Things I really learned at Affiliate Summit.

Since my last post was kind of about what I learned personally about myself I decided to post about things I learned at Affiliate Summit.

In the creating a mastermind group session I learned that any number above 3 is too many people to have in the group. I have seen groups larger than this and it never works. If a group larger than 3 is working for you than fine but in general I think anything over 3 people is too much.

You Never Know Where Future Business Will Come From.

I was approached with so many different opportunities in the strangest of places. While I was in the mastermind session we were approached by a guy that has over 300 quality domain names that were never developed. The guy was in my session so he approached me asking what I would do with them.

After that session I went to the bloggers lounge where I was asked by two guys about his product and if he was ready for an affiliate program. Both the product and his idea of affiliate marketing was way off. Not only was his product a bad idea, his payout ratio was really really bad.

On Monday I had a time slot at the speakers lounge where I was expecting a whole lot of questions and answers. One guy came up to me that attended my session and told me about his website and that everything I said in my session he needed. I didn’t think too much about it until I was in the airport on the way home and took a look at his website. Out of my 28 things to look at in my session his website needed 27 of them. I will be contacting him during the week and help get his website improved.

As I walked around the show floor I was approached by many many people asking me questions. With my voice being so bad it was really really interesting to listen for a change instead of talking a lot. Many of the questions were basic, I learned that there was room in the affiliate marketing and website building for more training aimed at newbies. The more questions people asked me, the more I realized that a lot of stuff I take for granted really needs to be shared in the open.

Most of the networking, is done after the show. I made more connections just sitting around the show hall after the closing keynote than I did during the show. I exchanged business cards with about 10 to 15 people as I was walking out of the show hall. Out of the 10 or 15 I probably grabbed 5 to 7 cell phone numbers.

I learned that one of the benefits of speaking at affiliate Summit is the amount of sign-ups to happen afterwards to your affiliate programs. In the days after speaking, actually while I was still at the show we received many quality applications to all of our affiliate programs. This was a very unexpected benefit, and one that I didn’t count on.

Affiliate Summit really is about networking, and seeing old friends that you haven’t seen in a long time. I saw an affiliate I haven’t seen in about five years and didn’t realize his whole game plan had changed about three years ago. I also gave him a lot of advice, I’m sure that just by touching base with me we will be able to make him more money and affiliate programs.

I didn’t go to many of the sessions this year, as I was not feeling well and I watch them on video. I can’t say I learned anything in any of the sessions as I didn’t go to many. I did have some great conversations and the bloggers lounge with a few people who let some good ideas out in the open.

I am big on helping people, it makes me feel really good when I can make the connection between two people and they do business. I was sitting at my friend and she mentioned that she wanted an iPhone app and maybe a droid app for her websites. I sent out a tweet to my buddy Brad Waller who came to the bloggers lounge within minutes and will probably be making her two apps.

I didn’t make it to the white boarding sessions as they were too early in the morning for me. I did hear some rave reviews from some affiliates that said Eric Nagel really knocked it out of the park. I attended the closing keynote which was okay but nothing really groundbreaking came out of it for me. But since I got a whole bunch of contacts after the closing keynote was well worth it for me.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 was a very different conference for me this year as I chose to speak for a change. I have been on a few panels before but this time I had a whole session to myself where I could put more details into a bunch of topics. My session was titled “25 ways to improve your website” but I over delivered and made it 28 and if you take that I put 3 points in each section my session gave about 84 things to look at.

I have to thank Shawn and Missy for letting me speak at Affiliate Summit. The session came close to being cancelled as I could barely talk between a cough I picked up and just not feeling well had me worried. The day before my session I could not talk at all. The last thing I wanted to do was have to cancel a session after finally agreeing to do one.

We got to Vegas early for a much needed break before the show. When Friday came about friends started to wander into town and we went over to the Ceasers Palace hotel to say hello to them. We settled into the Galleria bar in the lobby and as soon as we got there the smoke from people smoking cigarettes hit me like a wall. The ceilings in the place were so low there was no place for the smoke to go. Add this in with trying to talk over all the noises from the slot machines caused me to wake up during the night not able to breathe. It felt like a tennis ball was caught in my throat. Not exactly the way to start off a show, especially one you have to speak at.

