Shawn Collins and Missy Ward have consistently put on a great Affiliate Summit since I first started going to them in 2006. This year was no different and if you’re an affiliate, consultant or network, the show serves as a great opportunity to network and get a pulse on the trends in the industry.
It was worth the 20 hour plane ride each way, and despite the somewhat hefty tax expense, the benefits far outweighed the time and resources to get there.
This is a first in a series of posts, more to come.
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Pre-Affiliate Summit
Getting to the summit is a good idea, especially with some flights being delayed and having a chance to do some chillaxing before the event. I did some shopping at the premium outlets outlet mall and met up that night with Kim Rowley and Jon Levine.
At most conferences and seminars, I usually learn more from talking to other affiliates about their sites and projects, compared to the formal sessions (unless it’s a brand new area/topic for me).
So we went for drinks and it was interesting to hear about how the program that Jon is managing was put together.
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Day 1: Sun 11 Jan
I was pleasantly suprised outside the conference rooms by Shawn Collins who danced a welcome jig:
I’d post a video, but the group we were (more…)
One of the affiliate marketers I’d been following since I first started out in the industry was and continues to be Kim Rowley who owns Key Internet Marketing and has a network of shopping-themed niche sites.
Kim has come up with a number of great concepts for niche sites, and more than just the idea alone, she’s certainly one to take immediate action.
Although we’d talked a little before this past Affiliate Summit West and chatted briefly at the Summit, we’d been sharing some ideas in recent weeks and I was glad that she was able to take some time out to come on the podcast.
Besides hearing about her start in internet marketing, we also talked about strategies in setting up coupon/shopping/comparison type shopping sites and growing your online business.
As with previous Friday Podcasts, we covered a lot of ground in this episode and you can check out the podcast below:
Here it is: the discount code this month at domain registrar Namecheap this month is “AprilShowers”. [works great in tandem with BlueHost shared webhosting]
I know it works because I just got a new domain there a couple of minutes ago. More on that later.
Just a note about “Super Affiliates”, I was chatting with Kim Rowley last night about marketing techniques and mentioned the power of video blogging and YouTube.
I wake up this morning and she’s posted a VIDEO product review post at her shopping site TechTheStyle.
If that’s not enough, her partner Pat posts a VIDEO followup a couple of hours later here. (I dig the window blinds which gives his video a “Max Headroom-ish” feel and I thought the timecode gave it a techy/industrial feel).
If you’re still suffering from “structured procrastination“, I say “bull-crud”, get off your behind and do something, instead of just wondering why folks like Kim and Pat are so “lucky”…
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Back to the domain, I got a new one – AndrewWeeLive.com – the nice ones I was hoping for were taken already.
The site will be more personal in nature, a theme that I connect with, especially with the recent Sam Harrelson AffiliateFortuneCookie podcasts and the Scott Jangro “JangroCast” (should “JangroCast” be a new trigger term for “Sorry, Jangro“?)
It will also give me a reason to use my new MacBook as more than as just a paperweight.
Anyone have any tips/suggestions on getting started on the Mac?
