Day 3 of Affiliate Summit West 2010
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!
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 10: Gonna Make a Change
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
Unfortunately this week we had a mic failure on Mike’s part, so even though I could hear him when we were recording the podcast on Skype, when listening back he was inaudible. I tried amplifying it and leveling it and everything, but it was a lost cause. So instead, we decided I’d give you a recap on what we talked about since they were all pretty important issues. Basically, we’re taking a page from Shawn Collins’ book on podcast failures ;). So the title refers both to all the changes going on with tax rules and disclosure regarding affiliates AND to the change Mike has to make to get the recording right next week!
The recap episode is a short and sweet 26 minutes on the dot since it includes a Jackson tribute at the end.
In this show, we discussed:
- A recap of Affiliate Convention.
- Amazon dropped North Carolina affiliates and sent a warning letter to Rhode Island affiliates. Darren Rowse wrote about it on Problogger.
- The FTC is tightening it’s rules regarding disclosure, but it’s still ambiguous enough to leave affiliates questioning what this means for them. Daniel M. Clark wrote an article on the FTC disclosure issue, as well as Brian Clark of Copyblogger’s wrote about how to turn disclosure into a selling point.
- Twitter servers took a hit yesterday when the news about Michael Jackson’s sudden death broke. Are they ready to be a major search engine?
- Rumors swirled about other celebrity deaths – this doesn’t make Twitter look like a legitimate resource in the eyes of skeptics.
- Finally, Rest in Peace to Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, who both passed away yesterday. We pay tribute to MJ and pontificated on whether or not we’d see affiliates attempting to capitalize on these events. I see just now that Shawn Collins is thinking about this topic as well on his blog.
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 5: Staring Down the Governator
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
We are a touch late with delivering last week’s show to you. I was out of my office away lobbying against California AB 178 on Tuesday and then at Web 2.0 Expo the rest of the week, so Mike and I took today to catch up on a few things. We start all business and devolve into my rant on the etiquette of booth staff at trade shows. So be sure to heed my words and stop, collaborate, and listen!
A few things we mention this week:
- My second job as a California lobbyist against AB 178
- Affiliate Voice: The Voice of the Affiliate Industry launched this week. Their president is Melanie Seery of NYAffiliateVoice.com
- Twitter dropped their auto-follow service, so we took a look at 3rd party apps like Tweet Later.
- Mike explored Max Banner Ads as an adserver for his blogs.
- A brief recap of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and the tools I found potentially useful: StartForce, Safari Books Online, and GooseGrade
- Another tech blog by our pals Sam Harrelson and Scott Jangro called Cloud39.com
- Shout outs: Stephanie Lichtenstein’s awesome work on the #advertisingtax organization and Facebook group, and Daniel M. Clark’s great help via Twitter.
This episode comes in at a mouth watering 52 minutes.
Read MoreGeek Dads At Home Podcast
A few geeky stay at home dad’s I know decided to convene during their daddy day care days for a new podcast, aptly titled Geek Dads @ Home.
Happy Birthday Ian Clark | Geek Dads @Home: “The premise of our podcast revolves around three dads working from home while we provide day care for our kids. We will share our insights on the tools that allow us to function in this set up, but more importantly the podcast gives us a record in our own voices of the experiences of raising our children. The hope is that some time in the future, when they can best appreciate it, our kids will subscribe to this RSS feed and hear their dad’s perspectives on their lives growing up ….”
Joe did a guest post here last week, Tales of a Home Office Worker Dad, so I’m stoked to listen to this. I’m sure it will be good stuff! Take a listen if you’re interested in dad’s doteing on their daughters and talking marketing and working from home!
Read MoreReview: The Big Book of Spam
Have you ever actually bothered to ever read some of the subject lines of the ridiculous spam emails you get? Author Daniel M. Clark decided to do just that – and record all this sarcastic and funny gut reactions to them all in his new book, The Big Book of Spam, available for a reasonable $13.99.
I admit – without knowing Daniel or much about the book he was writing, he sent me one to reivew and I was worried that it might be dry with marketing analysis of spam headlines, and that I wouldn’t get around to reading it (like the last Joel Comm AdSense Secrets eBook I received that I still haven’t read). But this was a great fun read while I was jetting around the western United States a couple weeks ago on planes and in airports.
Relatively small considering it’s the BIG book of spam (funny in itself), the fonts are big, there’s generally two subject lines and their remarks per page, and it is really funny. I want to share with you my top 10 from the book. I shall warn you in advance, there’s some off-color language in a couple. More than half the book was devoted to the “Sex and Celebrities” category.
- Do you wish ladies would have an… An…? What? An… aardvark? An… obelisk? An… infection? Eww, no, probably not that. An… ice cream cone? Oooh, yummy! Yes, I wish ladies would have an ice cream cone, because maybe I could get a lick. Of the ice cream cone.
- Avoid enhancement pills I’m working on it. These days the kids are popping enhancement pills like candy, much the same way that my generation used to “smoke the weed”. It’s very, very important for the word to get out on “the street” that enhancement pills are very “dangerous”. Parents, heed the words of our noble spammer. Make sure your “kids” are “staying away” from the enhancement pills. This “public service message” brought to you by The Big Book of Spam, the spammer who sent it to us, donations from viewers like you, and this station. Also by a grant from the Corporation for Annoying the Hell Out of People. And the letter B. And the number 7.
- Girls go wild, screaming and stripping and running after me when they see me at the door. It’s embarrassing, really. Last time it happened, I was walking into a church. Talk about awkward.
- Does your spouse bore you to death? Cheer up! Are you trapped in a boring, loveless marriage? Do you wish you were happy? Do you wish that ugly, overweight, unfuckable hag in the ridiculous house coat would just spontaneously combust? Cheer up! For only three easy payments of $1999.99, we can arrange… something. If you know what we mean.
- No hardware needed, satellite tv on your pc Computer, monitor, network card or modem, a router perhaps… a big satellite in outer goddamn space… nope, no hardware needed at all.
- Cleanse your Excess Weight Look, I know I’m not Johnny Six-Pack in the abs here, but I don’t need to be told to cleanse my excess weight. I do that when I shower, and don’t need to be reminded that I should be hitting the gym instead of sitting in front of a computer for ten hours a day.
- Locate super and despicable Box Software for PC and All Macs!!! Your thesaurus has failed you.
- Open Your Eyes to Extreme Multidimensional Mascara! I hope it stops at three, because once you start getting into fouth- and fifth-dimensional mascara, strange shit starts to happen.
- Have your own Vegas Vacation – Participation Required “Honey, I’m off to Vegas. What? NO, this thing says I have to. I’ll be back in a week, I swear – maybe ten days. Seriously, the email says I have to. No, of course I won’t hire any hookers. No, it won’t be like last time.”
- Paris Hilton Sextape. We keep up to date with today’s hottest stars Her sex tape was news in 2003 – you’re not keeping up very well with today’s hottest stars if that’s the best you can do.