After waking up and what seemed like a million cough drops and water I was able to get out a squeak of a voice.  We headed over to registration and for a meeting. All day Saturday was just filled with people asking me to repeat myself. After a while I just shut it down and went back to the hotel where I could rest my voice. This seemed to be a wise choice as my voice came back in time for my Sunday session.

My session went well except I forgot to leave time for questions and answers but I did them after as people came up to me after with a bunch. I am the first to admit that public speaking is not my area of expertise and I felt like I was rushing at one point. After asking a few friends in the audience, they said I wasn’t so I feel good about that. I admit around the 3rd slide where I had to talk about myself and experience I did get a little nervous. It is hard to talk about yourself in front of a bunch of strangers, especially when you don’t do it all the time.

I did have some mistakes in the session saying that Facebook had 70 million users when in fact it is 700 million. I am going to have to look back and see how I made that mistake.  Surprised I didn’t notice it in the power point and odds are I probably said it since I was looking at my screen. If that was my only blunder so be it. I did have a few slides that I was going to take out to make it 25 but decided to leave them in. Meta keywords and keyword density were two candidates since no one talks much about them. Did they deserve their own slides? Maybe not but I felt it was important enough to talk about them and since there was newbies in the room it was a good decision.

After it was over I didn’t give much thought about reactions and was pleasantly surprised at how my session was viewed. Shannon from Marketing Elf and Dave from Fat Cow Business gave me nice reviews. The biggest surprise came from people just walking up to me and even going out of their way to let me know they enjoyed the session. Most were surprised when I told them it was a one time deal and I have no plans to ever talk again in public.

I handed out a worksheet that went along with the session but I didn’t print enough as people were taking 3 or 4 each so they could use it on each one of their sites. That was very well received, I wonder why more speakers don’t give worksheets out as audience members should have a takeaway from your session.

So I learned you have to take good care of your voice when you are speaking in public. I totally took that for granted and have more respect for people like Peter Shankman and Chris Brogan who speak all the time.

What Did You Get Out of Affiliate Summit?

Jason Rubacky's Artwork at Affiliate Summit

I know it is kind of late for a post about Affiliate Summit but Hurricane Irene kind of got in the way. There is nothing like grabbing everything you own in a few hours and fleeing town to delay writing a blog post.

This year at Affiliate Summit East 2011 I had the chance to take in the full day SEO training with Sugarrae. I was not sure what to expect and for someone that doesn’t take notes at all, I left with over 26 tips that will no doubt help in building future sites and improve existing sites. While I won’t get into specific details about the SEO training I will say that I was really glad I added this to my Affiliate Summit schedule.

This year we booked the Hilton on the first day it became available to register. If you read my post about Affiliate Summit East last year you will totally understand why. We got in on Friday night unpacked and went to the Old Castle pub for some dinner. This seems to be the home of Affiliate Summit after hours since the drinks are half price of the Hilton lobby bar and the staff is very friendly. We met up with some affiliates and had a few beers and talked affiliate marketing. I know I couldn’t hang out all night since the SugarRae training was starting at some ungodly hour in the morning.

Saturday morning I was up at the crack of dawn to get ready for the session. Not knowing if there would be breakfast I ran over to the 53rd street deli and bought a breakfast sandwich. So far my eating healthy plan seemed to be going out the window. I knew coming into Summit that my new eating better lifestyle would suffer but it is the price you pay. So as I am waiting to get my egg sandwich a couple of guys with Affiliate Summit passes come in and I engage in conversation. Turns out they are there for the day to learn about affiliate marketing and starting an affiliate program for a sports product they invented.

I talk to them for a bit and we exchanged cards. I make a connection before the conference even started. If I had stayed at another hotel that wouldn’t of happened. I head over to the SEO training and get ready for the day. Think I had like 5 cups of coffee already, 8am is not agreeing with me. I am really looking forward to the training session and it was good that I had people around me in the room that I knew.

