Is there really a “trade show season”? I’ve heard this referred to time & again, but I seem to go year ’round so I don’t know what that season is! Yes, soon it will be time for me to hit the road again and make my rounds of the country in search of truth, justice, and the American Business Way!

Actually, both of the conferences in my future take me to Boston, MA. I’m hoping since it’s on the coast that it won’t be as muggy and terrible as when I visited New Jersey in 2006 for a film festival. That was awful. I’ve never been to Boston, so I’m excited. This next trip is quick and won’t allow for a lot of time to see any sights except in the evenings, but for the second show I’ve worked a day or so in to see some stuff.

First stop, the HOW Design Conference May 18th through 21st. I’m on booth duty the entire time, so no sessions for me. Which makes me sad, but I’m relying on a co-worker that is attending the sessions to take good notes because I’m sure it’ll be interesting. In a geeky designer way. In booking this trip, it was pretty last minute for the company to make up it’s mind in who would be sent, so costs were pretty expensive. I managed to get one hell of a deal on a flight for $380 on Hotwire, a feat which seems to not be repeatable as looking for the flight for my second outing only returned prices in the $420-460 range. Since it was also the last minute and there has GOT to be some other conferences or events going on the same week, almost every decent hotel in the area was booked solid or $500/night. So we’re staying at the Best Western near Longview Medical for $300/night. Never have I stayed in such a poorly valued Best Western – but we’ll see.

Next on my list, the always great Affiliate Summit. I won’t be attending this as a representative of PsPrint. This is on my own dime. I’ll be going as a member of the press, and will be reporting live (hopefully) on the sessions I attend and the different events I go to. I’m stoked, and BIG Shout Out to Missy Ward, one of the co-founders, for helping make this happen for me. I’ve booked my hotel already, luckily getting on on super fair group rate of $189/night at the Seaport Hotel where the event will be happening. As I mentioned above, I tried to get a great deal on a flight booking 3 months in advance, but still only got higher…so I’ll watch the fares for awhile and see what I can do to swing a cheaper flight. I’ve built a day into my schedule out there to HOPEFULLY see some cool Boston stuff…maybe if I win the lottery I can go to a Red Sox game at Fenway! I’m really excited and can’t wait.

And BEST news of all, the wonderful Scott Jangro found out the problem I was having with the RSS feed – Revver & PodPress were just not playing nicely together. It has been fixed so PLEASE remember to subscribe to my RSS feed!

Be sure to share some travel tips with me!

Last week we were without a free Toolsday because I was toiling away in Las Vegas at Affiliate Summit West 2008… learning about more great tools! While I’m still getting the hang of those, let’s talk about an oldie, but goodie.

Anyone who doesn’t know YouTube at this point has been living under a rock. Half hosting company, half social network, YouTube took the internet by storm with it’s collection of rare, gross, lame, and hilarious videos in February of 2005. By June 2006, the company announced that 100,000 million videos were being watched per day. The impressiveness of this number boggled the mind and there was blood in the water.The shark that is Google smelled that blood and by November 2006, Google bought out YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. Quite a pretty penny.

YouTube helped birth the video blogs (vlogs) of the current day. Videos are great for content to promote your business. They lend your brand more equity, and more and more we’re seeing that quality is defined by the depth of knowledge the video displays, not the production value of sets, lights, etc. You can use videos on your website for press conferences, virtual site tours, customer testimonials, and more. YouTube is a great way to get started on the video front with their free hosting and embedding options.

I attended a session at ASW last week about Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing. Monetizing the traffic YouTube videos get is definitely the next step, and there are already businesses out there like Revver.com that are starting that revolution. The panel of experts agreed that video will be a must have on your website in the next 18 months.

With the inexpensive yet good quality video cameras on the market (like the Aiptek A-HD 720P 5MP CMOS High Definition Camcorder that I bought last week for under $150) there’s no reason NOT to get into video. Do what you know… as long as you know what you’re talking about and solving someone’s problem or answering someone’s question, you can do great things with a 2 minute video!

Almost a month ago I was granted a press pass for the Affiliate Summit. I was excited to get into the bloghaus and blog about the day as it happened. I was thrilled to walk around and network with people. I really wanted to get some great coverage of the Keynote (coverage hell, I wanted to just listen too), but… none of that happened.

Why? Because Las Vegas hates me. And there are far too many germs here. And somehow during the day on Sunday…I developed a cold. A bad one. Damn this dry air & germs!

So I didn’t get up in time to make it downstairs to have breakfast AND make it to Jason Calacanis’ keynote like I wanted to. I managed to grab some breakfast and share some stats about our affiliate program with my colleague here with me from PsPrint to help out and then to man the booth. I sent her out to get the table top sign made that wasn’t made in time for the show. I station the booth for awhile and talk to some good people before it’s time for me to head off to the morning session I planned on going to.

Oh, incidentally, for anyone who wants some GREAT coverage of the keynote, check out J. Botter’s Blog.

I digress.

I attended this morning’s “Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing” panel. Good stuff, although I was a bit disappointed in moderator Melissa Salas reading off a prepared script pretty much verbatim. But I really enjoyed the insight from video professionals, and it’s comforting to know that content really is king, and that production value isn’t as important. Woo Hoo! I was wondering how you’d go about monetizing a video, but Revver.com seems to answer that. I’ll definitely be checking that out when I get back to the joy that is desktop computer (this older laptop isn’t that great). I really enjoyed Gary Vaynerchuk’s sense of humor & ballsy honesty. I’m excited with my new Aiptek A-HD 720P 5MP CMOS High Definition Camcorder

Some great points from the panel session:

• Most people come on the internet for two P’s – pleasure or problems. If you solve someone’s problem, it’s a good video.
• KNOW what you’re talking about. As long as you know your subject, you can produce great content.
• In the next 12 months, you should test video on your site. By 18 months from now, if you don’t have video on your website you may be in trouble.
• Video really works to sell as it gives your brand more credibility & builds brand equity.
• Depth of information is quality will translate to a successful video.
• Work on integrating video into your current web experience for the most effective video experience.
• The average video watched online is about 2 minutes long.
• An enormous amount of video watching is done at work, so keep that in mind. Melissa added that a Click to Listen button is much appreciated by these people.
• In terms of size & format, go for the best quality you can when shooting, even if it has to be compressed when uploading online. If you can afford it, shoot in HD. It’s where everything is headed. (Side note – this makes me really glad that I bought my new HD mini cam! It’s the one in the picture.)

Day 3 should be good – hoping for some informative sessions and to feel better.