The Rio hotel loaned the Affiliate Summit West's co-organizer, Shawn Collins, a Segway to get around the massive hotel/convention area. Shawn was kind enough to let people try it out.

I think Steve Rosenbaum, the founder of Magnify.net, said it best when he wondered out loud while riding the Segway - "I wonder if it will ever not be dorky to ride on one of these?"

After watching this video of myself taking my first Segway ride, I think I know the answer...

Yup, dorky forever.

Posted by James at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Well, it’s over. I’m writing this post on the plane back to Denver and I couldn’t be happier with the trip that I had. Huge thanks to Josh for putting me up for the Summit, and for being such an all-around great guy to hang with. You’re my boy Josh - next time we’re doing the go-karts and shooting more machine guns...that was awesome.

Also wanted to say a big thank you to all the other affiliate bloggers who really made me feel at home. Thanks to Mark from 45n5.com, Carsten, Scott, Sam Harrelson, John Hasson, and Jim Kukral - it was great to meet you all (or meet you again in some cases).

Of course a huge thank you goes to Missy Ward and Shawn Collins - I have no idea how those two manage to put together an amazing conference and remain the life of the party at the same time. I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to cover the Summit via Marketing Punk. Also, thanks to to Shawn for letting people ride the Segway scooter - not sure why it made me carsick, but it was a lot of fun.

Also, love him or hate him, you have to thank Jason Calacanis for doing what he did at the Keynote...It’s rare that you see a keynote that leaves everyone talking for the duration of the conference, but that’s what Jason is a pro at. So thanks Jason...you jerk. ;)

Well, the turbulence is kicking in, trying to hold my coke in one hand and type with the other - so I’ll take that as my sign to wrap this up. So last of all I want to thank all of the attendees of Affiliate Summit - I’ve always thought that the best part of Affiliate Summit are the people who attend it, and this year confirmed that notion for me.

Posted by James at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I’m writing this as I am sitting in the Social Media Strategies in Affiliate Marketing session at the Summit, and interestingly we are talking about blogs. It’s getting me thinking, is this conversation coming too late or is blogging becoming the next Facebook?

The thing is, people seem to be getting burned out on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, but I have been running into non-techie folks who are starting blogs and loving it.

If you asked a lot of industry experts a few months back, there would tell you that blogging is on the decline - but now I am wondering if blogging is coming back after people have gotten a taste of having the voice, but are tired of the restrictions of social networks.

Just a thought.

Still, I am wondering if blogging is the right thing to be talking about in this session...I’m wondering why we aren’t focusing more on other forms of social media like user generated content (reviews), social networking sites, and YouTube marketing - especially with iJustine in the house.

Ah well - maybe next year.

Posted by James at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My first official session of the day today was Super Affiliate Strategies That Work. The session was a who’s who of “check picture” affiliates (too bad Calacanis isn’t attending this session). Namely John Chow, Zac Johnson, and Amit Patel along with Pepperjam president Kristopher Jones acting as moderator.

I ended up arriving late to this session (thanks again to the less than adequate signage), but once I did get in, it was the start of the Q&A section of the session. Here are some highlights of what was asked:

• Not surprisingly, many of the first questions focused in on black, white and grey hat tactics...focusing more on the dark than the light.
• One guy asked a question about the benefits and pitfalls of black hat techniques as an affiliate - which pulled the veil on the “pissing in pond” mindset that, no matter what Jason C. says, we can’t seem to get away from. John Chow pointed out that we are all marketers, and black or white, it’s still marketing (not sure if I am a fan of that).
• Trademark bidding was discussed a bit - with all panelists agreeing that it isn’t a huge deal for them personally, which I found a bit surprising.
• Someone asked Amit about the best places to do PPC and he confirmed what I’ve experienced - Google, Yahoo! and MSN are the places to be...the smaller engines/content networks are not worth the effort/aggravation.
• Winner Alert - a tool that can be set up in 5 minutes that will help you better understand which of your ads have better click-through rates on PPC. Winner Alert emails you daily with the winning ads.
• For PPC, you can day-part depending on which days convert the best. Amit sees that the best converting days differ based on the niche - so you should track daily conversions and day-part based off of that.
• Zac suggest having a close relationship with your affiliate managers - it helps you keep up on the latest info for the offer and gives you a better chance of getting higher payouts
• Due to the increased use of quality score by Google, affiliates need to be doing well from an organic standpoint as well...if not, you will have a hard time keeping up your quality score.
• Amit is a huge fan of AdWords Editor - it is the only thing he uses to manage his PPC.

Overall, it was a pretty decent session. I was glad to see that the self promotion was held to a minimum, and the tips given would be valuable to most affiliates.

Posted by James at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we hit up the Affiliate Bash last night at the Tao nightclub at the Venitian. The folks throwing the party were quite proud that the party was open to all attendees, which was nice, but there is something to be said for more intimate parties.

Anyway, the party was pretty decent, if not chaotic, but the club itself is beautiful and having the Blue Man Group play there (even if it was brief), was a nice touch.

Here are a couple pictures from the evening...

Posted by James at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the interesting things I saw yesterday was the domain name auction. There were some interesting names on the block like chinesenoodles.com and offer.com. This is a short clip of the auction for AdultSuperstore.com - final price $150,000.

