Affiliate Summit

December 14, 2011 By adamriemer 14 Comments

Guide to Affiliate Summit 2012 & Sessions (Including Mine)

I can’t believe Affiliate Summit is only a few weeks away. That means its time to get my slides done, prep my business cards and get ready to see everyone that I have grown to become great friends with over the years. If you’ve never been or want to know which sessions may be worth attending, here is my list of sessions and things to prep, pack and do for Affiliate Summit West 2012. (I didn’t list every session that I think is great, just some of the ones I will try to attend.) If you haven’t booked your ticket yet, feel free to use my Affiliate Link through the banner to the right.

New things to bring and prep.

The Loso App. I already have it downloaded on my phone and am ready to use it. What’s unique about this geo location app for Affiliate Summit is the What’s Up feature. It allows you to record video messages and other people to find them or your friends to retrieve them. This way if you are party hopping and about to leave, you can leave a video message at the location for your friends who haven’t shown up yet with where you are going. You can leave a video message at a meeting spot when you are meeting with clients or new potential partners so they know what you look like and where you are and you can help your friends find your table at lunch by leaving a quick video. There is a lot more to the Loso app, but it is a new definite for me for conferences like Affiliate Summit.

Cards for each of my sites. This time I think I am going to bring cards for each of my websites. Not only will it help Merchants to remember why to contact me, but it helps me remember what to look for on the showroom floor.

Flyers for my new Affiliate program, Pagemodo (no longer managed by us). This program completely kicks butt. I highly recommend you join and use it yourself to build a free Facebook Fanpage. It is a seriously easy to use tool complete with apps and more. It is part of the webs.com program on Share a Sale.

Here is a checklist of what to pack for Affiliate Summit and here is my list of how to prepare for Affiliate Summit.

Sessions to attend at Affiliate Summit West 2012.

My Session called Are Your Affiliates Adding Value. It is on Sunday in the Emperors I room and from 12:30pm – 1:30pm. I’ll be covering everything from coupon sites to PPC trademark bidders, adware, theft, SEO and everything in between. I am also redoing my slides from the last show a bit to be able to get through them all as well as the adware video shot by Kellie Stevens from Affiliate Fair Play and have time for questions.

Sunday:

25 ways you can improve your website by Vinny O’hare. Vinny is an awesome speaker and someone who more than knows his stuff. He is one of the people that always teaches me something new at these shows and I highly recommend going to his session from 11am to noon.

Recruiting Non Traditional Value Adding Affiliates with Angel Djambazov and Robert Glazer. I was originally on this panel until I got my own session and it is one I am very excited about. Angel and Robert are both excellent at recruiting incredible Affiliates and are both all about showing where the value comes from. I will definitely be at this one after my session is over.

SEO Clinic with Rae Hoffman, Michael Gray and the usual group. This is always a fun session to watch and scary to submit your sites too. The people on this panel will help you figure out why you aren’t ranking and also give you a ton of great advice from link building to design and more.

Affiliate Improv. If you don’t want to go to the SEO site clinic above, I recommend Affiliate Improv. It is sort of audience participation and can help you to generate new ideas for your own sites, programs, etc…

Monday:

Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel. If you aren’t to hungover or you have the energy to get out of bed, Eric’s whiteboarding session at 8am is perfect for you. You’ll get to learn a lot and have people help with your ecommerce sites, affiliate sites and affiliate programs.

Masterminds Groups Exposed from 11:30 to 12:30 with Tricia Meyers, Todd Farmer and Eric Nagel. These three are experts at networking and learning how to get the most out of a crowd. This session is a must attend if you want to learn how to Network to find partners, sites for backlinks and work a room of internet marketers.

Affiliate Under Fire from 2pm – 3pm. This session is an important one to attend if your company is worried about Nexus laws that effect Affiliates. It is being presented by Venable Law.

If you don’t want to go to Affiliates Under Fire, try Stop Doing it Wrong. Eric, Liz, Kim and Erik are all expert long time industry veterans. They’ll go over why you should sell honestly and stop the whole spam/scam websites and tactics that are causing the Affiliate Industry to not always look that clean.

