I took it light this time around at Affiliate Summit and only went to two events that weren’t hosted by the conference itself. Dominic and I spent the two days before the conference wandering Manhattan seeing some sights, so by the time the conference started we were not that interested in traipsing all over the city again. But we did make sure to go to the couple of smaller parties we were invited to. I’d have been asleep at the networking wheel had I not gone to any of the parties!  So here’s my take on the parties with some thanks and photos I took!

buy.at Party @ Empire Hotel

Big thanks to Ayako from buy.at for extending the invitation!  This party was on the rooftop bar at the Empire Hotel, which despite being 12 floors up was considerably shorter than most the surrounding buildings.  Only one part of the hotel bar was reserved for the party, so it was a relatively intimate affair.  We started by working the area and saying hello to old friends, and ended sitting with Heather Smith of Beautiful British Columbia and Murray Newlands of MurrayNewlands.com.  It was wonderful conversation and Dominic seemed to really feel comfortable with the jargon conversation and other assorted topics.

MarketLeverage & John Chow’s Dot Com Pizza @ Original Famous Ray’s Pizza

This was just what the doctor ordered!  I had a few culinary goals for my trip to New York: bagels, cheesecake, and pizza.  New York pizza is legendary, so I was excited to be invited to share some pizza with Dina and crew.  We got there a bit late but there was still plenty of great pizza!  I had my first real conversation with John Chow and Ted Murphy, both pleasant.  I felt bad because there wasn’t much room to sit with the main group by the time we got there to schmooze and converse, so Dominic and I ended up sitting back in the corner where the surplus pizzas were and didn’t have much chance to talk unless people came back and talked to us.

I thought it was especially funny that Dominic got an IZEA shirt from Heather earlier in the day in the Blogger’s Lounge, and decided to change out of his Blinkstar Media shirt to the Izea shirt before leaving.  We walked right up the stairs at Ray’s to see Ted Murphy, who of course commented on the IZEA shirt!  Good thing I’d taken some time earlier in the day to tell Dominic what IZEA is!  After hearing Ted and Dina and Heather talk about the last IZEAfest and the upcoming one, he really wanted to go!  Too bad we can’t afford to go to Florida and have fun with them!  Big thanks to Dina at MarketLeverage for the invite!

TechKaraoke @ the Hilton

This was unexpectedly fun, though I wish I had been able to get better photos!  Of course, the embarrassment factor of karaoke almost requires the lights to be dimmed, so the photos didn’t turn out.  I hear that I missed Chris Brogan singing a Jay-Z number, but I got down there just in time to see Ted Murphy, Shawn Collins, and Drew Bennett bust out some Milli Vanilli!  Throughout the evening I got to catch up with Connie Berg while listening to the vocal stylings of Todd Farmer, Jim Kukral, Missy Ward, and Brian Littleton amongst others.

I also never realized that you never truly appreciate how LONG some songs are until you hear them butchered at a karaoke event!  All in all though it was a good time and I hope Shawn & Missy bring back the TechKaraoke folks to do it again.  And this time bring the lights up for more embarrassing evidence!

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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!

We’ve finally determined that the audio problems were due to my headset this week as I stole the stand alone boom mic from my husband’s computer and the sound is excellent. Third time’s the charm! So now you won’t have to listen to a bad recording for our quality content!

We jumped around a bit today and covered a lot, so this episode is longer than the last two clocking in at about 40 minutes. We talk a lot about Twitter and decided that we live most of our lives through Twitter. We also give some shout outs at the end, as I promised last week.

Show Links:

• TweepMe and the creator’s account being suspended.
• Still getting used to the new Facebook.
• A few more words about Gary Vaynerchuk and his SXSW video.
• WeFollow, a survey about Twitter, and the Twouble with Twitters (careful, the video is on autoplay).
• Sony made a deal with Google to enhance their Sony Reader line up (watch out, Kindle!)

For the sake of driving the point home, I talked more about the grass roots fight going on against California Assembly Bill 178, which is looking to do in California what the so-called Amazon Tax did in New York. Here are some links I  mentioned and some from the March 3rd episode of Affiliate Thing:

• CAaffiliates.com ABestWeb forum
• Read the entire bill (Number AB 178)
• How to contact your California state law makers
• Comment on AB 178
• See the calendar for the California state legislature

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I was looking forward to attending this panel despite knowing that I probably knew all there was to know on this subject, because I knew two of the panelists.  Boy was I wrong – it just goes to show you that there’s always something new to be learned when attending trade shows! The panel consisted of:

• Shawn Collins, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit
• Mike Allen, CEO, Shopping-Bargains.com
• Tim Jones, Blogger, TheRealTimJones.com

I was proud of the boys – despite having a crowd of general noobs to affiliate marketing they did an excellent job and really threw out some solid information.

Bullet Point Review!

• Blended ads look nicer and work better.
• PopShops has a WordPress plugin that’s super easy to use.
• Remember to work the ads in creatively.
• Think and plan for the long term.
  • Your blog is your brand.
  • Be the expert.
  • Share your space.
• Affiliate marketing is a great start but doesn’t stop there.
  • Be careful – advertising the wrong way can tarnish your image.
  • Think like a business and set goals.
  • Craft a business plan and follow it.
  • Look for other retail opportunities (your own affiliate program?)
• There’s lots of opportunity for creativity.
• Most people don’t know it’s an affiliate link and most don’t care (when using text links).
• .htaccess redirect helps clean links up – fairly simple process.
• 50%+ of subscribers come by email.
• Utilize social media to build readership and establish yourself as an expert.
• People have to get there before they can click.
• MaxBlogPress, OpenX are good free ad serving plugins.
• Ninja Affiliate 1.5 is a paid plugin that automatically ads contextual links to keywords you enter in.
• Peel away ads (page ears) also work well
• Target your ads to your audience.
• Yahoo! Answers works well to help establish yourself within your niche as an expert.
• Don’t venture too far outside your niche.  You want to upsell and compliment your blog.
• The first thing you’d do?  Tim says sign up with the affiliate networks.  Shawn suggested doing a Google Search to get a feel for your competition.  Mike advises to make sure your site works and that content is up before applying for the affiliate programs – the merchant has to want you.
• Spend the $10 on a domain & it’ll get over the first threshold when affiliate managers review your application.

I don’t have any notes from the Q&A portion of the panel because a lot of it was specific to those bloggers asking the questions – they wanted to know specifics.  Personally I don’t think a Q&A session is really the time for that but I understand the desire for people to take any opportunity they can get to ask a question of an expert!

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