Posted by James at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by James at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive gave a very good speech on Futureproofing Your SEO Efforts. The thing I really like about Wil is he is passionate about SEO and helping his clients, and it showed in his speech...especially when he was sparring with Jason Calacanis.

Side note: I think it has been a long time since Jason has been a “unknown” person, and he seems to think the tactics that gave him success in the late 90s would still work today...I don’t know if that really the case. I think Jason’s notoriety has helped him kick start efforts like Mahalo - and that is not a luxury we all have at this point. I’m not saying that is bad, I’m just saying he should keep that in mind.

Will did a good job of really laying out the reality of SEO, not mincing words and not backing off when people asked questions that would have made more sense at the 1999 Search Engines Strategies Conference. I mean a 20,000 keyword meta keyword tag? Did someone just thaw that guy out from a cryogenic lab?

Anyway, I’m writing this as things are deteriorating with a lot of Q&A from people who are SEO novices...always the worst part of SEO sessions. Will is doing well though.

Here are some of Wil’s tip from the session:

• Relevance never gets old


• Tricking search engines is not a long-term business strategy


• Google may be using Google Reader subscription information as a data point to improve relevancy


• Google is now a registrar - they could use this data to track all your sites if you do something bad - keep that in mind


• Google can use data from conversion tracking and Google Analytics to improve relevancy


• Start thinking more like a marketer than a techie when doing SEO - if you are focused on keyword density and meta tag length, you are going to lose in the SEO game


• We give search engines a lot more credit than they deserve a lot of the time


• Patience is an essential skill for SEOs


• When you work on multiple sites you have a better chance of understanding what is a real algorithm change and what is a hick-up. If you don’t have multiple sites, build up a network of people who are optimizing sites as well. Compare notes.


• Best thing to do with Directories is get the big ones (Yahoo!, Best of the Web) and then look for directories that focus on your niche.


• Use MSN ad Intelligence - it rules


• Start looking at how-to videos and figure out how they can work for you

All said an done - this was a great session. Well done Wil!

Posted by James at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ok, so maybe my Eagle Scout skills have totally gone haywire, but I am having a horrible time finding sessions at Affiliate Summit. I spent 10 minutes trying to find out where the Video Marketing session was and ended up just skipping the session altogether because it was so late when Josh finally found out where it was.

Also, they don't have any extra schedules and I left mine behind today...so I feel like I am flying blind. Thank god for WiFi.

Posted by James at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As expected, Jason Calacanis delivered an interesting yet unsurprisingly controversial Keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2008. The overall point of the keynote was to encourage affiliates to use their brainpower towards something bigger that spamming, affiliate links and thin site creation.

Here’s the top ten things I got out of Jason’s talk:

1. Usenet, which preceded the Internet we all know, was killed by over zealous marketers...the Internet is on the same path, and affiliates are a part of that
2. Affiliates are polluting our own well - we should realize that
3. Curation is the solution - examples are Citysearch, Yelp, Angie’s List, LinkedIn, Hulu
4. Shoot for the slow and steady curve, not the quick buck. Doing so will lead you down the right path to long-term success
5. Holding up six figure checks is pathetic - Shoemoney was used as an example
6. Suggests that affiliates need to realize they are at the bottom of the food chain and then work up from there
7. Affiliate/SEOs are smarter and work harder than a lot of the people working at big companies in The Valley - affiliates could do a lot better for themselves, but they don’t because they are intimidated
8. Affiliate marketer’s big problem is that they are focused on short-term gains and think too small
9. Jason was more careful with his words than he has been in the past - made sure he didn’t categorize everyone as bad. Sounds like the “SEO is bullshit” experience has made him select his words more carefully.
10. Failure is just as big a part of the American dream as success - don’t be afraid to shoot for the stars, and if you fail, that’s OK. Just build another rocket.

Reaction to the keynote seemed to be overall fairly positive. Walking out I head comments that ranged from "the speech was inspirational" to "that guy is an elitist."

Yup, sounds like your average reaction to a Calacanis speech. :)

Tags: affiliatesummit

Posted by James at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So we decided to hang out for a bit in the bathroom of the Palm's Sky Villa suite at the ShareASale party. Funnily enough, we found the source of water for the bathtub to be quite entertaining. Obviously we had to turn it into a game. Here's Hardeep, an awesome guy we met at the party, playing the "Where Does The Water Come From Game."

Posted by James at 02:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Met a couple of nice guys from EmailDirect.com at the Meet Market today. I put them on the spot and asked them to do a 30 second pitch for their company...this is the very impressive result...

Posted by James at 02:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Quick video on the plan for today...

Posted by James at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, Josh hooked us up with a pimp room, so I figured it was time to make our own rendition of MTV Cribs. I think it goes without saying that production values might be lacking just a tad...

Tags: affiliatesummit

Posted by James at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Josh and I had to kill some time before our hotel room was ready, so we ended up doing something I've always wanted to do in Vegas...shoot a sub machine gun :)

Tags: affiliatesummit

Posted by James at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: affiliatesummit

Posted by James at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow - I look tired...oh wait, I am.

Tags: affiliatesummit

Posted by James at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)