My recent trip to Affiliate Summit West was not only a blast, it was foremost an investment in my internet marketing business. So what did I learn at Affiliate Summit and what kind of return on investment will I see from the money spent? Below I share some of the highlights of people I met and things I learned.
Productive Party Under the Stars
At the ShareASale Party I met James from Marketing Punk who has grown his internet marketing experience working for InsureMe. A really nice guy, not only did meeting him remind me that you can make more money by making friends rather than enemies. He also demonstrates the importance of finding a good company/product and running with it. I tend to jump from one thing to another, his story reminds me I need to focus. Focus first and the money will follow.
I also met Joel & Karen Garcia from GTO Management at the ShareASale Party, a really nice couple. One of the challenges I’ve faced as I soak in the internet marketing industry is balancing family time, day job, and time spent on my business. They’re a great example of meshing internet marketing and real life and offered Colin and I some good marital tips for internet marketers, thanks guys! Anything that keeps you out of divorce court is definitely a money saver.
Networking to the Blue Man Group
Colin McDougall and I got to the Tao nightclub a little early for the Affiliate Bash, a good thing too since there was quite a line. Not only that, we were early enough to get seats and even be able to make it up to the bar without waiting an hour. While Colin was wheeling and dealing with another affiliate, Thor Shrock and his wife sat down right across from us. Having been impressed with his performance on the Next Internet Millionaire, I went over to say hi and had a nice conversation with him and his wife.
I didn’t really pay much attention to the performance by the Blue Man group but you can see a video over at John Chow’s site. (I was hoping to meet John in person but never got the chance). Anyhow, I learned two things from Thor that revolve around his upcoming affiliate show, Top Affiliate Challenge.
The first was the importance of coming to events like Affiliate Summit for face time. Thor had sent multiple emails to the affiliate networks for sponsorships for Top Affiliate Challenge with no response. Suddenly, he shows up at Affiliate Summit, talks to them about it face to face and they love the idea! Emails can be blocked by spam filters or overlooked but a handshake and an introduction have a much better conversion rate : )
The second thing I learned from Thor was the importance of leveraging win/win relationships. He showed the city of Lincoln, NE how the Top Affiliate Challenge would bring the city publicity which has resulted in good press coverage and assistance from the city. I’ll definitely have to keep this example in mind as I build my business and look for win/win relationships.
Affiliate Marketing is Spam Keynote
The keynote speaker, I won’t mention his name, no need to give him any more press/links than he’s gotten so far, shared his rather negative view of the affiliate marketing industry. I enjoyed Joel Comm’s take on the speech and learned something from it myself. (I got to meet Joel at his Text Cast Live booth and will be signing up as an affiliate to promote the product, it’s pretty slick). Anyhow, the keynote speaker ridiculed Shoe Money and Zac Johnson for showing off checks of money they’d earned online, saying it was uncouth in Silicon Valley, to talk about how much money you make.
After giving it further thought, I realized why no one in Silicon Valley wants to reveal how many millions of dollars they’re making. It’s because they’re dependent on employees to make their companies go. How pissed would the lead technial engineer of a startup company be if they saw a picture online of thier CEO flaunting a check for $25 million when the engineer is making $100K a year?
I was reminded by this of the ability of internet marketing to generate wealth for one person all based off of their work alone. That kind of potential for income without having to build a huge business and have lots of employees is what got me involved in affiliate marketing in the first place and will continue to motivate me towards success.
Best Breakfast of the Week
I was running late on Tuesday morning, dashing in to grab breakfast before heading to the “Ask the Experts” session when I saw Andrew Wee, Amit Meta, and Wil Reynolds having a late breakfast together. I quickly decided to skip the session and grabbed a seat at their table. I had missed Wil’s SEO session the previous day, here is a recap by Ms Danielle and a video clip, and wanted to meet him in person. Having gone through Amit’s Super Affiliate Accelerator and a regular reader of WhoIsAndrewWee I thought I’d probably learn more from these guys in a small group breakfast than at the session.
I picked up some good tips on landing pages and how to outsource them as well as hire article writers during our conversation. I got to ask Amit about optimizing some of my adgroups that have a low CTR but high conversion rate and learned something from Wil’s approach to teaching others SEO. Basically, the importance of focusing on the analysis of the industry you’re in and how to stand out in it. Focusing on small details like meta or h1 tags is counter productive, become an expert at what you do and the links will come.
Super Affiliate Tips
After the breakfast I headed to the Super Affiliate Strategies session featuring Zac Johnson, Amit Meta, Kris Jones, and John Chow. One thing they were all in consensus on was that the marketing opportunities on Facebook are huge right now, they all seem to have their finger in the pie. Here’s what I learned from the presenters:
Amit - Create a business process for entering and profiting from a niche, anyone can steal your content but it’s tough to replicate your process. Here’s a video of Amit’s answer from the SOB Affiliate (Second one down, after John Chow’s comment). Making quality sites will not only result in good organic results but help your quality score. Content heavy sites are more immune to Google changes than thin sites. In terms of PPC, conversion rates are better at MSN and Yahoo than Google, probably because google users are more sophisticated.
Zac & John - From these guys I learned it’s all about the content. They both put a lot of effort into generating a lot of useful content, Zac with MySpace Now and John with JohnChow.com, and they’ve both reaped the financial rewards. I’ve picked up some useful information from Zac Johnson’s site over the last year and, even though I didn’t win his free Affiliate Summit ticket, I was able to thank him for it in person after the session and ask a few Facebook questions.
Kris Jones - After the session a few people were hanging around up front asking questions and Kris made a pretty good point about leveraging seasonality and the media. He gave an interesting tip I thought was pretty valuable, won’t share it here because I want to try it myself : )
After the session, I got to meet an up and coming super affiliate, Paul from Uber Affiliate. I’ve learned some useful stuff from his site and just stopped by to tell him thanks. He emphasized the power of networking and relationships in this affiliate interview from the conference.
Relationship Building
Although I picked up some useful tactical tips from Affiliate Summit the biggest ROI had to be the relationships I formed. I met some really cool people who gave me in one way or another some pretty good advice. Probably the most valuable was the time I spent hanging around Colin and getting to know him better. We just had an Affiliate Summit post-mortem last night and he’s helping me focus my affiliate efforts towards a profitable market that’s a good match for me, thanks Colin!
So in summary, yes Affiliate Summit will definitely help me make money. In fact, they had Affiliate Summit East tickets half price during the conference so I went ahead and bought mine for the one in Boston in August. If you’re on the fence & trying to decide whether it’s worth your money, go ahead and whip out that credit card, it’s worth every penny.