12 out of the box Affiliate promotions. This should be a great panel to learn some ways to get your Affiliates active and motivated to promote your program. It’s from 3:30 to 4:30 and features Missy Ward, Jared Saunders and Lindsy Savoie.

Tuesday:

8am whiteboarding with Eric Nagel. I probably won’t be awake for this one, but I highly recommend going if you are up.

I really don’t know which session I would attend from 11:30 to 12:30, but the two you may learn from are Does your program have Juice and the one about driving calls from mobile search. I’m torn between them.

Affiliate Marketing in the Age of Social Media with Dave Taylor from 2 – 3. Dave is a great speaker who you can always learn from. This should be a good one.

Anyways, those are my recommendations for Affiliate Summit West 2012. Hope to see you all there!

October 14, 2011 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

Voting for Affiliate Summit 2012 Sessions – Please Vote

Affiliate Summit has started their voting for their sessions again and this time I have three sessions. Before we get into my sessions and who else you may want to vote for, here is how to vote for sessions. Please read through each of the instructions and then vote.

1. Go to voting registration and enter in your username and email address.

2. Now check your email and get your password to log in and click on the link provided or click here to log in.

3. Now come back here and click on this link to find the sessions. (This link takes you to my sessions.)

4. To find more sessions, either sort by experience or use the search box in the top right where you can search by speaker name, topic, etc…

5. Now when you see a session you like, like mine if you click here, click on the name of the session and you’ll be taken to the next screen below.

6. Now all you have to do is click the yellow and blue box so that the number increases by 1 and it says voted.

7. Now you can leave a comment, find more sessions to vote for or tweet out the session so other attendees can vote as well.

Sessions to vote for:

There are tons of sessions that would be great to see at Affiliate Summit. Here are a few of the ones I’ll be voting for, but not all of the ones I am voting for.

My sessions – they are all about recruiting Affiliates and testing to see if your Affiliates are adding value. Please vote for the Adding Value One if you only vote for one.

Tricia Meyer, Todd Farmer and Eric Nagel’s Mastermind group session. Although Mastermind Groups sound complicated and mysterious, they are an easy way to network with other Internet marketers regularly to grow your business. Learn why and how to start your own.

Affiliate Improv starring Daniel, Eric, Trisha Lyn and Mike Buchele. This is always a fun one! Five industry veterans brainstorm marketing ideas for items/services with audience participation. Ideas to actionable solutions in one fun, lively hour. Come get your creative juices ?owing!

25 ways you can improve your website by Vinny O’Hare. Top 25 things webmasters should look at when building a site or evaluating their website performance. Attendees will leave with actionable items to improve their sites with easy to implement steps.

SEO Site Clinic with Rae Hoffman and the regulars. This is a must attend session!

Earlybird Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel. This is a great session where you can submit sites and have a room full of people comment on them for you. It is way to early in the morning for most, but a must attend if you can get up early enough.

Doing it wrong with Kim Salvino, Liz Gazer, Eric Schwarzer, Eric Hom and Daniel Clark. Consumers drowning in false claims & spam are wary. Quality brands hesitate to invest in affiliates. Panelists will engage in open discussion with insights on why it pays more to sell with integrity.

Thank you everyone who votes and lets get some good sessions up and running!

August 3, 2011 By adamriemer 6 Comments

Come See Me Speak at Affiliate Summit 2011 East

Hi Everyone. I hate self promoting posts but I also love getting to meet my readers. That’s why I wanted to invite you all to come see me speak at Affiliate Summit which is taking place this month from the 21st to the 23rd of August. If you haven’t registered yet, you can still attend and you can also save 5% off any registration type by using code ASE11FIVE. You can also click the banner to the left to use my Affiliate link if you want ;-).

Anyways, my session is on Sunday from 11:00 am to Noon Session 1d in the Sutton (South & Regent) room. The session is for attendees of all levels with Gold, Platinum and Diamond pass holders. The topic we will be covering is if your Affiliate Program is actually adding value to your company and building it instead of coasting along side or actually doing damage.

