Session Description: Get off your butt and get to work. Motivational tips, tricks & strategies that can put you on the path to online success. The featured speaker was:

• Jim Kukral, President, JimKukral.com

This was a great session, a real kick in the pants to get off your ass and finish those projects you’ve put on hold.  I picked up a lot of great tips to put into action here on my site, and I think you will too.  Jim is a master motivator, without the cheese (for the most part).

Bullet Point Review!

• Doers get what they want…everyone else gets what they get.
• Be remarkable.
• Have a signature product.
• Are you a loser or a failure?
  • The failures are the ones that are successful.  Because they keep trying.
  • Learn your lessons the hard way.
• Fail hard, fail fast, and try something new.
• Negativity kills.  Remove negativity across the board.
• Everything we do online falls under two categories: solve problems or be entertained.
  • If you can combine both of those things, you can find a faster path to success.
  • It’s about having your pain taken away – find ways to take pain away from people.
• Easy always wins – solving problems is how you make money.
  • Think like Google – simple.
  • Simple, problem solving, customer oriented.
• Branding is the thick, sticky goo that a company puts on your hand – if it’s good, you’ll lick it off.  If it’s bad, you’ll go wash it off.
• You don’t sell what you think you sell.
  • e.g. Nike doesn’t sell apparel & sports equipment.  They contract spokespeople like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods because they sell winning.
• What is it your customers REALLY need from you?
  • Lead with what you sell.
  • If you can lead with “We save you time” or “money”, great.
• Universal Internet truths
  • No one reads anymore, they scan.
    • Average attention span online is 2.7 seconds (about as long as it takes to read a tweet).
    • Resource: DontMakeMeThink.com
    • Figure out why people come to your site and get rid of the other junk.
  • No more interruptions!
    • Short attention spans.
    • There’s a million competitors out there.
    • There’s got to be a way for you to stand out and be more noticed.
      • Go back to problem solving and understanding your customers.
    • You know you need to do these things, you just need a reminder to apply it.  Go out and make it happen.
    • Where do you want to be in a year from now?  6 months from now?
  • People want bargains
    • It doesn’t matter what you sell, people will buy more often if you give them a deal, OR the perception that they’re getting a deal.
    • The truth about humans is that they want to feel like they’re getting one over on you.
    • Always have some kind of discount and put it in their face.
  • Take a chance and get creative
    • What ideas have you had that you let slip away?
    • You never know what will happen, so try it.

Most of the Q&A was just follow up on some of the examples and resources Jim talked about.  I really feel energized with this site to take it to another level. Here’s the presentation:

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Entreproducer: The Affiliate Marketer as Media Mogul

Thin affiliate sites are disappearing from search engines, while social media is powered by content sharing, not sales pitches. It’s time to start thinking like a new media producer first and foremost, with affiliate relationships as just one form of monetization. The keynote was given by:

• Brian Clark, Co-Founder, DIY Themes

Brian notes that this was his first keynote, so good job on one under the belt!  It focused on creativity, which I really did connect with.  Unfortunately it did get kind of dry in the middle and I admit, I lost focus on taking notes.  But he ended on a memorable note using some music clips to illustrate some points.

Bullet Point Review!

• Focus on branded websites – better for link backs.  If you can get a keyword in, great, but that shouldn’t be the focus.
• Positioning – What’s unique about you?  How do you stand out in a competitive landscape?
• Design – Great usability of the content (presentation).
• Contact & Community – you want people to raise their hands and pay attention to you over time.
• It’s easier to make money if you’re using content to attract an audience and sell something related.
• From a mindset standpoint, realize you’re in the media business.
• Branded content started with soap operas, kinda.
• There’s nothing more powerful than being an authority figure yourself.
• Branding is really everything – it’s the story you’re trying to tell the world.
• They hear what they want and hopefully it’s what you want them to hear.
• It’s not about traffic, and it’s not just about audience, it’s about creating fans.
• You don’t have to be a rock star to the whole world, just to a group of fans.
• Your brand is a story.  If someone is saying something bad about you then it’s still branding.
• If the only thing people are saying about you is bad, at least you have feedback telling you want you are doing wrong.
• Most people that study creativity find that these people have lower associative boundaries.
• We’re socialized to put things in boxes and categories.
• Fail fast – keep trying and you’ll get a lot better at it.

Brian summarized with some clips from a group called Girl Talk that makes unlikely musical mash ups. I highly recommend going in search of this group, who has two albums out if I remember correctly.

Here’s the video provided by Affiliate Summit:

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Tuesday January 19th

The final day of Affiliate Summit started bright and early with the Pinnacle Awards scheduled before the last day’s keynote by Brian Clark.  This was a change for the conference agenda, which usually puts the Pinnacle Awards in the afternoon after other sessions.  I like the change because it gets the awards out of the way, and didn’t interfere with any other sessions or independent parties planned in the evening.  I seem to remember last year that some of the award winners had to jet quickly after the awards to get to a charity poker tournament, among other places.

The winners have been blogged all over, but here’s a quick recap just in case this is the only blog you read (unlikely): Affiliate of the Year – Nicholas Koscianski.  Affiliate Manager of the Year – Matt McWilliams.  Exceptional Merchant – eBay Partner Network.  Affiliate Marketing Advocate – Angel Djambazov.  Best Bloggger – Jeremy Schoemaker.  Affiliate Marketing Legend – Scott Jangro.

Next up was Brian Clark’s keynote.  He admitted at the beginning that it was his first keynote, so I guess he did pretty well all things considered.  Of course, I have a whole post devoted to the keynote that I’ll go into later.

Once again, I intended to go into more sessions on Tuesday, but got sidetracked with all the networking possibilities.  As well, I was given a demo of a new affiliate network of sorts, Impact Radius.  It gives merchants and affiliates a way to also reach out and work with more traditional media partners.  I had an opportunity to interview one of the founders, Lisa Riolo, about the launch of the new network, which will also be another blog post coming up soon.

I made it a point to get to Jim Kukral’s session How To Get Motivated For Success!, which I’ll of course be posting a recap for.  It was a great kick in the pants to get going with projects that have been stalled for awhile.  I know Eric Nagel wrote an entire post about Jim’s kick in the ass.

While in Jim’s session, I heard via Twitter that Daniel M. Clark of Geek Dads Weekly was invited to speak on the GeekCast.fm Live panel.  I was bummed since I wanted to participate with that panel/group like I did at Affiliate Summit East 2009, but happy for Daniel.  I went into the session for a moment, but left in favor of running back up to my room for a few things.  As I understand, the session was some industry talk followed up with a lot of “how to podcast” type questions, so it looks like I personally didn’t miss much information that I didn’t already know.

The evening ended with a fail on the part of the Rio.  A BlogUp mixer was planned at the VooDoo Lounge, which was official and everything, not just 100 people crashing the lounge for a mixer.  Unfortunately, it was raining and since the lounge has an indoor and an outdoor area, the lounge ended up double booked with another much larger group of people.  So we tried cramming into the bar at the steakhouse for awhile, overwhelming the poor bartender on duty.  Finally, the Rio moved the charade down to the iBar and served complimentary champagne as a mea culpa.

I stayed for awhile, the  it was on to another Las Vegas tradition – the buffet!  A large group of us went to the Carnival World Buffet at the Rio, one of my favorite buffets ever.  Then again, I haven’t been to many.  It was good times and good food with good people – one of my favorite activities!  After dinner, I went and hung out with Heather Smith & Julie Vazquez, who were still at the iBar.  Had a very pleasant last night of Affiliate Summit West 2010!

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