Jangro.com Social Media, Affiliate Marketing, etc. Heavy on the etc.

I’m back home from Affiliate Summit East 2007 in Miami after a rough flight back with delays, missed connections, and missing luggage. An ordeal that had me rolling in at 3 this morning.

Got up this morning, caught up on some email, and went for a run to shake out the cobwebs (read alcohol). Plenty of time to reflect on the affiliate summit on 6 miles fueled only by the inspiration that can be gained in Miami Beach where less clothing is more. Plus I spent time with the likes of my good friend and ever-fit Mr. Cuan-Ruiz, Paul Nichols who looks well prepared for an Ironman coming this September, and among others, one individual who I’m quite certain could easily break me in two in spite of being at least 30 lbs lighter than me (no, not you Borja). Thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Inspiration-a-plenty.

While my favorite part of Affiliate Summit is reconnecting with old friends, it’s not all fun and games. OK, maybe it is…

I missed the affiliate dinner and buy.at party on Saturday night, so night #1 for me was Sunday at the Shareasale party which was a big hit. Well done Brian, once again.

Ironically, here’s a Linkshare-Florida meeting in progress. Thanks again Mark and Bruce for Dinner.

Kidwell, Cuan, and myself

That party ended and I was this close to a cab back to the hotel as any responsible person who had a panel presentation the next morning would do. Then Jeremy Palmer and Kevin Joyce dragged us kicking and screaming out to Nikki’s Beach to continue the business discussions. Who am I to deny a fellow panelist and a CJ guy with a credit card?

Steve Schaffer, Jeremy and Kevin

The real benefits of being a CJ Performer

Thanks Kevin. Best money spent. Ever. Really.

The next morning, on zero sleep, Jeremy Palmer and I sat on a panel with Ros Gardner titled “What Super Affiiates REALLY Want”. I think we pulled off the standing-room-only session in spite of our respective conditions. At least one of us was well rested.

I’ve discovered through much research on several talks and panels that the best approach to prevent getting unnecessarily nervous about a presentation is to keep your mind off it for as long as possible up until the time of the presentation. If that means talking colleagues all night prior, then so be it.

Night two involved a great dinner with Converseon followed by the DoubleClick / Performics party at the classy Shore Club where it was great to catch up with Chris, Tony, Dan, and Larry.

Sorry, I’ve shared all the pictures fit to print. But if that doesn’t make you want to get to the next summit, I don’t know what will.

But seriously, of course we were all there for some actual business of which there is plenty. Personally, I tend not to care much for the sessions (though I heard lots of good things) and spent most of my time talking with people (while dodging CPA network booth-babes with eagle-eye vision for nametags).

I had the privilege of meeting many people I’ve met only over the phone or email, as well as several BUMPzee members. It was humbling to have several people stop me and say great things about the BUMPzee service. Thank you. And I made a few potential business partnerships. Not bad for a few days work.

On an even more serious note, one concerning thing was a good amount of sidebar talk about a disturbing trend where the major networks are enabling “branded” affiliate links that go directly to the merchants domains. While smaller networks have been doing this for years and this is nothing new even for some bigger programs like ebay.com and their rover links, there’s a new spin on SEO benefit and link juice. A few big merchants seem to be stepping squarely onto this slippery slope. It’s all very short-sighted and misguided, in my opinion. But this is a topic deserving a post on it’s own, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Once again, a top-notch event put on by Shawn and Missy. Well done.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed