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Today is the day that I leave to go to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West (ASW)! This will be my second time attending the Affiliate Summit conference. The first time that I attended was in August for Affiliate Summit East (ASE) in Boston. I had a great time in Boston. I met a lot of people and learned a lot from both the people that I met and from the sessions that I attended. This time should be the same too.

ASW is taking place in Las Vegas this year. There are two conferences every year, one on the east coast, and another on the west coast. Although ASE changes every time, ASW always takes place in Vegas, I wonder why????

Anyway, I’m really excited to be attending another conference. There are so many great people to meet, good sessions to attend, and lots of information to digest. If you haven’t attended, and you are in the affiliate marketing industry, you should definitely try to attend at least one conference. The information that you will learn is worth more than the price tag of the event. Also, if you book your pass for the next conference while the current is going on, you can get it for at great discount! That’s what I always do.

This will be my firs time in Las Vegas. I will be staying at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino where the conference is taking place. At the last Affiliate Summit in Boston, I made the mistake of reserving my room at the last possible time and ended staying at a hotel next to where the conference was taking place. It was kind of annoying because the majority of the people where in one place and small group of procrastinators were at the hotel next door. This year, I didn’t make that mistake. As soon I purchased my conference pass, I also booked my hotel room!

Sessions That I will Be Attending

There are going to be a lot of great sessions and speakers this year at ASW and I attend on sitting in on many of them. Here is a list of the sessions that I will try to make it to this year at ASW:

Day 1

1. Affiliate Strategies for Traffic Generation and Monetization - This will be the session that kicks off the event. On the panel for this session are Nick Koscianski (NickyCakes) from NickyCakes.com, Miles Baker from Marketingwithmiles.com, and Geordie Cardswell from Diversion Marketing. The session will be moderated by Andrew Wee from WhoisAndrewWee.com. They will talk about PPC, seo optimization, website strategies and more.
2. The Black Ink Session - Jeremy Palmer will teach you how to plan, develop and market your own profitable affiliate site with a hands-on case study.
3. Automating Websites and PPC Management - John Hasson will be the speaker for this session. John is a really cool guy who tells it how it is. I attended his session the difference PPC engines last year and learned a lot. I look forward to this one as well. John is going to talk about the advanced concepts for automating daily website tasks (such as downloading stats, uploading changes, etc.) without access to an API.

Day 2

1. Keynote Address by Gary Vaynerchuk. I wouldn’t miss this one for the world. Gary is a great motivational speaker and entrepreneur. I really look forward to finally seeing him in person.Advertising on Facebook - The power of advertising on Facebook is amazing. You can target your ads to the exact demographic! This session will talk about advertising on Facebook. On the panel will be Zac Johnson, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Alex Schultz from Facebook.
2. Landing Page Testing To Increase Conversion - Tim Ash, author of Landing Page Optimization will talk about landing page testing to improve conversion.

Day 3

1. Super Affiliate PPC Marketing Strategies - Anik Singal, Rosalind Garner, Colin McDougall, and Amit Mehta will talk about how to inexpensively use Google, Yahoo, and MSN to drive inexpensive traffic to your site.
2. Setting Quality Standards in Affiliate Marketing - William Martin-Gill from the Ebay Partner Network will talk about improving the quality of the ebay affiliate program.
3. The Art of Keyword Blasting - Ian Fernando will talk blasting keywords and keeping the ones that convert
4. Affiliate Triathlon - I’m taking part in the Affiliate Triathlon this year. Every year, money is raised for a good cause. Shawn Collins decided to sponsor the first 5 people who commented on “Want Me To Sponsor You For The Affiliate Triathlon?“. I was commenter # 2 and got sponsored by Shawn. I also plan on making a donation myself. The money is being raised for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

That’s it for the sessions and activities that I’m going to attend and be part of. In addition to this, there are going to be lots of parties being thrown by the difference CPA networks, and as always, the parties are the best time to network and meet other link minded individuals.

I really can’t wait to get there. Unfortunately, I’m stuck at this small airport, just waiting to get my flight delayed, AGAIN!

