In an episode of TheSpew, a business-related podcast on the GeekCast content network, I had the opportunity to discuss this issue with Missy Ward, Lisa Picarille, Connie Berg and Karen White.

While Missy and Shawn Collins are able to effectively inject personal opinions, together with the business content in their twitter streams and blog posts, some of us who’re focused towards corporate clients who are less familiar with the social media environment and operate on a more “rules-based” corporate culture, seeing someone tweet about how great “Lost” was last night or “Free Cone Day” at Ben and Jerry’s might be perplexed, confused and even get riled up because they can’t figure it out.

If you’re a consultant/trainer, there’s a split between presenting a professional image because that’s what’s expected, compared to having the free rein to say what you really think.

It was insightful hearing Lisa, Karen, Connie and Missy who are all engaged with consulting, share their experience in managing these expectations. And any social marketer can get some food for thought in handling this personal vs professional dichotomy on the social networks.

Check out TheSpew Episode #8 on GeekCast.

A minor quibble I have about the Affiliate Summit is not being able to hear presentations by the event’s co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins because they’re busy presenting awards or talking to folks during the 3-day event.

In launching and leading their own new podcasts on Geekcast, this should address the appetite to hear and benefit from their expertise.

–

BrandMouthing, a new solo podcast by Shawn Collins, gives his take on branding strategies and marketing techniques that affiliates and internet marketers can employ in their own business. Usually featuring a 5-10 minute duration (the longest has been about 22 minutes thus far), the short, punchy format (with a high signal-to-noise ratio) gives immediate tips.

I’ve enjoyed Shawn’s synopsis of the Cast of Geeks/GeekyBunch sessions when his Skype recording software failed to activate (resulting in a loss of about 1+ hour of content) and the BrandMouthing podcasts likewise provide a short burst of actionable information.

–

TheSpew, helmed by Missy Ward, is vaguely themed after popular women-themed talkshow “The View”, with an affiliate marketing slant. Featuring prominent affiliate marketing/internet marketing veterans like Lisa Picarille, Connie Berg, Karen White, Lisa Riolo, Kim Rowley and featuring guests like Brian Littleton, Scott Jangro and others, the sessions are chock full of useful content, involving issues like the California affiliate tax, Missy’s fundraising projects, insights into the affiliate industry.

Bundled together with this, you’ll also hear about how several marketers got their start, get some insights into what makes them successful. TheSpew bunch have also thoughfully included snippets into managing a healthy work-life balancing, addressing issues like dating other members of the affiliate fraternity, networking at events and balancing parental duties with running your own internet business.

Although the sessions clock in at more than an hour, the time will probably fly by and I’ll be saving the sessions to listen to again.

–

I’ve certainly got a healthy fill of content and will be looking forward to more episodes from Shawn and Missy.

You can check them out at:

• BrandMouthing
• TheSpew

Listen to the previous Friday Podcast where Missy and Shawn talked about their plans for Geekcast.

During our conversation, we talked about:

• The history and growth of the Geekcast podcast network and upcoming plans
• The expansion and growth of content on Geekcast beyond just affiliate marketing
• Incentives and admission criteria for would-be Geekcast podcasters
• Details and the launch of Missy’s new podcast, “The Spew”, soon to debut on Geekcast in late March
• The addition of video content on Geekcast
• Shawn’s tips on getting started as a podcaster
• How to organize and structure a winning podcast
• The growth of FeedFront magazine
• The upcoming inclusion of AffStat data in FeedFront
• Missy’s new involvement with the affiliate program for DIYThemes (publisher of the Thesis WordPress theme)
• Highlights and details of the upcoming Affiliate Summit East (Aug 9-11, New York City)

Check out the Friday Podcast below:

Links:

• Geekcast
• FeedFront
• Join the DIY Themes affiliate program
  
• Affiliate Summit East

As an experienced affiliate professional, Missy has built up a reputation in the industry, serving in senior management positions like:

• Director of Public Relations for Media Breakaway LLC (formerly CPA Empire, now known as affiliate.com)
• Vice President of Partnership Marketing for eBound Strategies
• President of Aluria Software
• Vice-President of Marketing for Global Travel International

Some of these positions were concurrent with taking a leading role in launching and growing the Affiliate Summit conference/trade show as well as a number of fundraising intiaitives.