For a detailed account of the session you can read Eric Nagel’s post about the SugarRae SEO training class. I found the training valuable as it validated many things that I have been doing right over the years. Glad I was doing things right but she also explained why it was right. It was well worth it and I am glad I attended.

After the training we headed back to the old castle to grab a bite to eat and a few drinks before heading over to the buy.at party. I needed a few drinks if I was going to wear pink which was the theme of the party. It was a great location for a party. The views of the city was amazing. They really know how to plan a party.  The party was great, we were lucky as one of our clients “Rob from Party Beans” was able to make it at the last minute. It was good to talk about affiliate marketing with affiliates with the client there also. It was good because  they had donated to the charity auction.

I admit I took it easy at the party since I knew I had to set up for the meet market table on Sunday. Setting up a meet market table is a task in itself. I am glad they give you a few hours to set it up. I had to make what seemed like 10 trips back and forth between the show hall and the hotel room to get more supplies. I got to know the staff people working the show floor on a first name basis.

The meet market is Debbie’s job as I went to sessions and met with new affiliates. Of course one of the sessions was the SEO site review which I love and I am so glad it is included at every Summit. Between sessions I was in the bloggers lounge until it was time to break down the meet market table. One thing that surprised me was the amount of meet market tables that started taking down their tables early. I understand it is a long day but the last affiliate you talk to may be the best one of the day. It could be the one great connection that you as a merchant can make. Affiliates are in and out of the meet market inbetween sessions.

Some affiliates didn’t go up to the meet market until late in the afternoon. I know that when meet market opens it is usually packed like crazy and back in the day I use to wait until after the rush to start going through meet market. It just doesn’t make sense that you would pay for a table and then leave early. I saw the same thing with the booths on the last day of Summit. It is just a shame that companies are in such a rush to leave and leave business on the table. I didn’t get a chance to get to the booths this year until about an hour before it was over. Just bad scheduling on my part as I was busy meeting with affiliates.

It is so strange to me how times change. Years ago I would have been recognized as NYFalcon since that was my online persona for years. It would be no big thing if that is how people knew me at Summits since no one really used their real names. More and more people see my conference badge now and recognize me from our podcast. It is very strange when you are talking to someone and they say they know me from my voice because they listen to the podcast.

On Sunday as I was walking back to the bloggers lounge I was walking along side an affiliate and I started to talk to him. He looks at my badge and says “Vinny I know you, You are the pink unicorn guy from the podcast.” I was startled when he said that since I didn’t get it at first. He had to remind me of the unicorn picture on “The Affiliate Thing” podcast. For all things to be known for this was not expected. I couldn’t help but laugh and thinking what a big kick it wold be to Lisa Picarille.

This Summit was by far the best one that I went to when it came to making connections with affiliates. It seemed like everywhere I went there was affiliates looking for new programs to run. Can’t wait until Affiliate Summit West 2012. I may be putting together a session of my own.  It is on my to-do list which grew a lot after this Summit.

Did you attend Affiliate Summit East this year? What was your biggest take away?

I have been thinking a lot about affiliate programs that are on auto approval lately. I think the days of auto approval affiliate programs are coming to an end and will either soon either disappear or become rare.

A month or so ago we moved the rest of the affiliate programs we manage to manual approval since most of the applications we were getting were just plain junk. Sites claiming that WordPress.com or Google.com was their domain name and coming from a foreign country was starting to become the norm. Some of these are not exactly who you want to be partners with. These applications on auto approve can easily get bad players into your affiliate program to do harm to good affiliates as well as your brand. You are giving access to trademark bidders, bad ppc bidders, PPV and even spyware.

Lets say a user goes to Google and types in your brand name. They end up clicking on either some ppc ads or a link that automatically puts spyware or malware on the end users computer. That end user is only going to remember typing in your brand name and when they tell friends about your company this is what they will remember, not exactly how you want to be known.

With the FTC cracking down on websites and affiliate programs you should have it in your best interest to know who you are dealing with. Having 1000′s of affiliates in your program isn’t going to help you with sales if they are not doing anything so why bother wasting time policing them. Just announcing that you have a million affiliates tells serious affiliates that your program isn’t performing correctly and you are trying to get sales any way possible. Affiliate programs may be better off having a few hundred or a thousand affiliates that are performing then being stuck on trying to raise the number of affiliates in the program.