Alright, i’m out of here. I’ll post a recap of everything when I return.

Peace out!

Affiliate Marketing affiliate summit, asw, las vegas, rio

I recently attended my first ever Affiliate Summit conference. I have been wanting to attend this conference for a while and I’m glad that I was finally able to do so. I was in Boston from Saturday, August 9 to Tuesday, August 12.

Saturday
White in Boston, I stayed at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel, which is just a few minutes away from where the conference was taking place. Ideally, I would’ve loved to stay at the hotel where the conference was taking place, but due to my normal nature of doing things late, all rooms were booked when I finally decided to book my room. As a matter of fact, I almost ended up not even getting a room at the Westin.

After checking on Saturday, I went over to the Boston Seaport hotel’s lobby bar for a drink and to meet some people. Ian Fernando along with Charles Ngo came down and we all chit chatted over a few drinks. Ian and Charles are the first people that I really interacted with at the summit and they’re both great people.

Sunday, Day 1
Day one was pretty laid back. I thought that the check-in process was going to be a breeze, but it wasn’t for me. There were some printing problems so I ended waiting for 20+ minutes before getting my pass. It would’ve been nice if an announcement about the printing problems was made a little sooner.

After registering, I immediately went to John Hasson’s presentation, Which PPC Engines Work and How?. John’s session was packed with people and full of great information. Thanks for all the great information, John.

On Sunday night, Share a Sale hosted a party on the Odyssey ship. I almost wasn’t able to attend since I didn’t get a ticket. Lucky for me, Eric Nagle was nice enough to provide me with two tickets since he wasn’t going to be attending anymore. I had a great time at the share-a-sale party. Thanks again, Eric.

Monday, Day 2

Mayor Corey Booker’s speech was great. It was moving and very motivational. but it didn’t relate one bit to affiliate marketing. I still don’t know why he was invited to speak to a bunch of online marketers. Don’t get me wrong, his speech was moving, humorous, and motivational, but I think it would’ve been better if we had someone from the industry speak to us.

The first session that I attended was Wil Reynold’s “My 5 Favorite SEO Strategies Exposed” . Wil’s session was very informative. He talked about the different tools and strategies that he uses to gain back links. He also talked a lot about Google’s new service, Knol, In case you haven’t heard, Google Knol is Google’s answer to Wikipedia. Although the service is new, pages created in Knol are ranking high, and very quickly.

Me, listening to Wil Reynolds speak (flickr)

The second session I attended, The Anatomy of a Great Affiliate Program , was moderated by Heather Paulson and included the opinions of Ian Fernando , Janet Attard , and Daniel Gray . Although the session was geared towards companies who ran affiliate programs, it was good to hear Ian’s perspective, from an affiliate’s point of view

The third session that I attended, and probably my favorite of the day/possibly the entire conference, was Tim Ash’s “Landing Page Testing to Attract Super Affiliates” . The session was geared towards companies with affiliate programs but the information was useful for everyone. The main point that was drilled into everyone’s head is testing; one small change can increase your conversion rate and increase your profits. Tim is also the author of Landing Page Optimization . At the end of the show, one lucky audience member won a signed copy of his book.

Tim Ash’s session was very informative. (flickr)

The last session that I attended was Amit Mehta’s PPC Super Affiliate Strategies You Must Know . Amit seems like a great guy, but I after sitting in on the session, I wish I would’ve attended another session. The information that he provided was nothing new. As a matter of fact, most of it was already available on his blog.

Tuesday, Day 3
On Tuesday I went to the Ask The Experts Roundtable Discussions. It kind of sucked because a lot of the so called “experts” who were supposed to answer questions simply didn’t show up.

I attended Zac Johnson’s How to Grow a Blog table. Zac pretty much answered everyone’s questions starting and growing a blog. There were lots of people at the table who wanted to know how he got his blog become an authority in such a short period of time. The information that he provided was very useful.

Overall, my first affiliate summit was a success! I learned a lot and met a lot of great people and I look forward to attending the next conference in Las Vegas.

Affiliate Marketing affiliate summit, affsum, ase, ase08, boston