If you’ve had a chance to talk to Missy during one of the trade shows, you’d find that she’s personable and knowledgable. During the course of our discussion, I got to know Missy better, including:

• How she got involved in affiliate marketing
• The formation of the Affiliate Summit and it’s goals and growth over the years
• How she got involved with fundraising activities, concurrently growing her affiliate business
• A preview of upcoming Affiliate Summit conferences and related events
• The guerilla marketing strategies used to promote the summit (merchants and affiliate networks can take a leaf out of Missy and Shawn’s playbook)
• Missy’s video blogging and promotion strategies
• A number of inspirational moments from the recent Affiliate Summit
• Key updates involving projects like Geekcast.fm, a new podcast in the making, Missy’s return to affiliate management and the revamped AffStat affiliate industry survey

Check out the hour long podcast, chock-full of content below:

Resources:

• Missy’s blog
• Missy’s Twitter account
• Affiliate Summit
• FeedFront
• Geekcast.fm
• AffStat (participate in the latest survey. closes Feb 28, 2009)
• Affiliate Marketers Give Back
• WeViews.tv
• ShipToTroops.com

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.

–

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.

–

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 with was too ticked to fire up our flip cams.

–

And shortly after, pickup artist Mystery showed up with his entourage and soon a small crowd gathered around him:

I had a chance to check out the “Mysteryplex” AKA “Project Hollywood” mentioned in Neil Strauss’ bestseller “The Game” in Hollywood later in the week. (in a future post).

In many ways, successful pickup has a lot in common with successful affiliate marketing – you need to make the offer attractive, you need to match the approach with your target’s demographic, and you need an attractive “call to action”. The showmanship doesn’t hurt either.

–

Later that evening, affiliate network Market Leverage hosted a blogger dinner at Switch at the Encore by Wynn.

(Left to right): David Brim (Izea, back to camera), Market Leverage founder and CEO Michael Jenkins, Ms Danielle, Nate Whitehill (Unique Blog Designs).

Michael also announced the launch of Market Leverage’s Greenlinks – a series of video help videos, at the dinner.

Aside from the great seafood we had, it was also a good opportunity to get insight into Market Leverage’s operations from Mike Kelly (ML’s first affiliate manager) and Jen Fluker (ML’s second affiliate manager).

–

Meeting Steph

Undoubtedly, one of the advantages of attending Affiliate Summit is being able to meet networks and get a feel for the affiliate managers you’ll be working with. Meeting them in person also means you have a high chance of being accepted into their network.

I’d been talking to Stephanie Lichtenstein from Andy Rodriguez Consulting over twitter and it was a pleasure to meet her in person. In fact, I swept her off her feet:

Steph, me and Billy Kay Knoblach

Here is a video Steph put up on youtube (it’s received positive feedback from the twitter community)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acybZGnU8sw[/youtube]

Steph’s definitely got an edge when it comes to relationship building with affiliates and social marketers can take a page out of her book.

–

Affiliate Triathlon

What I like about the Affiliate Summits is how Shawn and Missy combine fun activities with fund-raising for worthwhile causes. This year’s charity: the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Some of the “competitiors” were dressed to kill too.

ShareASales CEO Brian Littleton in his 80s Miami Vice (LA Gear?) get up

The ladies from the set of Kill Bill 3: Affiliate Ninjas. Or possibly the ShareASale team (Jessica Sander, Sarah Beeskow, Carolyn Tang).

–

Some key takeways:

Video Marketing will continue to be grow this year, with merchants like Buy.com integrating solutions from Qoof and ToldYa! into their affiliate platforms. Buy.com’s Melissa Salas, Qoof’s Michael Stefansky and Market Leverage’s Mike Jenkins gave some good insights during their panel which smart affiliates will be able to utilize in their campaigns.

PPC Pay per click marketing: continues to be a red hot topic with numerous sessions during the seminar track devoted to tracking, optimizing and automating the process. As PPC usage becomes more sophisticated, tools like Wes Mahler’s Tracking202 lower the barrier of entry for new affiliates.