If the FTC comes knocking on the merchants door saying this affiliate is doing this and that, the only answer they can give them is that they were auto approved into the program and we didn’t know what they were doing. Needless to say this isn’t a good answer. The FTC just gave a huge penalty to a merchant and will require them to monitor their affiliates for a few years. Do you want this to happen to you? I don’t think so as you can avoid all this by putting the affiliate program on manual approval and carefully screen affiliates. You can either do manual approvals and know who you are working with or pay later. You have to make sure the affiliate uses some sort of disclosure that they are being paid to endorse the product especially if they are doing review sites.

As a business you don’t partner with everyone in the world so why should your affiliate program be operated in the same manner. It just doesn’t make good business sense. What I see in the future is serious affiliates not joining affiliate programs that are on auto approve. Wouldn’t you rather have a serious affiliate then 100 that will never do anything at all? Of course you would. Being on manual approval also gives you a chance to contact an affiliate that doesn’t initially look like a good fit and find out how they plan to promote your program.  Many affiliates that don’t look right on first look, can end up being great performers because you reached out and talked to them.

Out of the top 100 programs in the Shareasale network, 44 are on auto approval. That means over half are already on manual approval. I would bet that by the end of the year that number of affiliate programs on auto approval will be less then 10. I see no reason to have an affiliate program on auto approval except you having no one running the affiliate program or a lazy affiliate manager is in place. One of the programs we use to manage on the Google affiliate network got 300 affiliate applications a week and we would approve maybe 5 if we were lucky.

If we were on auto approval with them that would be 295 affiliates lousy affiliates that would have been in the program. We now have to watch these affiliates and 90% of them wouldn’t perform anyway so why have them at all. Just the amount of time we used going through the applications was time we could have spent better helping good affiliates get better or recruit better affiliates. It would waste more time being the policeman by letting these affiliates in and having to monitor them more closely.

Is there a benefit to having your affiliate program on auto approval? Yes, It allows the affiliate to get links up sooner, including the bad guys. If you manually approve affiliates the most it should take is 24-48 hours or so.  Is that really a long wait. Odds are if an affiliate is looking to work with a good affiliate program waiting a day or two at worst is not that bad.

Most serious affiliates have no problem waiting a day or so to get approved. If they were smart they already emailed the affiliate manager explaining how they would promote the program. Losing affiliates because you are on manual approval is not really the way it is.

Some managers think that they can go back and remove bad affiliates that slipped in by being auto-approved.  That is a bad practice for several reasons the biggest being that by the time you remove the affiliate, they already have links up and now they are mad at you when you remove them and will talk trash about your program.  Some affiliates you won’t care, others will have better sites that you didn’t give them a chance to talk to you about.  Also, with the links already out there, part of the damage is already done.

By having your program on auto approve you are not checking to see if websites are any good and if they have basic things like a terms of service, privacy policy, about us, etc. What if an affiliate joined your program, bought a list of emails and sent out a mass marketing email mentioning your company? Now you have your brand name creating spam and maybe even a Can-Spam issue on your hands. Not exactly what you were thinking when you decided to have an affiliate program.

I mentioned a few reasons why if you are running an affiliate program you should think more about how you are approving affiliates. If you are serious about your business you should be serious about your affiliate program as well.

It seems funny writing day 5 for Affiliate Summit since the conference is only three days long but since we got there early and left later it ends up being longer. It is just so much information to take in that leaving a day later is advised. I always count Affiliate Summit as a vacation and tack on a few days no matter what city it is in to unwind.

So Tuesday is here and we are getting out of the dump hotel and heading over to the Hilton for summit. No real plan today except the two affiliate meetings we have lined up. I am glad because I still have not been to the show floor really and my stomach pain is becoming more annoying. At first I thought it was gas but now I am leaning towards something else. We get to summit in time for breakfast but we missed meeting the super affiliate friends in the bloggers lounge. It seems that something is abuzz and we need to get together with them. We trek up to breakfast and sit down with Andy Rodriguez  and Charlie from buy.at. It is a pleasant breakfast discussion and then down to the Jim Kukral keynote.

