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
On any given day, my blog comment spam filter throws more than 500 spammy blog comments into the digital trashbin.
I go through the remainder, and too a whole bunch more in as well. These are typically with the sender’s “website” listed as a squidoo lens with the lens title something along the lines of “/instant-money-bonanza” or “/5second-millionaire” and inevitably leads to a spammy/scammy page with a $27 ebook teaching you how to make $1,000,000 in your sleep, while sipping a margarita.
Right…
So if so many blog comments are ending up in the trash, especially if you have a vigilant editorial team checking the comment moderation queue, is it even worth taking the time to submit one?
Let’s expand this a little wider and include forums and social networking/conversation sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and even Yahoo! Groups too.
The primary goal in social marketing is to (more…)
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…
—
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.
–
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…)
I get many questions about the tactical aspects of internet marketing, like what’s the best webhost, which is the best CPA network, how to configure a xml datafeed, how to use an autoresponder, which is the best ebook.
If you’re interested, I mention a number of these in the course of my blogging and i’ve listed a couple in my recommendations tabs.
But here’s the kicker, although these ‘technical’ questions represent about 90% of the questions that get asked, it’s the 10% of other questions that will help you grow your business and explode your profits!
The other questions deal with building your business, and positioning it for long term growth.
At the root of it,
Succeeding in internet marketing is simple and fundamental
1) Find a need.
2) Match it with a solution (could be a product/service)
Macro Issues in Internet Marketing
Most important than the ‘how do i learn HTML’ type questions are the macro or higher level considerations of your business strategy.
Your business strategy works as a business plan or blueprint to help you identify what you should or should not be doing.
It also goes into how you should be doing it.
If done correctly, your business plan will give you the answers to the questions you might be wondering about – like how do I select a partner, how much should i budget for my expenses and how much you should charge for your products, which offers or products should i promote.
Your business blueprint will drive what you do and when you’re stuck or you’re wondering about the next action you should take, it determines which of the tiny pieces of blog or affiliate or seo or ppc tools and software you will need.
I want to give you 5 important factors to take note of as you’re building your business this year.
————————-
1) TRUST
If you’ve dealt with a bank, insurance provider, realtor or another service provider who’s serious about building a long term relationship, you’ll notice that they will spend time to get to know you and what you’re about. If they were to try to force you to buy something the first time you met, it would seriously damage or even kill the relationship.
A significant part of the success I experienced in my business last year was due to the network i built up and the relationships and contacts i had made.
Spend a moment to think about the people you consider your good friends, and the people you do business with.
what is it that makes you trust them?
How would you bring those values and attitudes into your business?
Consciously or unconsciously, we buy from people we like and we trust.
As an internet marketer and as an affiliate,
promotion doesn’t always need to be something that you’re an affiliate or something you own. Might be a free resource.
You may not benefit from it, but your audience could stand to benefit greatly from.
Aaron Wall provides a number of free equivalents for products which other marketers are charging hundreds of dollars for, in a list of resources in his SEO Book. His intention is to help you grow your business and that builds trust.
Build trust.
You might recommend something free today, but if you build up your social goodwill bank (refer to blog post), you will reap the rewards later.
*** on a strong, reliable and trusted recommendation, conversions can be higher than 50%.
I got a short and sweet question today “Is blogging dead?
I was planning to start a blog, but I heard that I should create and optimize a Facebook profile instead.
What’s your advice?”
–
That’s an interesting question and let me do my best to you an interesting answer.
If you read Stephanie Agresta (AKA Internet Geek Girl’s) post “Blogging is not dead (but I am really busy)“, you’d realize that like a lot of popular bloggers (eg. Sam Harrelson, Wayne Porter, Jim Kukral and Co), Steph has reduced the frequency of her “long form” (eg. WordPress blogging), in favor of micro-blogging (eg. Twitter and it’s companions).
So blogging is not “dying” nor will it “die” anytime soon.
The significant issue at hand is to get a grip on your long term business growth.
Are you being overly tactical – looking at the micro level of your business – whether you should set up a squidoo page, a hubpage, a facebook profile, throw up a social community site…
When really you need to be more strategic in nature!
If you need an analogy – strategic or being long term-focused means looking at the forest, and fashioning a master plan.
Being tactical means you’re looking at an individual tree and trying to optimize it. Taking care of the day-to-day. so to speak.
Don’t get me wrong, you NEED to be tactical in nature when you’re going into a new niche and building up your skills, but you shouldn’t be (more…)
Does it make sense to slog for 40 years at a job that grinds you down from 9-to-5 every day, just to build a nice nest egg for retirement? And if you are an Internet Marketer, how do you continually fire yourself up? Find out in this week’s Friday Podcast.