We’re going to cover everything from how Affiliate marketing can enhance and hurt your PPC, how it can help your SEO but also debunk a few myths about Affiliate Marketing and SEO as well as go over things like the good and the bad about trademark bidding, coupons, loyalty sites and everything in between. I’d also like to give a big thank you to Kellie Stevens from Affiliate Fair Play for shooting a few custom brand new adware videos for the presentation and the show.

There are a ton of other great sessions that will be at the show and here are a few that you will find me at and possibly live blogging:

Sunday

How to pitch your company from 10am to 11 (Just before my session) with Tricia Meyers, Robert Adler, Kim Rowley and AdHustler. These are some amazing people with lots to say and even more to teach. You can definitely use this information to make the most out of your pitches at Affiliate Summit.

Meet market. This isn’t really a session but it is the most intense networking session you will see, besides the parties. Go in, talk to everyone and get your business cards ready.

SEO Clinic from 2 to 3. This session with @Sugarrae, @Greywolf and @Kenhyder is always a fun one to watch. Submit your sites and get some great and creative feedback from three creative people.

Monday

Eric Nagel’s white boarding session. This guy is seriously smart and worth listening to. I don’t really need to say more. If you’re up at 8am, this is a must attend.

SEO – Ask the experts with Rhea Drysdale, Bruce Clay, Michael Strekko and Stephan Spencer should be a good one. I haven’t heard two of them speak before but it should definitely be a good question and answer session from 11:30 to 12:30. (I’ll probably actually be at the testimonials in social media session.)

Affiliate Improv starring Jen Goode, Daniel M Clark, Drew Bennet, Michael Buchele and Wade Tonkin. Just go to this…no need to wonder why. It’s from 2 to 3 and you will love it.

Ask the Experts Roundtable. I always love to hear Melanie Seery speak and she has a round table. It will be a great opportunity to speak to a smart industry veteran.

Tuesday

If you’re up in the morning, go visit Eric Nagel again at 8am for another white boarding session.

Social Media in Niche Markets. Between Lisa, Joe and Steph you will walk away with a headache of knowledge about using social media to break into niches. This session is from 11:30 to 12:30.

At this point if you have any energy left, try walking the exhibit hall and then make the rest of your appointments.

Affiliate Summit is above and beyond one of my favorite shows to go to. I hope to see you all there and if you would like to meet me while I am there, leave a comment here. All comments are moderated so your info won’t go live unless you say to post it. Thank you for reading and looking forward to meeting you or seeing you again. I also have three or four new Affiliate programs to announce at the show so definitely come find me. See you all in NYC!

January 10, 2011 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

I’m Speaking At Affiliate Summit. How to manage, launch and grow an Affiliate Program and Q&A.

Hi Everyone.

I’m speaking today at 5pm at the ask the experts roundtable at Affiliate Summit. The topic is How to manage, launch or grow your Affiliate program. This will be a Q&A session just like the one at Affiliate Summit NYC. Please feel free to come and ask whatever questions you would like. We can also talk about what certain Affiliates are looking for, which network may be right for you and anything else you may want to know or talk about. Here are some of the things we went over in NYC and we can cover here as well.

Recruitment

Fraud (Adware, returns, cookie stuffing, etc…)

Networks (Should you trust them, being on multiple networks)

Coupon and Cash Back Sites (The benefits and the risks)

Newsletters

CPA vs. Affiliate Networks

Terms and Conditions and how to change them

How to be competitive against large brands

Please come and ask whatever questions you would like. Even if you don’t want to ask questions but you just want to listen in you are more than welcome to.

Hope to see you all there.

Adam

December 16, 2010 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

How to prepare for Affiliate Summit.

I can’t believe Affiliate Summit is only a couple weeks away. Most of the time I am one of the last people to prep for the show. This time however I am actually preparing ahead of time. Here is my check list of what you may want to start doing this week and then get together for the week before the show. I also recommend you read my post on what to pack for Affiliate Summit.