As we head towards the keynote we see all the affiliate super friends in capes and masks. A truly amazing site and within five minutes Debbie and I are in capes and mask also. We know Jim has no idea what is about to hit him. We all gather and walk into this big hall as if it was Halloween and no one else got the memo lol. We gather up into the front tables that are reserved for us. Jim is sitting at our table and I could see the relief come right off his face. He was at such a relaxed state you knew he was going to rock the keynote (and he did).

Keynote is over and we all get up on stage with Jim and get a picture taken with a chin pose of course.  It is now 11:15 and we have an affiliate meeting at 11:30 so we transform back to our regular selves and head over for the meeting. Our meeting goes well and we are off to the show floor. We talked to a few people and then it was time for lunch.

We sit with Kim and Greg from buy.at, Trica and Cindy from Sunshine Rewards and a few others. I really don’t feel like eating so I make a small plate. We met a lady from the San Fransisco area who is an affiliate and wants to do a podcast. As lunch is over I see Lisa Picarille leaving then next table and introduce her to the lady since she lives in SF also. They plan to meet when they get home. Once again we are making people connect lol.

We talked to a few people and then it was down to the bloggers lounge.We hang out there for a little while. We get to the bloggers lounge and set up our laptops and some people are getting ready to go to a session and Debbie joins them. At this point I am just glad to sit down and work on some blog post and relax a bit. John Chow gets all the extra drink tickets together and goes upstairs and brings back 98 beers. Hmmm at this point there is 6 of us in the bloggers lounge, who is going to drink all these beers? It isn’t going to be me since my stomach is not right. The beers go one by one and a few bloggers come in and now I am sure they won’t go to waste. Good Job John.

The show is coming to an end and we are making plans to go to dinner with Jen Goode and others. We all meet in the Hilton lobby and head over to the Old Castle for dinner. Jen reserved a table upstairs for 10 people and we are joined by some good people including Joe Sousa and his wife Kate. Once again that Joe found me eating lol.

Almost everyone had the Shepard’s pie and raved about it, as dinner was over the pain in my stomach became unbearable so I excused myself and went back to the dump hotel. I just needed a place to lay down so I told Debbie to stay out with the group and have a good time. I get back to the dump hotel and try to get some sleep as we suppose to take James Martell and his wife Arlene site seeing the next day. Guess what happens next? Firetrucks, cop cars, garbage trucks all night long and the pain in my stomach keeps me tossing and turning all night. It is another night of no sleep.

Morning comes we check out of the hotel and I am really feeling bad. We figure out I got salmonella poisoning from the bad eggs benedict. All I want to see is my own bed and get some rest. We have to go to the Hilton to get some bags we left with Jen Goode and to see James and Arlene to let them know they are on their own. We meet them all in the lobby we get our bags and get a cab home.

It is now four days later as I write this and I am better. I lost about 7 pounds not exactly planned but I will take it. Can’t wait for Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas

If you missed any of these post start from the beginning Affiliate Summit East 2010 Recap.

So it is Monday morning and I actually got some sleep, sure there was garbage trucks again and some firetrucks but I guess I am immune to them by now. We got a late start over to Summit and missed breakfast, not really a surprise there. Think all the summits I have been to I probably made breakfast three times total. Today is all about catching up on some work and we have a few meetings with affiliates.

We head over to the Hilton and set up in the bloggers lounge for a while and plan out the day. As we get to the Hilton we meet up with an affiliate from Abestweb that we know for years and lives nearby but somehow have never met. How this has happened I have no idea, maybe its time to put together a monthly group of nearby affiliates. We are asked to be a guest on the GeekDads Weekly podcast by Daniel Clark and Debbie says sure. My stomach isn’t exactly right and last thing I want to happen is be in the middle of a podcast and have to run to the bathroom lol. We head up and have lunch and sit with a few affiliates talking about the parties that happened.

