The Inaugural Affiliate Summit Central
[singlepic id=122 w= h= float=left]Another conference down, another Affiliate Summit for the record books. The first ever Affiliate Summit Central has drawn to a close. This time around, I attended as a humble affiliate instead of a vendor. Sessions galore were on my agenda for this show, with my only real goal being to get some tips for my sites and Dominic’s, so mission accomplished! I even got some work done for the good ‘ol day job while I was at it!
The mini conference, just a day and a half long, kicked off Monday night with an official welcome party at Maggie Mae’s. It was a terribly crowded joint with a muggy heat and amped up band, so I didn’t end up staying long. Instead, we wound up in the hotel bar chatting for quite some time and enjoying a glass of one of my favorite wines.
I started out Tuesday morning for a day full of sessions. I hit the second half of a session on optimizing WordPress for speed and sat in on a session for merchants on deals and coupons before a Texas style BBQ brisket lunch. After some grub, I learned more about compliance from Kellie Stevens than I knew existed and got some awesome tips from Jeremy Palmer. The day was rounded out by some great brainstorming with Karen Garcia and others on Pinterest marketing and a surprise balloon artist!
[singlepic id=131 w= h= float=right] The Austin Hilton was a terrific venue for this smaller show. It had the perfect sized conference facilities, while being just a block away from historic 6th St., with many live music venues. If you were so inclined to explore further, the metro station was right outside as well. I stayed after many folks left for ShareASale’s Think Tank at Lake Travis, so I had the pleasure of dining in the Liberty Tavern for lunch and Finn & Porter for dinner. Both great places.
Affiliate Summit would not be complete without an Under the Stars party by ShareASale, of course! Before hand, food was needed! A group of us headed to a nice place called Haddington’s, a gastropub where we were not disappointed with the upscale pub grub. Then we walked over to the party at the Hangar Lounge, a three story venue with a live band on the rooftop area. It was a grat party, complete with a photo booth. Brian Littleton does not disappoint!
All in all, I’d say I got out of Affiliate Summit Central what I wanted. A nice trip to Austin, seeing some good friends, and a lot of great nuggets of information to bring back to my personal affiliate endeavors!
Most are not from the conference itself, but see all of my photos from Austin:
[nggallery id=2]
Read MoreWhen a microblog stands in for a real blog…
Anyone who follows me on Twitter (if you don’t yet – what’s your excuse?) could see that I was more than making up for my lack of internet on my laptop by tweeting notes from the sessions I was in. I strained one of my fingers on my dominant right hand Sunday night bowling with the folks from GTO Management, and even taking traditional written notes was a challenge.
So before I kick off all the notes I took at the sessions (it was lighter this conference than I have in the past), here’s all the tidbits of knowledge I tweeted while attending sessions at Affiliate Summit West 09.
From the Buy.at Party at Moon:
- http://twitpic.com/11sw2 – Tear the roof off at Moon buy.at party
- http://twitpic.com/11t7v – From the roof of the palms
From The Ultimate Pitching Guide Session:
- @skydiver just said re pitches on twitter “if u can’t pitch in 140 char u need 2 work on brevity anyway”
- Twitter has replaced focus groups- @skydiver
From the ShareASale Under the Star’s 80’s themed party:
- http://twitpic.com/1243s – Jon levine @ sas party
- http://twitpic.com/124e8 – Gettin’ down at SAS party
From Affiliate Videos: Where do they work best? Session:
- Video session: Youtube is larger than Microsoft in search engines- 77mil uniques
- u don’t have to have a professional prod studio to develop video
- .tv traffic increasing but still nowhere near as high as .com
- very brand & vertical specific video creative is the most requested
- People buy from people – at the end of the day video is the most effective medium for that. Amen!
- I love @andrewwee for bringing up ShamWOW in his question!
- get out there & try it!
From the Pinnacle Awards Gala:
- Nice touch on the tux & beer @shawncollins
- Right on for Train Signals donating $10k for Breast Cancer Research- squish a boob save a life!
- Mike Allen – Affiliate of the Year
- AM of the yr- @djambazov Angel
- pinnacle award exceptional merchant CelebrateExpress.com
- pinnacle award Affiliate Mktg Advocate @mellies! Melanie Seery
- pinnacle award Best Blogger @jangro! Scott Jangro
- affiliate marketing legend – congrats to Kellie Stevens!
- congrats to thew winners!
From Advanced Optimization for Landing Pages Session:
- 2% avg conversion rate: 2009 year of conversion optimization
- test everything assume nothing
- Lisa Crossly Hunter: what are your affiliates doing that your search team can borrow from?
- start now, but don’t start without a plan. And test.
- gen rule of thumb- at least 100 conversions for at least a week (per element you change, I forgot to include that in the tweet)
From the Affiliate Triathalon:
- http://twitpic.com/12mj4 – #asw09 Brian Littleton of SAS @ Affiliate Triathalon
Of course if you’re REALLY bored you can just go to Twitter Search and enter in “#asw09 trishalyn” and see EVERYTHING I tweeted while at the conference 😀
Read More
