Affiliate Summit East 2008
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.
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