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!
Win a Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2012
In July of 2007 I attended my first Affiliate Summit in Miami. It was a fantastic experience. I learned so much, and that was certainly part of the chain of events in my wandering string of jobs to convince me that I liked this industry. The following year at Affiliate Summit East in Boston, I made the decision that I wanted to continue in Affiliate Marketing and build a career rather than just meander along at different jobs. Considering this is light years away from what I went to college for, that was a major decision in my life.
And attending Affiliate Summits helped solidify that for me.
So I want so spread the love and help someone else drive into this dynamic and awesome industry feet first. So I’m giving away a Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2012. This year’s western version of the conference will take place January 8-10, 2012 at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, which I’m excited about since it’s one of the few larger hotels in Las Vegas that I’ve never once set foot into. The Gold Pass will allow you access to the Meet Market, Exhibit Hall, Keynotes, Sunday educational sessions, and online access to all recorded session videos and PowerPoint presentations. Right now we’re still in the Early Bird registration phase, so the Gold Pass is valued at $279 and after October 21st it goes up to $529, so winning this Gold Pass is definitely in your best financial interests!
How do you win this awesome opportunity? Here’s what you have to do. Please post 1 separate comment for each entry. Each entry received one point. The more entries you receive, the higher your chances of winning are.
- MANDATORY: Follow Affiliate Summit on Twitter. Post a comment below with your Twitter ID confirming that you’ve followed @AffiliateSummit.
- Follow GeekCast on Twitter. Post a comment below with your Twitter ID confirming that you’ve followed @GeekCast.
- Follow FeedFront on Twitter. Post a comment below with your Twitter ID confirming that you’ve followed @FeedFront.
- Follow TrishaLyn on Twitter. Post a comment below with your Twitter ID confirming that you’ve followed @TrishaLyn.
- Tweet the following message to your users and post a comment below with a link to the post. “Just entered to win an #ASW12 gold pass from @TrishaLyn. You can enter too! Here’s how: http://linq2.us/asw12gp”
- Join the Affiliate Summit group on Facebook. Post on the group wall that you were referred to the group by me and post a link to that post here in the comments.
- Join the AS Forums and introduce yourself in the Online Meet Market. Post a comment below with a link to your posting.
Here’s the fine print. You have until October 15th at 6:00 PM Pacific to complete this mission, should you choose to accept it. I’ll be using Random.org to choose the winner from the posts, so I won’t be approving trackbacks or commenting on posts until the contest is over. The winner will be notified via e-mail and will have 48 hours to confirm that they can attend Affiliate Summit West, then I will provide them with the code to register for free. Don’t scam the contest or I’ll out you on Twitter and the blog!
Good night, and good luck!
Read MoreGetting ready for Affiliate Summit West 08
Twitter is alive with activity. The summit has set up a group twitter that tracks whenever someone uses the keyword asw08 in their twits. This is very cool, especially considering I didn’t know Twitter had this capability!
Everyone seems to be in a rush to get things done. Jim Kukral from ScratchBack.com is MCing the keynote on Monday. He’s twittered several times tonight about the video he’s working on for the presentation. At ASE07 in Miami the keynote was Ze Frank, a hilarious individual, so I’m hoping for no less at ASW08.
Stephanie Agresta from Stephanie Agresta Consulting is also a speaker and author of the Internet Geek Girl blog. She’s twittered off and on today about her flight information and getting ready for the trip from out east. Sam Harrelson from Affiliate Fortune Cookies has been twittering as well and he’s even had to change his flight because of inclement Northeastern weather.
Of course myself, I’m twittering here and there about getting ready. I’m not lucky enough to have a nice new company supplied laptop, so I’m on my own personal laptop this weekend. I do have a press pass, so I be working on keeping the interweb updated from the blogger’s room through this blog and Twitter. I’m committed despite my chunky clunky Dell Latitude laptop :p.
As a final note while I’m getting my laptop set up tonight, I encourage everyone associated with affiliate marketing in any way to check out this month’s issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine. Besides there being a keen write up of the PsPrint Affiliate Program, there’s a lot of great affiliate manager tips. I’ll be attending the whopping 10 hour Affiliate Classroom LIVE affiliate manager training on Saturday in Las Vegas before the summit. I’m eager to get in there and take notes… is it too much to hope for actual desks? :p I know that it’s at the Rio and from all the conference space I’ve seen at hotels in the last year, I’m sure there won’t be surfaces to write on readily available, so I’ll be taking my clipboard with me.
Hope to see you there! I’m considering bringing my camcorder with me to the exhibit hall, so if you’ve used PsPrint in the past, come on by for an impromptu video plug!
Read MoreAre we too late for the boat?
Lots of industries are taking a long time to embrace web 2.0 and the blogosphere, and as we try to buy our tickets to the blogging dinner cruise, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve missed the boat?
I read an interesting blog written by Hugh MacLeod: Why we’re all blogging less. I admit that I have noticed a lack of fresh blogs to keep my entertained on my lunch break… so that has to mean there’s less serious content out there too. At work we’re just now working out our social media game plan, so reading blogs like Hugh’s makes me fear that we’re a day late and a dollar short to this party.
I hope not… I’m so excited about the blog and the social networking we’ll be doing in the coming months. Not only does it open up new opportunities for PsPrint, but it opens up new ops for me personally. As I said when I started this blog, it’s basically my thoughts on what I’ve been up to at work and what I’ve been learning while thrown to the lions.
In case I didn’t mention it, I don’t have a fancy marketing degree. I have humble roots with a Theater Arts degree, focusing in dramatic writing. Now you see why I’m so apt to blog. We’re starting to get some talk back from followers on Twitter, which is exciting even though it’s very casual at the moment. Hopefully it’ll open up some sales or marketing opportunities, but I’m not holding my breath.
Exciting, but a tad disappointing, is the fact the Shawn Collins over at Affiliate Marketing Blog has finally posted the session videos from Affiliate Summit East 2007. You have to sign up for the Real Deal summit newsletter, but it’s a good idea to sign up for it anyway. I was a bit disappointed to see that the interview we did with the wandering camera crew isn’t up, but I hope someday it will be. Just so I can point and laugh at myself 🙂
Read MoreThe Long Days Journey Into Trade Shows
Some of my most useful immersion into the professional world recently has been my attendance at trade shows. I attended Affiliate Summit East in Miami at the beginning of July and just this week attended Inman News Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. Both had their benefits, although I enjoyed the Miami show a bit more.
There are a few reasons for this. For one, I didn’t feel like a child at the Miami show. The crowd there was a lot younger, fresher, relaxed. Of course, the affiliate marketing industry is a newer industry, not like real estate. Real estate is a very traditional industry, with a lot of older, established professionals. Which don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing either. The purpose of the show was connecting new technologies with agents & brokers to improve the business.
I also learned a bit more at the Miami show that’s relevant to my professional life. It was also my first trade show, first business trip, so I was super pumped to get back and apply all the new things I learned. Connect was valuable, but reiterated a good deal of what I learned in Miami. But it gave me a good reinforcement that the tips I got from one industry are universally applicable to other industries.
A moment about keynote speakers… both conferences I went to had incredibly engaging keynote speakers. AS East had Ze Frank, a very funny and smart guy. He was very vivacious, and presented his message in a roundabout way, but hilariously entertaining. Connect invited Hugh McLeod, again a very intelligent and funny gentleman. His message was more direct but still engaging. I encourage you to check out their websites and if you ever get the opportunity to hear them speak, take it.
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