Reflecting on an Origin Story: Affiliate Summit East 2007
Yes, you read that right. After a whirlwind trip to Oregon this week for a wedding, I’m making off into the night on a red-eye flight to New York for Affiliate Summit East 2012.
This marks a milestone for me. Affiliate Summit East 2007 in Miami was my first Summit, so this will be (counting last May’s Affiliate Summit Central) my 10th Summit and the 5 year anniversary of this blog and my participation in Affiliate Marketing. I was just a baby in affiliate marketing back then.
Wow… how things have changed! Back then I didn’t know what I was doing at ALL, somehow teaching my co-worker everything I knew about affiliate marketing on our red-eye flight from Oakland to Miami. And by everything I knew – that means everything I’d learned since about November of 2006, so not much. How naive we were – we totally blew off the Meet Market thinking it would be lame (maybe back then it was, I wouldn’t have known) and didn’t participate in hardly ANY networking. We were more interested in South Beach every night to eat dinner on the strip.
The trip was not all fun, and I did take it seriously and so glad I did. I still use the same college-ruled composition book for notes. The sessions I went to at that Summit might make you chuckle:
I remember some of the speakers, but not all… Jeremy Palmer, Scott Jangro, Rosalind Gardner, Stephanie Agresta, most notable in my mind at the time was Jay Berkowitz and his 10 golden rules session. I remember offering up the merchant I worked for at the time for analysis in the Conversion Rate Clinic and going back to my manager at our booth saying, “We have a LOT to fix when we get back! Josh Sloan made a magical impression on me with his magic tricks as we exhibited beside 1&1,. We went to ONE networking event and only because we were told we could win some sweet prizes. It was there that I met Karen & Joel Garcia, who I count as friends now. I remember returning from that show and deciding that I should start a blog. I started it on Blogger (I know, I’m ashamed too…) and later got with it and ported it over to self-hosted WordPress. Want to read my first post? It’s a doozy… but it was 5 years ago on 8/2 (also my wedding anniversary & Kevin Smith’s birthday).
So in a few days I’m off to Summit again, and I’m so glad I went to summit back in ’07. It set me on this career path when I just had a job, so I’ll be forever grateful to the speakers in the sessions I attended and the people I met back then that ignited this spark. I’m proud to say that 5 years later, I’m still loving it!
Want to sit down with me and chat about any of the affiliate programs I manage? Check out my schedule at Tungle.me/trishalyn and let’s set something up!
Another laugh… my random photos from Miami in 07!
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 50: #ASW11 Recap
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
It’s been a couple of weeks since Affiliate Summit West 2011 was over & done with, and it’s taken us this long to recuperate, follow up with all our leads, jot our ideas for improvement down in notebooks and on whiteboards, and had the time to breathe and record our recap! We had different experiences at this show than some of the others in the recent past, so we share it all with you in a super sized episode this week. For 1 hour & 14 minutes we babble on about:
- Saturday pre-registration ease & the lightly sponsored conference tote bag.
- The short, but sweet, buy.at party and the drinks, view, and having to interact with the “public”. And a brief insight into Trisha’s bath.
- The packed sessions, Mike’s session went well, and our Sunday in meetings and the insanity of the Meet Market.
- Elvis costumes, Marilyn Monroe impersonators, and legend Warren Moon.
- The lovely ShareASale 10 year anniversary party & the Strike Out Breast Cancer bowling party.
- Our quick review of the Drew Eric Whitman keynote, yet neither of us attended the Brian Solis presentation.
- Mike finally met Lewis Howes & they talked about Lewis’ book, LinkedWorking: Generating Success on LinkedIn the Worlds Largest Professional Networking Website
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- Affiliate Summit Forum is now live, so go sign up!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! Leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 39: Interviewing Karen Garcia & Wade Tonkin #BWE10 #ASW11
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
We’re continuing our series of interviews, this time talking to folks involved with Blog World Expo, coming up in a couple of weeks in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. Today we talk to Karen Garcia & Wade Tonkin, co-founders at GTO Management and managers of the Blog World Expo affiliate program. We chat casually about what they’re looking forward to about Blog World Expo, and a bit about our proposed panels at Affiliate Summit West 2011 in January. In in this episode we discuss:
- Register for Blog World Expo now! Book your flight & hotel too!
- Vote for Mike & Wade’s Panel Affiliate Improv!
- Vote for Karen & Trisha’s Panel Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management
- It’s not too late to join & promote the Blog World Expo affiliate program on ShareASale!
- Visit the GTO Management booth at Blog World Expo!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! You can also ask Trisha questions through FormSpring.me. Or leave us a comment!
Read MoreVote for “Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management”! #ASW11
For the second conference in a row, Affiliate Summit has opened up the democracy of picking out which sessions attendees want to see on the agenda. Voting will be open through October 8th on their Slinkset page. Vote here! I don’t see that many changes since the last time, so I sincerely hope that those who attempted to game the system the last time by offering contest entries for votes have learned their lesson. Remember, the venue for Affiliate Summit West 2011 has changed this year to the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas, NV. It’ll take place January 9-11, 2010.
I’ll be a shameless shill for a moment and ask that you vote for my & Karen Garcia’s panel idea, Behind the Curtain of Affiliate Management. We will discuss tools, tricks, and processes that make being an affiliate manager more effective and efficient. Please vote as we really want to help all the new, struggling affiliate managers out there to improve even the smallest affiliate program! Karen has nearly 10 years in the business managing various retail affiliate programs, and I have 3 years managing a wide variety of both retail and leads based affiliate programs in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer verticals.
There are 91 options to choose from, and you can vote up as many panels as you’d like to see. To vote, just click the upward arrow. You will have to create a login, or retrieve your login from the last round 0f voting. Do your civic duty as an attendee of Affiliate Summit and help shape what the agenda looks like. As soon as I have a few free moments, I’ll be voting and tell you all what I’m voting for. Just in browsing through, before reading the descriptions, there are more than a few really good sessions that are jumping out at me. It makes me even more excited for January to get here!
Viva Democracy! Remember, you have no business complaining about the content presented at the conference if you don’t go vote!
Day 2 of Affiliate Summit West 2010
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!
Read MoreDay 1 of Affiliate Summit West 2010
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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