I won big while in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit, but not at the tables or slots.  For someone who rarely wins anything, I’ve had great luck lately winning some goodies in the last three weeks, from three different affiliate networks!  I managed to win some cool prizes that will most definitely help me out in my blogging and social endeavors!

So with that, thank you SO MUCH and here’s what I won so far this year and from who.  2009 has turned out pretty awesome so far!  I apologize in advance, dear readers, as this will be a long post!

Flip Mino Video Camera from MarketLeverage

Last month, several bloggers I read hosted a contest by MarketLeverage, the “Share Your Secret” contest.  The rules were simple – share your marketing secret via blog comment and you can only use MarketLeverage as the example network.  I entered on a couple of blogs, and was chosen to be the winner from 11|15 Media’s blog!  So thanks Mike!  Here’s what I shared:

As I said there, my secret isn’t really a secret – work smarter, not harder. I picked up the saying from one of my college roommates and I’m sure some genius generations before me coined the phrase, but I apply that mantra to everything. I try to make things more efficient and do things better so that my time is more effectively used and I can work smart without necessarily making things harder on myself.

To apply that to the affiliate example, I use MaxBannerAds on my blog. When I label the ads, not only do I add the merchant name but I also add the network name, i.e. MarketLeverage, to help me to group them together when I go to look at reporting so I can easily group things for myself. That’s just one small example of how I work smarter, not harder.

There were a lot of great contenders, so I was surprised to have won!  I was given the choice between a 4th generation iPod Nano or a Flip Mino, and since I had just bought an iPod for my husband for Christmas and have my own classic iPod, I chose the Flip.  I have to give MarketLeverage extra thanks for such a good prize because I just realized that my Aiptek HD camera is on it’s way to death.  So yay!  I hope as soon as I receive it and check out the cool content they’re going to preload onto it that I’ll have the guts to video blog more

A new service from marketing master Joel Comm was launched at Affiliate Summit.  The service, called TextCastLive, is a SMS messaging service that texted updates to opt-ins about the conference, like when sessions were starting and other events.  They also peppered in some contests in.  During the tail end of a session, a text went out announcing that the 7th person to show their phone the good folks at the oneNetworkDirect booth would receive $500 in network credit.  So I wandered over and with the good fortune of being with some other people who showed their phones (or, their phones were immediately more visible I might say) I was number 7!  I was actually surprised to see that they have a lot of tech offers on their network, including Lavasoft which makes the awesome anti-spyware program Ad-Aware that I love and swear by!  So thank you to TextCastLive and oneNetworkDirect!

Merchant Bag from buy.at

When you see those bowls on booth tables that say “drop your business card here to win”, DO IT!  This is how I was the lucky recipient of the merchant bag from buy.at.  The bag was a veritable treasure trove of swag, all provided by the merchants on their network.  At face value, it was an awesome Patagonia backpack, designed to comfortably pad a laptop.  It’s nice a slim, which is a benefit since the current backpack case I have is huge and bulky.  They also handed me a $100 Ticketmaster gift card, and said there was a Bonobos gift card designated for me as well.  I shook hands and hugged those I knew, took a picture with the guys decked out for the Affiliate Triathalon (Kim & Ayako – I WANT THAT PIC!)  and wandered off.

I was stoked to get that, and later when I went to open the bag to consolidate some of the other swag I’d received at the show I found that there was even MORE inside!  A cool track jacket, which I unfortunately had to give away since it was much smaller than what I wear, a $5 Starbucks gift card, a nifty gel stress ball, a cool pleather (plastic+leather) & metal USB thumb drive, some nifty ear warmer headphones, and… oh I know I’m forgetting something!  So HUGE thanks to the people I know from buy.at, Kim Salvino, Ayako Bingham, Amy Ely and everyone else there!

So once again, thank you to MarketLeverage, oneNetworkDirect, and buy.at for their awesome generosity and great prizes!

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Always providing you with the best hijacked content from around the web. If you didn’t hear about most of this yet… you were probably playing ostrich.

• Starbucks Coffee announced Free Wifi at 7,000 US locations. They’ve dumped the zero (T-Mobile) and got with a hero (AT&T).
• Microsoft bid $44.6 billion to buy out Yahoo. Yahoo rebuffed the unsolicited offer and told them to step off. The NY Times has some good coverage of this cat & mouse game.
  • On a personal note this irritates me to read things like this, because I just bought myself a pro account! I don’t want it to change!!
• I started adding new seriest to this blog: Free Toolsdays (get it?), Analytics Glossary, and the Quote of the Day. I know, no huge international scandal but I could have included Britney Psych Ward coverage instead.

Have a great long weekend!

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The games are about to begin! That’s right, next week is the 2007 National Association of REALTORS® Conference & Expo at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. PsPrint will be there in full force at booth 2740 in the NAR Partner Pavilion. Stop on by and participate in our great giveaways for an iPhone, some wine, or a Visa Gift Card. We’ll also be offering a 30% Off show special discount for any orders placed at the show.

I’m super excited for this show, and not because it’s in Las Vegas since I was just there a few months ago. This is my first massive trade show, and I’m stoked to be representing our company and attending some really great seminars. The two that I’m the most excited about are on Tuesday and Friday. Tuesday afternoon there is a seminar given by Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and a great blog that I subscribe to (speaking of Seth speaking[heh]). Friday at the close of the show there’s another presentation being given by Scott Bedbury, marketing genius behind Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign and Starbucks’ marketing campaigns.

There are just so many learning opportunities for me at this conference, not only in the way of marketing but also networking and trade shows. I hope to really knock the ball out of the park on this one. Unfortunately we’re also working on some changes to our affiliate program over here, and that all has to be postponed until we return from the show on the 19th. But those changes will be exciting as well in their own right!

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