2 Weeks Before Affiliate Summit.

1. Buy a new pair of dress shows or dressy tennis shoes. Not only are you going to be walking around a lot, but you’ll need them to get into most of the clubs and events. If you buy a pair of comfy slip on dress shoes this week, whether online or at a store, you’ll get a sense for how comfortable they will be after wearing them for long periods of time. Make sure you wear them around the house, to work and all day long just to make sure they don’t cause blisters or hurt. You may be wearing and standing in them for 12 hours or more a day. Break them in now to not only be sure they are comfortable, but also so you’ll know if you should buy a different pair or if you need to buy padding for the inside.

2. Order business cards now! You never know if a printer will mess them up. You want your cards to be correct and ready to go without any last minute issues. By giving yourself a week or two to send them back if there is a problem you lessen your chances for cards with errors.

3. Finalize and set any last appointments. Affiliate and Merchant time slots are filling up fast. Call the companies you want to meet with this week and early next week (since it is a holiday), and try to find when you all can meet. Then 1 week before send a reminder to make sure they are still good for that time and place. You will also want to get their cell phone numbers so that you can find each other in a crowd.

4. Get your handouts to the printer. Again, you don’t want any errors. At Affiliate Summit Boston one company was handing out flyers that said low conversions or lowest payouts. Something along those lines. The Affiliate Manager didn’t really care much, hopefully he or she was fired, but there is no excuse to make a bad impression or show you don’t care about the channel. Making a mistake that shows you don’t care about the channel also shows potential Affiliates that you probably won’t care about them if they have a problem.

5. Confirm your hotel reservation. This isn’t a normal occurrence but there are some other very large shows in Vegas during Summit. You don’t want to find out they overbooked and are moving you to a different hotel. It may sound a bit crazy but there are horror stories in Vegas where you get there and all of the sudden you find out you have been moved to a hotel that is a 10 minute ride or 30 minute walk away, and you don’t get a refund or price difference paid back.

The week before and of the show.

6. Pack your bags 3 days in advance. Everyone forgets something at Summit. If you create a checklist 3 days before and start packing everything that night, you will not only know what you are missing but you will have time to go buy it.

For money saving tips for Affiliate Summit, here are some things you can do.

Hotels:

Go onto the Affiliate Summit Networking site and see if anyone wants to do a hotel share. You can also try forums like Abestweb.com or WickedFire.com. You do have to be careful because you never know who you will end up sharing a room with. Sometimes it is better to stay a bit further away and spend a little more.

Cabs:

Make friends and set up times to meet. See if anyone is staying at the same hotel as you and are going to the same parties. If they are you can arrange times to meet up and then split the cab fares. This becomes a life saver at times if you are a bit tipsy and need someone to help you home, not to mention it helps save you money. It also sometimes helps you find out and get into parties that you didn’t know about.

Food:

Vegas can be expensive or cheap. If you are an Affiliate, see if the Merchants you do well with are hosting dinners. Normally if they know you are there are you do well with them they’ll treat. Lots of the parties have excellent food as well. Eating at the parties is a great way to not have to spend on a meal. There are also numerous cheap buffets on the strip at other hotels. Go in and fill up for under $15 or $20 so you only have to eat in the morning or mid day and can fill up again at a night time party. Las Vegas also has an In and Out burger, but you have to spend more on a cab just to get there. The Peppermill is also a personal favorite of mine. It isn’t budget food but it is good greasy diner food and the best breakfasts in Vegas.

Rides from the airport.

If you don’t want to pay for a cab to and from the strip, find one of the ride share vans. They are reasonable in price and you can sometimes negotiate the drivers down. Make sure you don’t take an illegal cab and that the shuttle or van is a legit and a licensed vehicle. You don’t want to get in a car with a stranger driving in Vegas.

Anyways, that is how I prep for Affiliate Summit each year. Feel free to add your own tips and advice below.

