ShareASale’s Director of Client Services Carolyn Tang AKA Catango is one of the most pleasant and knowledgeable individuals in the industry and it was a pleasure to talk to her at the SaS booth, even though there were lots of people there.
As a tradeshow visitor, I’ve got more than my fair share of t-shirts, notepads, pens, paper weights and stationery to last 2.5 lifetimes. I liked how SaS did a little out of the box thinking to provide a photobooth where affiliates took some crazy pics (I’ll post mine later), and thoughtfully gave out baby T-shirts and bears. For affiliates with families or significant others, they’ll likely be seeing the SaS logo on a teddy bear or baby T for some time to come. (a good thing).
It was cool hanging out with top affiliates Colin “Google” McDougall and Ros Gardner over dinner at the Nobu Japanese restaurant at the Hard Rock for the private launch of Jim Lillig’s Offeratti network.
Considering that Colin doesn’t take raw food, it’s a testament to the great food at Nobu that Colin was enjoying the sashimi with the rest of us during the meal. It was also interesting to hear Colin tell his stories about his towed trailer that he rolls out for holidays. And if you’re looking for inspiration as you’re working towards your ideal affiliate lifestyle, Ros has bought a lot of nice toys/trinkets to enjoy the fruits of her labor.
It was great to meet affiliate network Market Leverage‘s marketing manager Dina Riccobono after talking to her over IM and being interviewed for MLTV late last year.
Market Leverage has a proactive outreach and affiliate recruitment program and it’s refreshing to see a network take the intiative in getting to know affiliates. They hosted a dinner at Switch at the Encore hotel, with Market Leverage CEO Mike Jenkins in attendance. It was a great opportunity to talk to affiliate managers Mike Kelly and Jen Fluker to get insight into how affiliate managers operate.
At the dinner, Mike announced the launch of Market Leverage’s greenlinks program, which provides links to video-based affiliate training from the ML website interface.
Jen Goode, better known as JGoode, headed the Affiliate Summit mentors program and did a great job (I believe there were more than 100 mentees in the program). I also had a picture taken with the penguin and nearly kidnapped him. Ah well, maybe next time.
With Jon Fisher AKA AOJon , founder of the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum. I started making these “gang signs” because a number of the “affiliate gangstas” started making them.
Before the panel discussion on Affiliate Strategies for Traffic Generation and Sales Conversion on the first day of the summit with Miles Baker, Geordie Carswell, Nickycakes.
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 had a great time presenting a session on social marketing and web 2.0 technologies for Jeremy Palmer’s Black Ink Project today and it fired off a couple of thoughts on how Internet marketers can leverage their brand to enhance their business.
Especially if you’ve been traditionally focusing on PPC or Search Engine Optimization to generate leads and sales, these strategies can give you a couple more tools for your arsenal.
Social marketing is all about open communication and visibility. (transparency and honesty are key too).
If you don’t already have an online presence, look at how you want to position yourself.
At the heart of it, a Dell computer, an Apple iPod or an Asus Eee PC is just a bunch of circuit boards and electronic chips soldered together and encased in an aluminum or polycarbonate case. It’s marketing magic that imbues these objects with the emotional associations of style, ease-of-use, prestige, etc.
In his book, “All Marketers are Liars”, Seth Godin mentions how consumers are actually the ones lying to themselves. They imbue products and services with these larger-than-life characteristics and spending their income on “driving machines” and believe that a computer can help them “think different”.
If you’re an online marketer and you aren’t already picking up these tips to up your game, you could be missing out on the massive leverage these strategies provide.
Pickup artists like Neil Strauss AKA Style, Erik Von Markovik AKA Mystery talk about creating personas or social avatars. I don’t see this as very different from a brand that a company creates.
One question might be asked “So, how do I create my identity if I’m new to this?”
Answer: Create your identity based on what you want to be (your outcome) and strive towards it. An avatar is your desired outcome, you build it as a goal you want to achieve.
Having it consistent with your personal thoughts, values and attitudes will help you market via social media and web 2.0 with authenticity and brutal effectiveness. Projecting a picture of yourself as something you’re not is going to be a fruitless exercise down the road.
The pickup artists have put a practical application to Robert Cialdini’s concept of social proof – the idea of DHV’s or Demonstration of Higher Value. In Internet marketer speak, that’s becoming an authority site in your niche. (ok, I’m extending the concept further from its original position).
More importantly, social marketing still represents a pool of huge untapped potential – something like the Excalibur buried in a block of stone. The secret here is that anyone can be the “King Arthur” that pulls it out and unleashes its potential – it’s a matter of stepping up and taking action.
This clip with one of Mystery’s lieutenants, JDog, address the issue of creating avatars. Read between the lines and the same principles of focus, rather than “peacocking” will equally apply in your business too.
I just got back from spending half a day at Project Hollywood 2, the homebase of PickUp Artist Mystery and the Venusian Arts team. Besides Mystery, I also got to meet Lovedrop and Matador.
If you missed the first season of VH1’s The PickUp Artist, you can check out the VH1 page.
The series is slated for a second season and there’re a number of surprises planned, so reality series fans should be waiting with bated breath…
So into an undisclosed apartment complex in Hollywood, I got to check out Mystery’s digs, which has a great pool and BBQ area, just perfect for parties…
I got to do the old meet-and-greet at Project Hollywood 2 AKA Hotel Mystery:
And besides getting a copy of his “Mystery Method” book autographed, I also got to hear about (more…)