Boutique CPA Networks: A number of “boutique” style CPA networks are rewriting the rules of affiliate marketing. While some affiliate manager are of the “I am here just to tell you the best offers and negotiate payouts for you” mindset, smaller, agile networks like Convert2Media (helmed by Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman) and Ads4Dough (helmed by Jason “Smaxor” Akatiff) are rewriting the rules of what a network is, by going the extra mile to provide guidance to new and experienced affiliates. The fact that the networks are run by top affiliates well versed in white hat and black hat traffic and affiliate tactics also means that they can provide useful and relevant advice.

This time round, the next Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas will feature an Affiliate Triathlon, billed as “designed for affiliate marketers by affiliate marketers”. As affiliate marketing gives most successful affiliates the option to eat and sleep as much as they can comfortably tolerate, the tendency is to put on a little weight around the waist, thighs, face, etc. (With the exception of a couple of notables like Shawn, Missy, Heather Paulson, Ros Gardner, Amit Mehta, Chad Frederiksen, John Hasson, Nickycakes – who are the healthier minority among the affiliate majority).

All proceeds from the event go to charity, which will include the National Breast Cancer Foundation. It’ll be a fun event for sure, though I’m hoping Shawn will give more details. Maybe this year, we’ll see Heather in her bikini at the Rio pool taking on all challengers?

Shawn Collins on his preferred mode of transport

Affiliate Summit West 2009 will be from Jan 11-13 in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

Get your tickets early to avoid disappointment.

Tip: Use promo code ASW09WHOISAW to save 10% off any type of pass

What started this off was Revenue editor-in-chief’s post about video blogging and wondering why the majority of video bloggers seem to be male.

Is it an issue of looks? Or vanity?

Internet Geek Girl Stephanie Agresta weighed in:





Shedding some insight was Shawn with some disturbingly profound thoughts…

I was pleasantly surprised to see Missy Ward talk about burning her vanity bra…

Click To Play

And finally Sam “Mountain Man” Harrelson weighed in with some surprisingly philosophical advice.

And here’s the answer to the “Want to be a successful video blogger” question

…Get a fur-covered face.

—

On a more serious note, I had a great discussion with Shawn about trends in the affiliate marketing industry and how affiliate networks and merchants can up their affiliate marketing game. Tune in for this week’s edition of Friday Podcast. (to be published on Friday).

• Co-founding the Affiliate Summit with Missy Ward (the next Affiliate Summit East is from Aug 10-12 in Boston)
• Multiple updates on his Affiliate Tip blog
• His sarcastic and wry style on Affiliate Thing (together with co-host Revenue Magazine editor Lisa Picarille)
• His relative new foray into group podcasting at Geekcast.fm together with partners-in-crime Sam Harrelson and Jim Kukral. (Jim did a video interview with me in the midst of the recent Affiliate Summit West)

If you like Shawn’s Road Trip/American Pie-ish style of humor, you’d want to check out this Easter bunny video broadcast:

Also, check out this Facebook thread where we’re aiming to hit 500 comments. Every little comment helps!

At Affiliate Summit West with ASW co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward

If it was your first Affiliate Summit or you would like to get more out of your trip, here’re my suggestions:

• Follow Up

Yes, you can mass mail all the people you met, but social marketing/conversational marketing is what’s going to give you an edge in building relationships and bringing your business to the next level. Include a personal note, talk about winning that $15,000 top prize at the slot machines at 3am, or downing round-after-round of shots at the Ghost Bar. People connect best with those they have a personal connection with.

For more tips check out “Internet Geek Girl” Stephanie Agresta’s blog. She’s mentioned she’s really good at the following up part.

Here’re 2 things I’ve learned from my consulting to brick-and-mortar companies, 2 things need to stand out and are probably more important than the sale (whether it’s the sale of a product/service or inking of a service/consulting contract). The pre-sales and the post-sales.

Pre-sales might’ve taken place at your Affiliate Summit booth, or over dinner, or at one of the parties. Post-sales means you continue keeping in touch with your customers/partners even after the project has been kicked off or the product has been delivered.

Is it too soon? Too late?

I’d say that you have a 2-week window to drop people a note after the summit. After 2 weeks, it’s difficult to place a reference.

• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

You have a business to run, maybe a day job and a family or significant other to take care of or spend time with. So you need to sort out your business contacts:

Who should you get touch with immediately.

Who should you get in touch with within the next 7 days.

And then there’s everyone else that you follow up with when you have time. Eg. checking your email on your iPhone during the boring bits at a meeting, or while waiting for someone and you’re in a WiFi zone.

