Day 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!
Read MoreBack from Affiliate Summit West 2010
I have returned from another successful trip to an Affiliate Summit, this time the conference was Affiliate Summit West 2010. It was an interesting trip, considering the new direction my career is now taking.
So here’s the scoop – at the end of the month, I’ll no longer be working as an outsourced program manager with Paulson Management Group. They are bringing all work in-house to their Boulder, CO office. – which means that I’d have to move from California to continue to work with them. Instead, I’m going to be transitioning over the next two weeks to work in client support and sales for ForMeToCoupon.com, an automated coupon feed service for affiliates. I’m excited for the transition, into yet another aspect of affiliate marketing.
So at this Affiliate Summit, I did double duty. I both represented Paulson Management Group and the client whose program I still manage, and represented ForMeToCoupon.com in their booth as well during the expo hall hours. It was very interesting, but worked out better than I’d imagined. Amy with Affiliate Summit was awesome enough to print me out a second version of my name tag badge that had the FMTC company name on it so I wouldn’t confuse anyone (more than I might already have confused people). So, enough about my new role, which I am very excited about and have already started working on.
I didn’t go to as many sessions as I normally like to at a conference, what with the meetings I had and the time I put in standing at the FMTC booth. Those recaps will come soon. Until then, some brief recaps of my days at Affiliate Summit West 2010 are soon to come! I don’t want to write the longest post in the history of TrishaLyn.com, so I’ll break them up. You can see them later!
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 17: Coming Soon – Black Friday!
Podcast: Play in new window | 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!
Well, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Schedules have been ca-razy lately and Mike & I just haven’t been able to get together to record. So, welcome back as stand in co-host Eric Nagel! We got back to our roots in talking strictly from the affiliate vs. affiliate manager discussion. We come in at a cool 42:50. In in this episode we discuss:
- The new Retweet function on Twitter – meh.
- Holiday affiliate contests
- Paulson Management Group’s “A Jingle for your Jangle”
- ShareASale’s Fourth Quarter Frenzy
- Increased communications from affiliate managers during the holidays
- Still more emphasis on Black Friday than Cyber Monday
- Happy Monday: The Importance of Mondays this Holiday
- Affiliates buying products through their own links
- Debate: Affiliates Buying Clickbank Products
We promise not to go this long again!
Read MoreASE09 Session: Getting Noticed FAST
Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.
Session Description: Regardless what your role in the industry is, it’s important to be noticed within the industry. Learn the networking and social media techniques that make it possible. The panel consisted of:
- Lisa Picarille, Online Marketing Consultant, LisaPicarille.com (Twitter @lisap) (Moderator)
- Michael Buechele, Owner, MikeBuechele.com (Twitter @mikebuechele)
- Trisha Lyn Fawver, Affiliate Manager, Paulson Management Group (Twitter @trishalyn)
- Jen Goode, Doodler in Charge, JGoode Designs (Twitter @JGoode)
- Stephanie Lichtenstein, Affiliate Program Manager, Andy Rodriguez Consulting (Twitter @MicroSteph)
This session, Getting Noticed FAST, contained a lot of valuable information from people who have gone from being a nobody in Affiliate Marketing to being well known by many of the top people in just a couple of years. Some of the suggestions were:
“Get involved in the response…go to other sites and comment” Jen Goode
“Start blogging” Stephanie Lichtenstein
“Don’t flame people” Trisha Fawver
“Do something different the first time you meet in person” Mike Buechele
Many tips were given on the importance of using social media to get your name out there. Also mentioned was the importance of personal branding and being consistent between all of the different forms of social media that you are on.
From the standpoint of someone who is new to Affiliate Marketing, this was a very good session with plenty of examples from the panelist’s personal experience. It gave me ideas on where to start on getting noticed so that I can further a career in Affiliate Marketing (if I so chose) by meeting people who are already successful in the field and learn from their experiences and mistakes, while at the same time possibly being able to help them out with my own expertise. In many cases it is not what you know, but who you know.
Video from Affiliate Convention
While at Affiliate Convention, I took the opportunity to bust out my Flip camera and take some brief footage of the party Paulson Management Group threw at alto in Denver. I also got some snipits of Heather speaking on various panels during the show. I have to say, this was actually the first time I used the FlipShare software to compile multiple short videos into one “movie” and upload straight to YouTube from the software. I wish I’d have been able to add a few more titles in between, but for really simple compilations it works great!
So without further ado, PMG at Affiliate Convention.
Read MoreMy ad:tech San Francisco Experience
So ad:tech has come and gone, and for my first experience at ad:tech is was pretty good. The first day I spent most of my time connecting with some industry friends in the very cool Affiliate Summit sponsored Beer Garden. I was surprised how much it looked like the conceptual drawing that Shawn Collins had posted on his blog when he first announced the beer garden.
For those faithful listeners of Affiliate Thing, you’ll be happy to know that there were no snuggies involved. Unfortunately that first day I didn’t make it to any sessions, but I did take a quick glance at the exhibit hall. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen two floors of exhibit hall. Can you tell I’m not an old hat at ad:tech?
That evening I joined some affiliate marketing folks at AT&T Park for a Giants vs. Padres game. Shawn was quite perturbed that he could not get a signal on his AT&T serviced cell phone at AT&T Park. I can’t say that I blame him. There were some great moments in the game, including the closest I’ve ever seen two runners together when rounding the bases. The Giants won and our seats were pretty good. Luckily it was a nice balmy night and I didn’t need a jacket, but I did get blisters on my feet walking from Moscone Center to the park in bad dress shoes. Nonetheless, I have to send a big thanks to Shawn for the game invite!
The second day I was able to attend some sessions, notes from which will appear here next week. They were hit and miss… I got a lot out of some of them and almost nothing from others, except for some entertainment value.
That evening I had a nice dinner with the folks from eBay, Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, Shawn Collins from Affiliate Summit, Peter Bordes of Media Trust, and a couple folks from Red Anchor Media. We had a nice discussion on quality in Affiliate Marketing. I was honored to be invited and had a terrific time. Any fellow creme brulee fans will be pleased to hear about the lovely Butterscotch variation at Anchor & Hope on Minna in San Francisco!
I didn’t make it over for the 3rd day of ad:tech, but overall it was a good experience and I’m looking forward to attending more in the future and getting some more done once I’m more firmly established with my new clients and with Paulson Management Group.
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