Days -1 and 1 of Affiliate Summit East 2008
Just a quick recap of days negative 1 and 1 of Affiliate Summit East 2008 before I head off to the Share a Sale Under the Stars party that started an hour ago (give me a break, I’m fashionably late!).
Day Negative 1 (a.k.a. Saturday)
- The Affiliate Classroom Live event went well overall. I feel like the people in most of my discussions were picking up what I was putting down. I feel like I could have been better prepared, but that was really my own fault. I hope that I’m asked back in the future of other events and can do a bang up job! Also met some cool peeps.
- AffSpot.com forum meet-up was fun – got to meet some new people like Angie & Roger from Snow Consulting, talked at length with the ever charming Lisa Picarille of Revenue Magazine, finally met the lovely penguin Jen Good of JGoode Designs, was thrown schwag by Sam Harrelson & Aunesty Janssen the admins of the Spot, and met Bill (Beachy), Ron (7daysRon), & some others that came & went. As I was looking down reading something on my phone outside the bar I recognized Jim Kukral of Scratchback soley by his mandals with socks walking by! Love it.
- Speaking of Sam, he had to bail on the Affiliate Dinner last night so he graciously gave me his ticket! I went and had a great meal, lots of laughs at the expense of the roastee Connie Berg of FlamingoWorld.com, and talked at great length with apparently my #1 fan Kim Rodgers from 4Checks.com. It’s funny that I JUST ordered my new checks from them for the first time last week, so we had a great discussion! The highlight just might have been Brian Littleton from Share-a-Sale dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow for Connie’s love of all things Johnny Depp.
- Finally, while the concept of recording a live podcast for GeekCast live was a terrific idea, it ended up being a FAIL of epic proportions. It was an insanely fun time talking and having fun with peeps but between the audience, topics, & Shawn’s BeerTender, it was too much of a party. It was a blast though that kept me up until 3:45am.
Day 1 – Affiliate Summit Kicks Off
- Registration was incredibly easy now that they’ve come up with self check in kiosks. Love it!
- Missed the PPC and Social Media tracks I wanted to attend thanks to a righteous headache this morning (no, I DON’T think it was a hangover!) but heard the social media was good.
- Headed into the Meet Market and MAN was it packed! Got my fare share of awesome schwag, bought myself an “I Gave Back!” button, and got some good info on some cool networks and programs. It was a zoo in there so I had to bail, bu t it was good that I did since I’d lost track of time and was able to get to the NY tax laws session.
- The day isn’t over! I’m shutting this bad boy down in lieu of blogging about the other session I attended today and I’m heading over to the ShareASale party on the Odyssey Cruise yacht… can’t promise how long I’ll stay but it should be a blast!
Ball: Dropped Stress: High
I have good news, and I have bad news. Hopefully this will explain why I’ve been asleep at the wheel here.
First, the good!
- TrishaLyn.com is now available as a mobile compatible site! Just point your smartphone browser to www.trishalyn.com! Thanks to Shawn Collins & the Geek Cast crew for mentioning this nifty plugin in the last episode and Shawn specifically for sending me the link.
- Speaking of Geek Cast, I was mentioned two weeks running. Apparently Scott Jangro and I will be the only audience members for their Geek Cast Live show from Affiliate Summit, and Lisa’s counting on me to help keep the boys in line. Ah, good times will be had I can FEEL it!
- Affiliate Summit East 2008 is SOLD OUT and takes place in a little over a week. I’m excited to be hitting Boston again and finally meeting some of these people I’ve been networkin’ with online since the last summit.
- Affiliate Classroom Live! is also in about a week, so I really REALLY need to get my act together and formulate some talking points for the round-table discussion I’ll be leading.
Now, the not so great.
I’m sad to say that after almost 2 years my beloved supervisor is leaving our company. I’m going to miss her tremendously as she’s been a complete pleasure and joy to work for! To be honest, I’m taking the change harder than I should because of….- I’m moving! Just from one city here in the East San Francisco Bay Area to another, nothing major. It’s just that I absolutely detest packing and moving. Luckily my husband acknowledges that I’m a weakling and useless in the actual heavy lifting, so I’m on packing and unpacking duty.
- With the change in my supervisor leaving, my job responsibilities are changing as well. I don’t think I can say much right now, but involves some shifting in terms of my focused projects within the marketing department.
Obviously the combined changes of job responsibilities, moving, taking a long weekend vacation to celebrate my 5th wedding anniversary, and taking off for several days to attend Affiliate Summit East are all a bit overwhelming. I hope to be rejuvenated after my vacation and be able to jump back into the swing of things with some excellent coverage of Affiliate Summit!
If you’re giving away stress balls at the summit, save one for me!!