• Lessons Learned And Key Takeaways

Yes, it’s not as cool to keep a diary or notebook (the paper-based variety!) anymore, but let’s face it, you’ll forget 50% of what you learned a week later, and 50% of whatever remains a month from now, and so on. Pretty soon, you’ll forget that you were even at the Affiliate Summit!

I keep multiple text files on my computer, labelled:

• PPC-tips.txt
• marketing-pointers.txt
• contact-info.txt
• trial-super-affiliate-exclusives.txt

and so on. If there’s going to be an invite-only launch for a new product or service, I need to keep track of when it starts, how long it’s running for, and most important my account name and password.

If going to a couple of great parties and meeting “celebrities” was the highlight of ASW for you, you’re sure missing out on a lot of good stuff!

• Bringing Home More Bacon!

Typically I come home with a list of 10 new things to test out in my existing campaigns, or new product ideas to test out. This past summit was no different.

By “testing out something new”, it has to be more than adding a new widget that someone mentioned during a session or during a conversation, I’d do a benchmark to see what the results are before testing a new strategy, then I’d test the new strategy.

Going one step further, I’d develop 3 more variations of that idea and test those too. It’d be like a mini multi-variate test if you will. And only after enough data has been collected will I continue testing the two best performing strategies out of the bunch of 5 tests.

Going by past experience, I’ve seen modest increases of 10-20% testing new techniques, with the occasional 50% jump in my results. If that doesn’t already pay for the cost of your trip and room and board and entertainment, I’d be hard pressed to find an alternative.

–

To give you an idea of how important attending live events is to my business, I’m already making plans to attend Affiliate Summit East in Boston from August 10-12 later this year.

With that, here are the women of the Affiliate Summit:

Justine Ezarik is a lifecasting star who vlogs over at iJustine.tv. She spoke at the social marketing session with Sam Harrelson, Stephanie Agresta, Debbie Schultz and Tris Hussey sitting on the panel.

Schaaf Consulting’s Stephanie Harris spoke at the Anik Singal’s AC Certified workshop the day before Affiliate Summit.

Buy.com‘s Melissa Salas chaired the video marketing panel and also received the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year award. She’s done some great work with Buy.tv.

Irene Rojas is an affiliate manager with the OfferHive affiliate network based out of florida. Met her at the Affiliate Bash and she is friendly.

Carolyn Tang: I’ve talked to her on ABW and on Facebook and it was great to meet her at the summit. Carolyn’s probably the second most public face of ShareASale after ski fanatic and founder Brian Littleton. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk a whole lot, it was great to meet Carolyn and a number of the SAS merchants at the Affiliate Meet Market and the trade show.

Laura Alter, Lauren and Andrea Schoemaker

WickedFire regulars Laura Alter of Notebook Forums, Lauren AKA Turbolapp and my homie Andrea from PlanetAndrea…who’s been one of my buddies and supporters since I began.

Samantha Brachat: Sam over at NeverBlueAds has been a great affiliate manager and we did a podcast on seasonality and getting started in affiliate marketing. (Samantha Brachat Friday Podcast)

Heather Paulson:
We’ve exchanged emails and talked on the forums. I caught her presentation at the Affiliate Classroom Live workshop and it was a great opportunity to meet and talk to an experienced OPM and PPC manager like Heather at SAS’ Party Under the Stars. Check out the Paulson Management Group.

Danielle Nagami AKA MsDanielle
It’s always a great opportunity to meet people behind the blogs and meeting MsDanielle was no different. We were talking at the John Chow BBQ pig out the last day of the conference and I even got to carry her box around…

Robyn Jones
The former Ms Robyn Martin and now Mrs Kris Jones, always looking fab. Check out the PepperjamNetwork.

Rachel Honoway: Affiliate marketing veteran Rachel (who’s driving the AC Certified program) and I had some fun with the moving bed in the suite during the ShareASale party…but it’s really not what you think! If you haven’t yet, check out this edition of the Friday Podcast we did earlier. (Rachel Honoway Friday Podcast)

Julia Stead: We’ve talked on Linda Buquet’s 5Star Affiliate Marketing forum and I was surprised at how short she was.

Well, actually she’s like over 6′ and used to play basketball. We actually had got some footage of her and fellow ShareResults affiliate manager Jamie Fortunaso dancing on the couches at Tao during the Affiliate Bash, but the footage didn’t come out…

Ah well…ASE Boston I guess.

