Monday January 18th

Day 2 of Affiliate Summit for me started off a bit rocky.  I was far from hung over, but I awoke with the familiar feeling of an impending migraine.  I decided that, despite the morning keynote by Dr. Robert Cialdini not being recorded, I’d have to skip it in favor of some more quiet time before the storm to dispel the headache on the horizon.  Luckily it worked and I went down just at the end of the keynote to catch up with some folks to get the cliff’s notes version of the keynote and to find my first morning appointment.  Luckily, the staff were handing out little cheat sheet cards with the main bullet points from the keynote, which I got and took note of.

I mentioned I had a meeting.  I learned a valuable lesson at this conference – don’t just research what the person you’re meeting with does, research what they look like!  We’d decided to meet in outside the theater after the keynote, and man was that a bad idea.  A sea of unfamiliar faces and I have no idea what this guy looks like!  I hang around for about 15 minutes, trying to find someone who looks like they’re also looking for someone, to no avail.  I check my watch and decide that I have to move on in order to get to the session I wanted to go to.  So now I know that next time I have to meet with someone, I’m either going to meet them somewhere not so busy or snoop on their Facebook profile to see what they look like!

My first session of the day was Product Datafeeds: The Next Level, which by nature was dry, but sill interesting.  Scott Jangro did a great job as moderator and I did my best as a student.  I figured that I know the basics about datafeeds, but moving on in my career to a company that provides a coupon feed, I better learn more!  A full review of that will come later today.

After lunch, I did some time working in the For Me to Coupon booth in the expo hall.  I’m glad that I did some homework about the basics of the company before standing in the booth, because we certainly didn’t have a whole lot of downtime to chit chat.  People were coming by nonstop asking questions about the service, which is awesome.  I was put to the test many times on my knowledge, and thankfully only had to defer to Forrest & Nate a few times for questions I had no clue about.  But it was also a great opportunity to learn more nitty gritty stuff about the service when more technical affiliates stopped by with really detailed developer questions.  A great introduction to my new job!

I ducked away from the booth for some rejuvenation time in the blogger lounge, then on to the Oprah, Flogs and FTC: Hot Topics 2010 session.  It was interesting, but frustrated me that the presenter went through a LOT of good information in his presentation much too fast.  I’m incredibly happy though that the presentation has been uploaded to SlideShare, so when I post my recap of that, it’ll have the presentation link!

Before the activity for the evening I had a lovely few drinks with Heather Smith, Julie Vazquez, Lori Herren, & Joe Vaughn from Izea.  After playing with the Microsoft Surface table in the iBar, we moved our operation over to the All American Bar & Grill for the 20 cent chicken wings!  It’s the Rio’s 20th anniversary, so they had all sorts of deals like that.  About 60 wings, a basket of fries, and a few sodas all came in under $30!  I learned a TON more about Izea and their products sitting with two insiders and Joe, a sales manager from Izea.

After dinner, it was time for our evening activity, one of my favorite activities hands down anywhere – TRIVIAL PURSUIT!  They set up the Wii  on a large screen and popped in the game.  I was happily chosen 3rd or 4th for Team Missy Ward and we proceeded to kick ass.  Of course, another team came from behind in an upset win, but it was a TON of fun playing the game.  I know this is a game I’ll have to get for my wii.  It was good times, and everyone who played & stuck around until the end was generously given a complimentary Gold Pass for Affiliate Summit East 2010, which we’ll be using to bring Dominic along! 

For a normal, sane person, trivia’s end at midnight would have been the end of the evening, but oh no.  Now it was time to wander over to McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon for a party once again thrown by the folks at GTO Management in conjunction with MakeBeer.net.  Coopers Brew makes some fine beer and their affiliate program is for the home brew kits that they sell, which are handy for the home brewer.  It was  a great time with displays of male competition and a punching bag game.  A few heads hit it and then headed off to another club, but I was done for the night around 2am so I headed back to the room to get some sleep before my early meeting!

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Sunday January 17th

I’d arrived in Las Vegas Saturday afternoon, so I was all ready to get busy Sunday morning.  My morning meeting had been rescheduled, so first on my agenda was meeting with a client of PMG.  We had a good meeting, discussing Valentine’s Day promotions and going forward & my departure.  It went well, though the food was a bit lacking.  It was our fault though for getting a late start & needing to run to the Sports Deli instead of sitting down at the All American Bar & Grill as we’d sort of planned.  Afterward I went over to the Meet Market, which was OUT.  OF.  CONTROL!

The Meet Market could not be contained to just one room!  There was a smaller room first, which I thought was the whole thing until I didn’t see a few companies that I knew had tables (namely PMG).  So I got in & out of there as fast as I could and found the other portion of the Meet Market, which was in a larger area adjacent to where the expo hall would be the next day, and it was not as stuffy, but still a mad house.  I wandered to see what was there, but still had to high tail it out of there after talking to some people.

Next up was a session, which you’ll see  a recap & notes for soon.  After the session I went in search of the bloggers lounge, which was way out in the boonies.  Lori Herren was awesome enough to go get Heather Smith and I cool buttons from the Facebook table.  I hung out in there for awhile to mooch off the internet capabilities to upload photos I’d taken at the session before.  I had every intention to purchase the internet access in my hotel room, but it wasn’t working and I did not have the patience for tech support.  So I ended up staying downstairs until Lori had the inspired idea to go get dinner from the local In-N-Out Burger.

We got back and pretty much went straight into the ShareASale Under the Stars Party.  It was awesome, as usual, with a terrific spread of pizza, bread & cheese plates, ice cream sundaes, cupcakes, a chocolate fountain, and of course, open bar!  They had a plethora of things to do, from Wii Sports games, stand up arcade games, darts, fun gambling (no money involved), the photo booth, a DJ, dance floor, Karaoke, and the most awesome of all – a JUMP HOUSE!  I was not adventurous enough to get into that bad boy, though I really, really wanted to!  At one point, the spire knocked into the chandelier in the ballroom and knocked some panels off – party foul!

I had a good time with the chocolate fountain in particular & shaking my booty on the dance floor when they were giving away feather boas.  I wasn’t even drunk!  But who can resist a feather boa?  I attempted to stay sitting for most of the party because I knew that the Strike Out Breast Cancer charity event was coming up afterward.  I’m already a bad enough bowler, so I needed to conserve energy!  Maybe I should have partook in the Wii Bowling to gain some confidence!

On to the bowling – it was fun despite my atrocious score of just 39.  It began at midnight and was hosted by GTO Management, BowlingShirt.com, Things From Another World, and Affiliate Marketers Give Back as a fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.  We got awesome pink and black bowling shirts with the logo of the event on them, and had a great time.  There were over 100 people there easily by my estimates, which is quite a feat for an event that started at midnight!  It was good times, and I dragged myself back to the Rio and straight into bed to get ready for day 2!

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 Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 16 [34:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | 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!

This week we are FINALLY joined by Wade Tonkin of GTO Management and the man  behind the Christian Affiliate Marketers Association.  We had a fine conversation, accidentally recorded in Mono instead of Stereo since I forgot to switch the defaults on this new computer.  I think the sound quality is good though, but welcome any feedback.  Since we’re all busy people, I opted for no intro music this week and we come in at a sultry 34:25. In in this episode we discuss:

• Who Wade is, i.e. a partner at GTO Management
• Blog World Expo and their affiliate program (which GTO Management professionally manages)
• The events put on by and the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association
• SponsoredTweets and how that’s going to Mike & Trisha

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