After lunch we have a meetings with two super affiliates, kind of funny being on the other end of these conversations since I almost know what they are going to ask for before they say it . Meetings go well, now it is time for my favorite part of Affiliate Summit the SEO site review panel with Sugarrae from Outspoken Media and Michael Gray. Debbie and I trek down to the session rooms and get a place up front. It seems we are a little late but we didn’t miss anything as they were having computer issues. I love watching Rae go behind the scenes and breakdown a website and letting them know how they stand and offer suggestions on how to make their site better. I usually pick up some things that they see ahead of time and wait for them to say it. It seems that every time they do this session there is always a website that has too many webmasters over the years fiddling around and they mess up something major. This year one of the sites actually had the Googlebot blocked. I just shake my head every time I think about it. I am glad that Affiliate Summit has had this session the last few Summits I really enjoy it.

Session is over and its off to the bloggers lounge to see whats happening. Glad we decided to come back here because there is beer and a funnel and John Chow is pouring beer and someone is downing it. I pulled out my Droid and recorded it.

We are off to dinner with Kim and Amy from buy.at. We plan on heading down towards Times Square and see what that brings, no plan really just hanging out and talking shop with two of our favorite people in the affiliate industry. (I can hear Kim right now saying aaaah that is so sweet we love you guys too, while Amy is blushing).

We end up at Rosie O’Grady’s near the Sheraton on Broadway and have a nice steak dinner. I sat there for a hour as they all talked about how great I am. (it is my site so I can dream sometimes) Actually we catch up on whats going on and it was very nice dinner. After dinner we stroll down to Times Square and then head back up to the hotel where Trivia night has already begun. Kim, Debbie and I head up as Amy had other plans.

Here is where the power of Affiliate Summit happens. As we enter the room we see a bunch of familiar faces sitting around and we start to mingle. Debbie is approached by an affiliate who is talking to a merchant. It seems he needs some affiliate manger stuff done I am not sure, it ends up not exactly our niche but it is in Kim’s expertise so Debbie sends me to get her and bring her into the conversation. I stay talking to the affiliate manager that Kim was talking to and telling her whats going on. We both sit there and laugh as we see Debbie and Kim’s mind working a mile a minute. A connection is made and I am sure this will end up being a good thing for both the merchant and Kim’s company buy.at. I wish I had a nickel for every time I have seen this type of thing happen at Affiliate Summit.

Some affiliates are heading out early on Tuesday so we end up saying goodbye to them and we call it a night. Back to our dump of a hotel. On to Day five of Affiliate Summit

If you missed any part of this recap you can see it from the beginning Affiliate Summit Day One – Day Two – Day Three.

Affiliate Summit Day Three – Meet Market Day

Need to catch up you can start with Affiliate Summit Day 1 or Day 2.

So now that you have all the details about the first two days leading up to Affiliate Summit you are probably busting at the seems to read about the actual show. Before we get to that I have to tell you about my lack of sleep the night before. The dump of a hotel we stayed in also seemed to attract all the outside elements. We got back to the Hotel a little after midnight and Debbie fell asleep right away. I on the other hand had a restless night sleep between the gas like pain in my stomach and the combination of firetrucks, garbage trucks and the two hour fight between a bunch of women right under our window I figure I slept for 1/2 hour. Not a good way to start off the show for sure.

We get up and shower and grab the laptops and head to the hotel. We stop off at the 53rd street deli for some breakfast. We meet up with Joe Sousa again (hmm How does he always know where I am eating lol) anyway I am glad we found Joe because we have boxes in his room that we need for the show. We eat and Joe helps us get the boxes out of his room (Thanks again Joe). We start setting up on the Meet Market floor I am manning the Raven Tools table with Jon Henshaw, Debbie is over with CorpNet Incorporation Services table with Nellie and Amanda. Affiliates are starting to enter the room and we spend the next 6 hours meeting affiliates and making great connections.

The Meet market was a big success and packing up was an adventure as finding the business center and getting our leftover stuff there was a task in itself. Auggie and Shawn from Infinite Traffic help out and get a bellman and I carried everything else near the bloggers lounge where we had to do the new comer program welcome with Jen Goode. By this time I am exhausted and I am sure glad they had beverages there. Think I drank two gallons of water, this pain in my stomach is not going away but it wasn’t enough to stop me. I would call it more of an annoyance then anything.

