.
And as part of my research, I watch some of Wil’s videos from Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s Affiliate Summit Seminar.
If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization, undoubtedly, Wil’s suggestions to check out 3 key blogs to keep you up to date on SEO developments will be intriguing.
What are the 3 blogs?
Listening to Wil’s recommendations, I opened my copy of SEOBook I’d purchased early last year.
I’d glanced through it a number of times and picked up great SEO tips and subsequently listed it on my recommendations page.
Now, with the weight of Wil’s endorsement, I re-read it (all 350 pages in a 2 hour sitting).
If you have not read it yet, you will not know that it goes beyond SEO, to encompass Aaron’s copywriting strategies and even PPC management. More importantly, Aaron includes elements of his Internet Marketing journey from spamming links to creating quality white hat links.
If you haven’t yet, why not spend the opening days of this year, checking out Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.
It’s been more than a week since I left Las Vegas after attending Anik Singal and Jeremy Palmer’s PPC Classroom Live.
So the question is “Was it worth a 20+ hour plane ride each way?”
Certainly a resounding YES!
I got to meet a bunch of great people and the stellar cast of speakers presented great content. Now it’s a matter of hunkering down and putting some of those ideas into practise.
The turnout was very respectable with the room filled to the gills…
It was great to hear how Anik took one of his info product sites, added CPA offers to it and have it generated $42,000+ to date this year.
Andrew Wee and Anik Singal
Just as you’re seeing a convergence of search marketing and PPC marketing, I believe the worlds of info marketing and lead generation/affiliate marketing are going to draw closer in the coming year.
Andrew Wee, Kirt Christensen, Greg Cesar
I look to Kirt Christensen as one of the pioneers in Internet Marketing, together with his partner, Terry Dean.
It was certainly illuminating to hear about his strategies for positioning yourself as a PPC management agency and it was pretty impressive hearing about some of the biggest Internet marketers he manages PPC campaigns for.
Greg Cesar is someone who’s in my mastermind and this was (more…)
Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins has kindly put up the presentations from the recent (and inaugural) Affiliate Summit London.
Seer Interactive’s Wil Reynolds
One of the presenters, Seer Interactive’s Wil Reynolds didn’t fail to shine as always with his “SEO For the New Google / Yahoo! / MSN” presentation (somewhat wordy, but chock full of content as usual).
No word yet on whether Shawn will have the videos up, but you can download (more…)
