{"id":280,"date":"2007-01-30T23:02:29","date_gmt":"2007-01-30T15:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whoisandrewwee.com\/internet-marketing-events\/affiliate-summit-west-2006-wrap-up\/"},"modified":"2007-01-30T23:02:29","modified_gmt":"2007-01-30T15:02:29","slug":"affiliate-summit-west-2006-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/internet-marketing-events\/affiliate-summit-west-2006-wrap-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Affiliate Summit West 2006 Wrap Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just touched down in Singapore earlier today and although the 14 hour time difference is causing major havoc to my body clock, I figured this is the perfect opportunity to reflect on Affiliate Summit West and the takeaways from having flown 20+ hours around the world to attend.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Shawn Collins<\/a> and Missy Ward who conceptualized Affiliate Summit<\/a> and have been grown it from strength-to-strength at about 200 participants in the first AS in 2003 till more than 2,000 at the recently concluded ASW.<\/p>\n

It was a great opportunity to meet up face-to-face with a number of the online marketers I’d been reading and talking with over the past few months like ShoeMoney<\/a>, Scott Jangro<\/a>, Kris Jones<\/a>, PlanetAndrea<\/a>, Jon Fisher<\/a> from WickedFire<\/a> and Joe Whyte<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Becky “Webmoxy” Ryan<\/a> was a friendly and intelligent person to talk to (even though I was deep in thought and seemed to have unintentionally ignored her when she called out a few times).<\/p>\n

\"pepperjam\"<\/p>\n

Maura, Robyn, Andrew Wee at the Pepperjam booth<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"shoemoney\"<\/p>\n

Shoemoney’s assistant Nicole<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"webmoxy\"<\/p>\n

Webmoxy Becky Ryan<\/strong><\/p>\n

More surprising still was the fact that a number of affiliate managers and affiliates whom I hadn’t met prior to ASW mentioned they enjoyed reading this blog.<\/p>\n

Blogging can be a solitary affair and it’s comforting to have face-to-face validation (which gives a human face to the otherwise clinical awstats’ 6000+ monthly uniques).<\/p>\n

Although I missed them, perhaps I’ll have a chance to catch up with Super Affiliate Ros Gardner<\/a>, BlogKits founder Jim Kukral<\/a>, Sam Harrelson<\/a> and SleepyBlogger Robyn Tippins<\/a> at the next event. I heard Neil Patel<\/a> and Cameron Olthuis<\/a> had to leave Sunday evening for school, so I probably missed them by a hair.<\/p>\n

What I greatly appreciated was the opportunity to meet Mike Krongel and his team over at Copeac<\/a>. They threw a killer party for the WickedFire folks over at the Caramel Loung in the Bellagio.<\/p>\n

It’s a great opportunity to have met up with WickedFire founders Jon and Brandon and WF members like John “I like c**k”, SEO_Mike<\/a>, chrislingle, lerchmo, jDog, DruSam, Surly, Kaveman<\/a>, Smaxor, Jon Warass<\/a>, ExEngima, Rick.<\/p>\n

Mike Peters from Software Projects<\/a> had some interesting stories to tell too.<\/p>\n

I’ve been listening to some of the post-ASW buzz and one of the issues I’ve heard is that the workshops didn’t provide good information.<\/p>\n

I think the major element of a ‘summit’ is to share ideas. And given the time constraint of a 1.5 hour session, I’d doubt it’s fair to compare AS’ workshop sessions with Elite Retreat or other multiple day workshop focused on a single topic like SEO or list building.<\/p>\n

I had the opportunity to speak to merchants making their first foray into affiliate marketing and they seemed to have got basic information to follow up on their efforts.<\/p>\n

The biggest benefit of ASW is ‘being there’.<\/p>\n

And ShoeMoney has rightly pointed out that the best exchange of ideas takes place after the workshop, in the bars and restaurants after<\/strong> the sessions end. In a more relaxed environment, you have an open exchange of ideas and trading information on what works and what doesn’t.<\/p>\n

And herein lies the rub, Internet Marketing has more to do with relationship building and personal contact, than just the technology aspect that people generally get obsessed about.<\/p>\n

Online marketing is more than composing the best Web copy, or optimizing your landing page or PPC campaign.<\/p>\n

If you don’t<\/strong> have grassroot supports from your peers, whether it’s getting feedback on something you’re implementing, or even working together on a project, you can still succeed, it will just take a much longer time.<\/p>\n

You can, of course, read about ASW and other events from this blog, though in the long run you’d be missing out on some great networking opportunities.<\/p>\n

Affiliate Summit East will be coming up later this year.<\/p>\n

Will you be there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just touched down in Singapore earlier today and although the 14 hour time difference is causing major havoc to my body clock, I figured this is the perfect opportunity to reflect on Affiliate Summit West and the takeaways from having flown 20+ hours around the world to attend. Thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[61],"tags":[454,209,337,380,505,204,503,504,359,459,155,360,325,372,482,342,1793,373],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}