We finish with the newcomer gathering and Jen was nice enough to let us put our stuff in her room so I don’t have to lug it to the dump hotel.(Thanks Jen)After lugging up the stuff it is time to head over to the Shareasale party. I finally get to relax and have a drink or two but wait we didn’t have dinner. We get out of the cab and the line to get up to the party was long. Lucky for us there is a great restaurant called P.J. Clarkes here and Debbie and I sneak in and have a nice dinner. Even though I had a pain in my stomach I never lost my appetite. We finish up and head upstairs and had a great time. The Shareasale people really know how to throw a good party. This location is good because it gives people a place to get away from the blasting music and head outside so they can talk. I finally get a chance to meet @pearsonified who designed the Thesis Theme for WordPress which I use on all my sites. We have only been to the same conferences about 5 times but never met. Thanks Derek for making that happen.

After the party we all hop in cabs and head back to the Old Castle pub. The place gets packed in a hurry as word is out that the prices are much better then the Hilton bar. I meet my buddy Faisal from England who I have not seen in over 5 years. That was a great surprise and made my whole summit worth it. We hang out a bit and catch up and it starts getting late so we call it a night. Back to the dump hotel for the night, can’t believe I did all this on 1/2 hour sleep. Hopefully there will be no cat fights outside our window tonight.

Now on to Day four of Affiliate Summit.

Day Two of Affiliate Summit – Saturdays Poor Decisions

(Read our Day one of Affiliate Summit here.)
Between staying out a little late and Debbie not feeling well we didn’t make it to the audience conference and we kind of slept in. After packing up it was around 12 noon check out time so Debbie and I checked out and decided to go check into our new hotel the Washington Jefferson on 51st street. I picked this hotel after we missed getting a decent rate at the Hilton. I booked through Expedia since we had a coupon and I wanted to use it before it went away.

This was one of the many mistakes that I made (Debbie will agree) on Saturday. We checked into this hotel in sheep’s clothing and it looked ok from the lobby. We were greeted by a nice doorman who took us to the room. As we exited the elevator I knew were in trouble as I had to push open a door to exit the elevator. My first clue I was in a dump, we get to the room on the fourth floor and when we opened the door there was a mattress and not much else.There wasn’t even a place to put our suitcases. It kind of reminded me of the inside of the prison barge they use to hold prisoners here in New York. Wait cancel that because the prison barge is probably nicer.

Anyway as the doorman/bellhop came to the room with our bags I asked if all the rooms were like this and he told me for about $20 a night we can upgrade. First time I was ever up-sold by a bellhop but something had to be done. I went down and got a key to see the upgraded room and it wasn’t much better but at least there was a desk for the laptop and a place for suitcases besides the bed.

It was now about 1 or 2pm so we needed some food since we didn’t do breakfast. We went looking for a place and we found this diner on the corner of 52nd and 8th so we went in and was glad we could still get breakfast. The place looked OK so Debbie got her usual banana pancakes and I got eggs Benedict. We finished up and went back to the hotel to get our stuff we needed before heading over to the hotel to meet with affiliates before heading to the Abestweb Party. We lounged around the hotel lobby bar with Bill from Girlychecks.com and my friend Packy from Syracuse.

We all just sat around waiting for registration for Affiliate Summit to open so we could register and get our passes. It is always good to register the day before as trying to do it the morning summit opens is usually packed and you are standing in line and missing the show. We met with our client Nellie and Amanda from Corpnet Incorporation Services and went up and registered. It was now back to the bar and wait for others to go to the ABW party which didn’t start until 6pm. We got a group of us together and walked to the place where it was being held. We should have taken a cab since the ladies were walking in heels but it was only a few blocks away.

The party was good as we met many affiliates that we knew for years face to face for the first time. I planted myself right in front of the mini burgers just like I said I would on ABW. This was a wise choice as most of the people kept coming back to this area for more. I had a rum and coke and then switched to coke for the rest of the night as I knew I had a big day Sunday with the Meet Market table and I wanted to be on my game. As the party was winding down we gathered a group up and walked over to the buy.at party. I lead a bunch of people liked the pied piper through Times Square pointing out things like where the failed bomb attempt happened. This made people walk faster lol. I am always amazed at the amount of people looking up as they walk around NYC and this group had a lot of people that were doing just that.

