Moose on the Loose

On the whole, with regard to Affiliate Summit in Miami, for me it was a satisfying event, and I can confidently & thoroughly justify the trip as having been worthwhile venture.

On this occasion, unlike Las Vegas, I deliberately made sure I went out of my way & to make more of a concerted effort by taking advantage of the networking opportunities presented to me by ensuring that I visited almost every single exhibitors booth or table. By listening to their pitch on what they had to offer & how it could possibly fit into my existing business model.

This time I did’t feel there was the slight xenophobia & false assumptions which was experienced at the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, with myself immediately establishing the fact that I was a UK affiliate looking to considerably increase our presence in the US market with US focused websites & US paid search activity.

With the above in mind I am looking forward to forging relationships with a number of companies by working together proactively, as long as that is reciprocated of course.

Basically, what I am suggesting, is don’t rest back on your laurels at these events, always make the most of the opportunity whilst there are so many potentially waiting to happen at a single event. As a result, I hope that US merchants & networks take that giant stride across the pond to pitch themselves to inquisitive UK affiliates who maybe interested in the US market at forthcoming London affiliate events.

Though it was maybe a little disappointing there was a lack in attendance of British affiliates for a purely social aspect, perhaps they are indeed waiting for forthcoming events this autumn.

What was quite noticeable to myself was that there is definitely a plethora of untapped opportunities in the US market for UK affiliates to exert their prowess & marketing skills.

Affiliate Summit Miami really re-ignited my creative juices.

For location, I did naturally prefer Las Vegas, but what I did like about Miami was the Latin Amercian influence. People were generally very polite, for example in one the nightclubs a doorman escorted me to the toilet when I enquired where it was, then escorted me back again (impeccable manners). Where would you experience anything like that in the UK? Also, I especially liked the fact that their musical taste whenever visting the mall or a restaurant or a club was predominantly stuck in the 80’s which was really up my street.

Though I maybe didn’t learn anything of significance from the seminars, they did stir the creative juices, on the whole they were generally of a much higher quality than Las Vegas which in many ways reinforced some of our own existing ideas & methodology. Sometimes I find certain aspects within the seminars like a refresher course, reminding me of what I am doing & what should be doing by never neglecting my roots & core foundations.

My favourites included the opening keynote speaker Ze Frank purely for the comedy aspect, his dancing widget had my spleen wobbling purely for the fact it reminds me of myself dancing naked in front on the bathroom mirror. Urgh, what traumatising visions that induces.

Then in order of merit maybe Kristopher Jones (President & CEO of Pepperjam), who’s crowd seem to be larger than life characters who enjoy the fruits of their labour & good for them too, his presentation on “The Confluence of Search & Affiliate Marketing” was pretty much spot on for anyone interested in search engine arbitrage and I did appreciate that one & would like to hear him at any forthcoming events.

Then there was Amit Mehta with “The Secrets of a PPC Super Affiliate”, red pill or blue pill, his presentation was pretty much on the ball too, I believe both are quite workable and with affiliates applying the tips they have learned from Affiliate Summit can truly learn “how deep does the rabbit hole go.”
My only suggestion generally, which does not necessarily apply to the above three refined & excellent speakers, would be to touch more on the hands on application of these ideas & suggestions that are presented.

For the record my favourite speaker in Las Vegas was without a doubt Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive.

Now, myself being pretty much a wall flower with the Hawaiian shirt to match, the evenings social gatherings were friendly and quite good fun, so thanks for the generous hospitality of the sponsors for those events.

The nicest people we met were definitely the crowd from Share Results Network, from the “land of maple syrup and back bacon”, what a pleasant bunch of people like Sarafina (even though she supports Arsenal), Jamie, Daniel & Julia.

For my colleague & wingman Eric, this was his first affiliate conference, I hope he learned a lot & had an enjoyable time.

I am still in Miami at the moment and won’t get back to England until Sunday. Though Miami hasn’t impressed overall me as a City, though that could simply be because of my preconceived images of Miami Vice back in the 80‘s. South Beach didn’t live up to expectations, thus, I must have been on the wrong section of beach. However, I did have a nice trip to The Everglades (tourist trappings) to catch a few Alligators & tomorrows intended shopping spree at Aventura will set me right by purchasing enough clothes to fill the wardrobe for the next year, plus a few things for my adorable children. I usually palm off the freebie swag to them which mounts up from the stalls in addition to what I can find in the shopping mall.

Now, it’s about 2am here and I am not particularly lucid, so I might update & edit this entry later on by chucking in a few meaningless buzz words to liven it up. But, before I finish, re buzz words on the Exhibitor Guide we all received which had summaries of the various exhibitors, they were generally full of superfluous superlatives, which didn’t really say if they were a network, agency, merchant etc. All I suggest is that within that document it should say exactly what they do on the tin & in laymans terms too. But let’s not get away from the fact it was a good event & an improvement on Las Vegas.

Well done.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 6:04 AM and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.