Twitter is alive with activity. The summit has set up a group twitter that tracks whenever someone uses the keyword asw08 in their twits. This is very cool, especially considering I didn’t know Twitter had this capability!

Everyone seems to be in a rush to get things done. Jim Kukral from ScratchBack.com is MCing the keynote on Monday. He’s twittered several times tonight about the video he’s working on for the presentation. At ASE07 in Miami the keynote was Ze Frank, a hilarious individual, so I’m hoping for no less at ASW08.

Stephanie Agresta from Stephanie Agresta Consulting is also a speaker and author of the Internet Geek Girl blog. She’s twittered off and on today about her flight information and getting ready for the trip from out east. Sam Harrelson from Affiliate Fortune Cookies has been twittering as well and he’s even had to change his flight because of inclement Northeastern weather.

Of course myself, I’m twittering here and there about getting ready. I’m not lucky enough to have a nice new company supplied laptop, so I’m on my own personal laptop this weekend. I do have a press pass, so I be working on keeping the interweb updated from the blogger’s room through this blog and Twitter. I’m committed despite my chunky clunky Dell Latitude laptop :p.

As a final note while I’m getting my laptop set up tonight, I encourage everyone associated with affiliate marketing in any way to check out this month’s issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine. Besides there being a keen write up of the PsPrint Affiliate Program, there’s a lot of great affiliate manager tips. I’ll be attending the whopping 10 hour Affiliate Classroom LIVE affiliate manager training on Saturday in Las Vegas before the summit. I’m eager to get in there and take notes… is it too much to hope for actual desks? :p I know that it’s at the Rio and from all the conference space I’ve seen at hotels in the last year, I’m sure there won’t be surfaces to write on readily available, so I’ll be taking my clipboard with me.

Hope to see you there! I’m considering bringing my camcorder with me to the exhibit hall, so if you’ve used PsPrint in the past, come on by for an impromptu video plug!

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In my never-ending quest to attract readers, I’ve come across several free tools that assist bloggers in marketing their blogs and attracting even more readers. I thought I’d share.

1. StatCounter.com: StatCounter is a little bit o’ heaven I stumbled upon about a year ago when I was setting up some private websites and wanted to know if anyone was even going to the sites. With StatCounter it’s free to sign up and get emailed reports of the daily traffic to the URL you set up. You can run multiple campaigns and get various different types of data from this website. If you want more in depth information you can always pay for an account, but it’s not necessary. My favorite part are the e-mailed reports… I’ve set up weekly reports that let me know how many visitors my site has had. And I’ve never had a problem with any strange incorrect data.
2. Twitter: When I first heard about Twitter I was in Miami attending the Affiliate Summit East. I was like a sponge with the things I learned in the sessions I attended and wanted to apply all of my knowledge right away. So I came back and started to read Twitter. I have to admit that at first it seemed pointless, but as I’ve immersed myself into “mini blogging” I’ve started to get it. Link to the blog to remind people to read. Reach out to people with similar interests if you see something they’d be interested in. If your blog addresses that interest, even better. It’s a fun little community I’m happy to be part of.
3. BlogRush: This is a new one I just started using last week, and I’m happy to say it’s worked just a little bit. The service itself is relatively new to the blogosphere, but the nifty little widget I like. A few pretty reputable blogs I know of, including Marketing Pilgrim where I first learned about BlogRush, have joined the link exchange so far. There’s really nothing you have to do once it’s been installed in your blog and it’s totally free. Since it is in it’s infancy, some reporting features are still having the bugs worked out, but I have faith that this will be a good little widget to have.
4. ArticlesBase: I admit… I haven’t poked around much on ArticlesBase yet, but so far I’m fascinated. You can create your own submission and read other articles based on keywords. I love tagging and keywords myself, so this is a great tool to submit your article (for free) and to find other articles that you’ll enjoy reading.

I’m always looking for other freebie marketing ideas, so let me know if you know of any other great tools out there.

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Some of my most useful immersion into the professional world recently has been my attendance at trade shows. I attended Affiliate Summit East in Miami at the beginning of July and just this week attended Inman News Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. Both had their benefits, although I enjoyed the Miami show a bit more.

There are a few reasons for this. For one, I didn’t feel like a child at the Miami show. The crowd there was a lot younger, fresher, relaxed. Of course, the affiliate marketing industry is a newer industry, not like real estate. Real estate is a very traditional industry, with a lot of older, established professionals. Which don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing either. The purpose of the show was connecting new technologies with agents & brokers to improve the business.

I also learned a bit more at the Miami show that’s relevant to my professional life. It was also my first trade show, first business trip, so I was super pumped to get back and apply all the new things I learned. Connect was valuable, but reiterated a good deal of what I learned in Miami. But it gave me a good reinforcement that the tips I got from one industry are universally applicable to other industries.

A moment about keynote speakers… both conferences I went to had incredibly engaging keynote speakers. AS East had Ze Frank, a very funny and smart guy. He was very vivacious, and presented his message in a roundabout way, but hilariously entertaining. Connect invited Hugh McLeod, again a very intelligent and funny gentleman. His message was more direct but still engaging. I encourage you to check out their websites and if you ever get the opportunity to hear them speak, take it.

I’ll leave you with this, which is not the model for my blog, but a cartoon by Hugh that I just ran across that seems appropriate.

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