We got to the Buy.at party and it was amazing! There was waitresses serving all sorts of chocolate and the club was really nice. Most affiliates were gathered by the couches near the bar but I had to investigate the back. I found a huge pool table and a large screen TV that had Wii games and a really nice place to set up shop so to speak. Buy.at really outdid themselves this time picking out a place for their party. I hung out back here most of the night talking to affiliates Eric Nagel, Jen Goode and Tricia Meyer. We met up with James Martell and his wife Arlene, Debbie and I started talking to them like we usually do. James, Debbie and I just did a podcast about NYC so it was good catching up with them. James and I can talk affiliate marketing all day if Debbie and Arlene would let us. This party was really good and a great way to start off Affiliate Summit. The party was only around the corner from our hotel so after the party we went back and called it a night to get fully charged for meet market. See that on Affiliate Summit Day Three page.

Day 1 at Affiliate Summit – Just a little Early

Debbie and I were originally planning on going to Affiliate Summit on Saturday morning since Debbie was going to the Audience conference but since we are about an hour out of the city I suggested we stay in the city on Friday night instead of getting up super early to take in the show. We had some big boxes to take into the city for the meet market tables and since we were not staying at the Hilton during summit we could bring them in early and put them in someones room that was staying at the Hilton.

Although we did not stay at the Hilton during the summit we booked a room there for Friday night since it was reasonably priced. We got into the city around 4pm on Friday and settled in after seeing Shawn Collins and Connie Berg and a few people we knew in the lobby. After we checked in Debbie and I went to the Old Castle pub on 54th street to get some late lunch/ early dinner. We have been to the Old Castle many times and besides the great food it is 1/3 of the price then the restaurant at the Hilton. As we sat down Joe Sousa saw us through the window and came in and joined us. Joe just got married so it was great hearing all the details of the wedding and catching up with him. He was nice enough to let us put our boxes in his room (Thanks Joe) We were then joined by Shawn Collins who was running around doing last minute stuff for the show.

Friday night we spent mostly around the lobby seeing old friends and affiliates starting to get settled into their rooms. Most of the time we were sending affiliates down to Old Castle since the drinks were also a lot cheaper then the Hilton bar. We probably saved affiliates a thousand dollars in drinks by sharing this info with HeatherinBC this info and she passed it on.

We were on our way to the room to call it a night when we met up with Amy and Kim from buy.at who twisted our arms(yeah right) to have a drink. After one drink we decided to go to the OLD castle and have a few more. I was tweeting out that there was singing and dancing going on but it was more talking and catching up with a few affiliate friends.

Walked back to the Hilton and called it a night. A little later then planned but that’s all good. Click here to read about Day Two at Affiliate Summit.

If you are running any sort of online business you constantly have to keep learning to keep going and making money. One way to learn while you are working or on the go is by listening to a podcast.

I am not talking about a certain podcast from your industry which you should be listening to anyway, I am talking about one that is outside your industry that you can learn new ideas to spark up your business. I often listen to podcast that are based around a hobby or something that I want to learn about.

A few weeks ago we were at Affiliate Summit meeting new people and I started talking to someone about SEO and when I asked them certain questions it became apparent that they had no clue.

I told them if they wanted to learn about SEO they could find a few podcast and listen while they worked on their sites. Of course since they were just getting started in affiliate marketing I also steered them to www.geekcast.fm where I am on a few podcast and there are other good podcast on the subject also.

I listen to almost every podcast on Geekcast since they are mostly about making money online. You can get them delivered automatically using Itunes which is a huge time saver. You can listen in the car (since most radio stations suck now anyways) or you can listen using an Ipod while taking in your morning run.

If you make time to learn your business should improve. If you can’t find a podcast in your business then start your own, you can be the expert in your field and business will come to you. You will be considered a leader in your field and business will come to you in ways you never expected.