If you missed it, here are “Affiliate Summit West 2009 in Pics and Words” – Part 1 and Part 2.
Meeting people in person at tradeshows and seminars and more importantly, talking to them face-to-face has yielded some of the greatest dividends in getting ideas to grow my business, find partners to work on projects and connect with others.
Here’re more folks:
Yes his name really is B Knoblach AKA BillyKay.
Besides his successful Mail Order Shoppe, BK is friendly and always has a smile on his face.
At this time of the year with Christmas and New Year’s reducing the number of official work days in December, has your productivity been affected? Especially for those of us who are tethered to our computers, either because we’re:
Working
Hosting/calling in to a conference call
Playing games
Watching a movie
Going through our business balance sheets
Coordinating with our remote operations team
Or some other activity of your own choosing, I have found that I spend about 1.5 to twice as much time in front of my computer as I spend sleeping on my bed every day.
So do the holidays represent a boon or bane to the internet marketing continually building their business (especially during the holiday shopping season).
Specifically, Do the holidays disrupt your business momentum and do either you and/or your business suffer as a result?
With the 24×7 nature of the internet, it’s inevitable that there’ll be a number of casualties (direct or indirect) are suffered along the rush to be the first and #1, especially in a high stakes game where “Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.”
In the words of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington: “I haven’t died yet,†although he’s (more…)
When I first started reading Haiko De Poel’s ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum, one of the things that mystified me was this lady who said she was going around giving people Loxly hugs at Affiliate Summit.
It’s no surprise that Deborah Carney AKA Loxly has built up significant goodwill through her journey as an affiliate, affiliate manager and currently, affiliate outsourced program manager (OPM).
Loxly is one of my secret resources and I find myself consulting her on business building and marketing strategies. The fact that she posts prodigiously on ABW and is available nearly 24-7 on Skype says a lot about her commitment and work ethic to the affiliate industry.
Besides catching her session at the recent Affiliate Summit West 08 in Vegas at the ABW panel discussion, you can also tune into the latest edition of the Friday Podcast where we discussed:
Affiliate strategies for new affiliates
How and when merchants should evaluate and engage outsourced (affiliate) program managers
The content management system of choice for affiliates
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:
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.
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…)
When I first started reading Haiko De Poel’s ABestWeb affiliate marketing forum, one of the things that mystified me was this lady who said she was going around giving people Loxly hugs at Affiliate Summit.