July 30, 2010 By adamriemer 8 Comments

Affiliate Summit 2010 East NYC Checklist

I cannot believe Affiliate Summit 2010 East in NYC is only a couple weeks away. Summit East came way to fast this year and I am lucky that all of the pre show spam had started because it reminded me to make sure that I have everything I need for the show. If this is your first time attending Affiliate Summit then this list is for you. If you have been a few times but want to know what the newest trends are then this list is also for you. If you are a long time veteran and need a reminder of what to bring, then this list is also for you. I basically create my list each Summit and check it to make sure I don’t forget anything and if I actually stick to it I usually end up not leaving anything behind. So if you need a check list of what to bring to Summit, please feel free to use this one.

1. One dressy outfit or suit for the Buy.at party.

This is an invite only party so I highly recommend promoting them and getting some sales as it is one of the do not miss events of the show. Share a Sale is also an amazing party and usually comes on the next night. The Share a Sale party is usually opened to most people though and not always dress up but at the same time I do recommend business casual because even though it is fun and a party, it is still work. You should also definitely take a look at them as a network, they are above and beyond one of the best!

2. 250 business cards.

It is important to bring more than enough cards to a show. Many times you’ll sweat or they’ll get bent and ruined. Keep enough in your hotel room each day so that you’ll be able to have crisp and professional cards for the people you’ve meet. I usually only go through about 50 or 60 but bring a couple hundred just in case.

3. My Vampire Poken.

I love Poken and in Vegas everyone had them. Click the link above to find out what they are and where to buy them. I’ll have my Poken there with me.

4. Hand sanitizer.

You will be shaking a ton of hands and be in contact with a ton of people. Bring hand sanitizer to keep your hands clean, especially before you eat and during meals when people walk up and shake your hands.

5. An extra foldable bag for handouts.

There are some cool trinkets and giveaways at Summit so bring an extra bag with you to carry them home in.

6. Throat Lozenges.

If you talk a lot or are going to, you’ll thank me when you keep your voice from going and your throat from hurting. I always bring throat lozenges and drink lots of tea when I go to Summit to try and keep my voice for as long as possible.

7. Advil, Tylenol or Headache medicine.

If you go out to the parties or you just don’t do well in crowds, you may end up with headaches. Bring something with you so you don’t have to pay NYC prices or hotel prices for headache medicine.

8. An extra phone charger for the show.

If you are meeting people by phone or calling to set up places to meet, don’t let your battery die on you. Bring a charger to the show so you can keep in contact with everyone you need to.

9. A business card holder for cards I cannot lose.

Sometimes I meet people I definitely do not want to lose contact with. For them I either put their cards in my badge or I put them into my business card holder. I save those for the people who I need to be in contact with after the show.

10. A pair of dress shoes, tennis shoes, flip flops and slip on shoes for meals.

Guys, this is for you especially. Dress shoes can be important but so can comfort. If you aren’t staying at the Hilton then pack shoes to walk to the Hilton in and check your tennis shoes when you get there. That way when you walk back home it won’t be in uncomfortable dress shoes.

11. Two or Three pullovers.

I always end up wearing tshirts but I like to make an effort to at least be somewhat business casual. I always pack two or three pullovers and try to wear them to the show. Most Affiliates dress in tshirts and shorts. Merchants wear business casual and Networks dress up. It is ok to blend in but also make sure you are properly dressed for the company you are representing and how you want yourself to appear.

12. Clothes to go out clubbing in that are also business casual enough for the show or dinners with Clients/Affiliates/Vendors.

A ton of us will go to dinner, then a networking event and then off to the parties. After the parties or during the parties many of us will also end up going out clubbing because when else do you get to party in NY. Wear clothes that are business appropriate but also able to be trendy enough and fun enough for a club. You are technically working and having fun so find an outfit that works for both.

Other than that I think I only pack the basics like a toothbrush and toothpaste. Affiliate Summit is one of my favorite shows and one of the only ones I’ll go to each year. Also, don’t forget to stop by my session at the Merchant table during ask the experts on Monday night. See you there!

Affiliate Summit

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