Debby Banning: Building trust and credibility is important in building your network and I first “met” Debby when she added me as a friend on Facebook. I checked out the link and saw that Mark Wielgus of 45n5.com was a common friend. Debby’s with Market Leverage.

Note: This is a snippet from the 300+ photos I took at the seminar. More to come, including some commentary and analysis of the topics covered during the show.

Check out details on the next Affiliate Summit

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 Childrenâ€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 be ready for the rally.

I am hearing that Shawn might be driving his “salami car” to serve as a pace car… (or to perhaps transform the race into a demolition derby…)

What’s a “salami car”? Watch the video below:

There’s a rumor that the great affiliate race queen Lisa Picarille (AKA Revenue magazine editor-in-chief) might be flagging off the race with a checkered flag….or a napkin… so there’s a Kodak moment right there…

Here’s a list of the current road rally competitors:

• InternetGeekGirl.com / Stephanie Agresta – $100
• Shopping-Bargains.com / Mike Allen – $100
• Affilisites Ltd. / Benjamin Bertisch – $100
• ZacJohnson.com / Zak Johnson – $100
• ShareASale / David Zelken – $100

For updates, you can visit the Starlight donations page.

To participate you should visit the road rally participation page ideally before this Friday. More importantly, you should order or buy your race car ahead of time.

Take note that with recent Department of Homeland Security regulations, you will need to wrap lithium batteries (most RC cars use these) in plastic. And you will need to put your RC remote in your check-in luggage.

In the meantime, my daughter Bianca was asking, when’s the Affiliate Motorcross coming up?

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…

—

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)

–

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.

–

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 on the panel.

–

Seer Interactive’s Wil Reynolds is always a popular presenter, and I’m looking forward to checking out his presentation ahead of his session.

—

Day 3 kicks off with an “Ask the Experts” session:

I’m keen to talk to Heather Paulson about her new Paulson Management Group company.

A little later in the day, be sure to check out:

A media panel chaired by Revenue Magazine’s Lisa Picarille. Besides myself, you’ll also see Jim Kukral, Anik Singal and Valerie Stevens on the panel.

In parallel with the media panel is the Super Affiliate panel:

With the likes of Pepperjam’s Kris Jones, John Chow, Zac Johnson and Amit Mehta in attendance.

And if you’re not already torn between two or more sessions, consider that later in the afternoon, you’ll have the ABestWeb panel:

With AbestWeb’s Haiko De Poel, AffiliateCrew’s Chuck Hamrick and Team Loxly’s Loxly AKA Deb Carney in attendance.

In the same time slot you have the social marketing panel:

With a Who’s Who of the blogosphere/social media space, like Sam Harrelson, Tris Hussey, Stephanie Agresta among others.

I would point out more highlights, but my fingers are worn-out from all that typing, so you might like to check out:

–> Affiliate Summit West 2008

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…

If we get a chance to talk at Affiliate Summit West next month in Vegas, you’ll discover that I do niche and product research very differently from other affiliates – whether SEO, blackhat or PPC affiliates.

I believe a lot of it has to do with my background in journalism…

During the dotcom era in early 2000, the startups which were on the verge of crashing-and-burning didn’t have much incentive to give you an exclusive interview, or give out any clues as to what was happening.

So I’ve developed an intuitive demographic/psychographic behavioral-based system to my research process and marketing campaigns…

So looking at the Facebook Top Countdowns application, think about it for a moment, what events are people likely to bookmark? Important ones? Significant events?

Think people will be motivated to pull a “sickie” to be able to catch a major sports event (the Olympics, the Super Bowl, World Cup Soccer), launch of a new book or movie (like the Harry Potter novel or movie, or Star Wars), or new product (like the next Nintendo WII or incarnation of the Apple iPhone or iPod)?

If anything, events like Valentine’s Day, the start of the new season of popular TV shows like Prison Break, Lost and American Idol Season 7 have all been flagged for you.

Smart affiliate marketers merely need to match these events with an appropriate affiliate or CPA offer and count the sales come in.