Read MoreAffiliate Thing Post-Show
On Tuesday I had the pleasure of co-hosting the Affiliate Thing podcast with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit. Let me start by saying that I was unaware that it’s a live show since I always listen to it on iTunes or GeekCast.fm. I listened to the recording last night that’s up over at GeekCast.fm and I have some criticism for myself.
First though, the experience. Monday night I spent nearly an hour fussing with Skype. The test call was choppy and I couldn’t understand all of what it was saying. But all my settings seemed fine. I determined at last that it had to be my internet connection, which has a tendency to be not so good in the evenings sometimes. I must have called the test call in the neighborhood of 30 times. I also called my husband’s cell phone to see if it was any better – nope. He could hear me pretty well but I could barely hear him. I finally give up and hope that it works in the morning or that there’s another option for me to call in or something if all else fails.
I can’t sleep (of course) because I’m nervous about the show. I finally get to sleep and surprisingly have no trouble waking up early the next day for the show. I’m on the West Coast and I usually work 10 am to 7 pm at PsPrint, so I had to get up around 8:30 am to wake up enough to tape the show at 9 am. I fire up my home computer and get Skype up and running, calling the test call about 10 more times with only slightly better results than the night before.
I let Shawn know over the messenger portion of Skype that I’m having issues and he suggests we start anyway and if it’s too bad I can drop off. Luckily when WebmasterRadio.fm called, it was much clearer. Which begs the question – shouldn’t the test caller be the best quality possible? I digress…
The call itself went great in the moment… there weren’t any points where I was sitting there silently banging my head. I fumbled the intro to myself, which is ironic because that’s what was keeping me up the night before – how to whip in PsPrint AND this blog. I figured that was the only part I could rehearse, and coming from a theatrical background I’m a fan of rehearsal.
Now, for my “notes to self”.
- Be more conscious of how close my mic is to my keyboard and how loud I’m typing.
- Do more research about what’s going on so I can suggest more topics instead of being a ‘yes’ woman.
- Don’t laugh – it doesn’t come across well over the phone/skype.
- Attempt to fix the skype thing because in the recording I do hear myself cut out sometimes.
I think, all in all, this was a good exercise for me in giving up control of my image and gives me some things to work on. Please, go listen, and add on to my notes so I can work on my presence, public relations and such! In advance, I truly appreciate it.
Read MoreOnline Video Toolkit – Live Today!
Today is the date, kiddies! The launch of Jim Kukral’s latest joint, OnlineVideoToolkit.com, has brought your freebie early this week. Jim himself has said he’s never been the kind of guy to put up a 3 mile long sales page and sell the information he knows, so he’s giving it away! That’s right, all you have to do is sign up… give him your preciously guarded email address and the keys to the castle are yours!
I signed up a couple weeks ago and was invited to check it out yesterday before it was technically launched. So far Jim has 10 really informative videos up, covering the basic aspects like sound, editing, lighting, wardrobe, and of course your choice of camera. For anyone looking to seriously jump into online video and produce well made content for reasonable prices, this toolkit is a must have.
Jim’s been doing online video for some time now, and he’s one of the most vocal proponents of online video and it’s potential. Jim currently produces The Daily Flip on his website JimKukral.com and records the Video Ninjas podcast on GeekCast.fm with Magnify.net’s Steve Rosenbaum. So, brother knows what he’s talking about here! This is really the perfect resource for beginners and intermediate online video fans, and it’s free! So there’s really no excuse not to at least go check it out.
I’m already enjoying it, and it’s inspired me to make some more video. I know, I said that about podcasting too but I SWEAR I’m working on some of that as well! So I’m going to stop wasting time and go watch more of the videos at OnlineVideoToolkit.com in preparation for my trip to Boston next week, and I suggest you do the same!
Read MoreDuped by Geeks
Twitter vs twatter – it was a ruse! Jim Kukral returns to GeekCast & they all explain that it was just to spoof Loren Feldman’s puppet show against Shel Israel. They explain it in GeekCast today.
Mike from 1115 Media Called it first! Did anyone have a pool going?
Next we’ll hear that Mark Wielgus is in Joel Comm’s pocket and the scam alerts were all a ruse too!
Read MoreAmusing Phrases
I’m a total media consumer, so in listening to things and reading this I’ve picked up a couple of highly amusing phrases that I’d like to share with you. It’s Saturday afternoon, not much else is going on! So let’s get a little silly while I share some things that have been absolutely cracking me up in the last few weeks.
“Keep it clean, Jangro’s listening” from the GeekCast (coined by Lisa Picarille I believe)
“It’s tough being a digital gangster” from Sam Harrelson of Affiliate Fortune Cookies
“NSFJ (not safe for Jangro) ” from Todd Crawford on Twitter
“I’d twit me.” from Shawn Collins on Geek Cast
Read More