Failing which, you could always celebrate Chuck Norris’ birthday on March 10th…

Founded in 2003, Affilaite Summit brings together affiliate marketers, affiliate networks, vendors and merchants. The event has been going gangbusters with this year’s Affiliate Summit West and Affiliate Summit East nearing or breaching the 2,000 attendee mark.

I had a chance to talk to Shawn about the upcoming Affiliate Summit UK. Aside from a June 2004 Affiliate Summit held on a cruise ship from New York City to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, this’ll be the first time Affiliate Summit’s heading outside of the continental US.

Andrew: Hi Shawn, how did you pick the UK? Are you seeing a lot of growth in the affiliate marketing industry there?

Shawn: We were seeing a significant percentage of our attendees come from the UK, so they indicated to us that there was a demand for an Affiliate Summit that was local for them. I can’t speak to the growth of their affiliate marketing industry, but we’re seeing an increasing percentage of our audience come from the UK.

Andrew: What’re the highlights of AS UK? How’s it different from ASW and ASE.

Shawn: The keynote is Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research at E-consultancy, and then we’ll have six breakout sessions and some structured networking.

It’s different from the US shows in that the US events run three days and this one will be just one. Also, it’s significantly lower in price in the UK, and a smaller, more intimate crowd.

Andrew: Do you see different behavior among US and UK affiliates and affiliate networks?

Shawn: I just had Malcolm Cowley from buy.at on the Affiliate Thing podcast, and he laid out the differences. [Check out the Affiliate Thing podcast: The British Invasion: Affiliate Style!]

We brought on Jess Luthi of AffiliateProgramAdvice.com as a partner to aid us in catering to the UK audience.

Andrew: What’re the prospects for the UK and Europe in general like?

Shawn: From everything I hear, they are in a constant state of growth.

Andrew: Anything special we can look forward to in this show?

Shawn: I had expected this show to be very UK centric, but we’re seeing a wide variety of countries registering. In fact, the Gold Sponsor will be the M4N Affiliate Marketing network from the Netherlands.
–

Notes: Affiliate Summit London (UK) will be held on September 28th at the Olympia Conference Centre (Hammersmith Road, Kensington, London).

The speaker lineup includes:

• Matt Bentley, Chief Strategy Officer, Sedo
• Shawn Collins, Co-founder, Affiliate Summit
• Todd Crawford, VP Sales & Business Development, Digital River’s oneNetworkDirect
• Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research, E-consultancy
• Alison Guise, UK Managing Director, Commission Junction and Mediaplex
• Robert Kelly, Publisher Sales Manager, OSOYOU & TradeDoubler
• Wil Reynolds, Associate, SEER Interactive
• Sri Sharma, Managing Director, Net Media Planet
• Andreas van de Ven, Partner Sales Manager Europe, Lycos Europe GmbH
• Missy Ward, Co-founder, Affiliate Summit

I hear that Wil Reynolds never gives the same presentation twice, so if you heard him speak at ASE in Miami, I believe he’ll be presenting something new.

Shawn is giving away a limited number of “Exhibit Hall Only” passes for the event. You can check out the post: here.FULLY REDEEMED

To register for a full event pass (including the keynote address and breakout sessions), you should visit the Affiliate Summit Registration Page.

Note: There’re a total of 500 places available for the event and if you’re interested, you should register now.

If you didn’t make it down, Shawn has posted a listing of WebProNews’ video coverage of the event.

Jim Kukral seems to have been holed up in the Blogging Room the entire event and has posted quite a bit of content. Pity I wasn’t down there, else I’d have visited him once or twice (For real this time, Jim…)

He did post this marvel of a pic though:

Missy Ward and Internet Girl Geek Stephanie [Let me emphasize that’s it’s SIMULATED]

Shawn has also blogged about ASE:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

5Star Affiliate Linda Buquet has linked to the Affiliate Summit East blog posts. [Incidentally I won 5Star’s “Blog Buzz” prize a week back. Thanks Linda!].

Shoemoney has posted his reflections on Affiliate Summit East and has a number of interesting photos in his photo gallery.

Super Affiliate Zac Johnson, who spoke at ASE, has posted his thoughts on the event on his blog. If you didn’t make it to the show, you might be interested in his ASE swag giveaway. [The monkey looks cute, Zac, and I see you have 3 of them…hint, hint]

I guess someone out there would be interested in the WickedFire shirt.

The next Affiliate Summit will be in the UK, and following that in Vegas next year!