Just a week ago, I attended Jason's A4D Meetup in San Diego. In 2012 I went to my first A4D meetup and I can tell you it was very educational. I unfortunately missed last year, but I made it to this year and this year it was different. Instead of media buys, affiliate links, and traffic sources; it was about taking your current marketing skills and applying it to something else.
But first let me talk about the audience because I can tell that the industry changed a lot by just attending this meetup. If you looked at the last post of the 2012 meetup I attended, you will see it was packed! This year, it was quite a bit smaller. This literally shows how much the industry has changed in 2 years, probably over year over year.
... and this is why I think this year A4D Meetup is the best yet because of the content.
If you have been reading this blog, I have been getting into more and more things as the years has passed and it is refreshing to hear content that can be used outside of affiliate marketing.
Some breakdown of my favorite speakers...
Sergey, spoke about Minimal Viable Product, or product creation. He has provided such great tools like Lucid Charts which is a great tool which I use time to time. Organizing your ideas, getting the team, assigning it, and getting it to production to turn it into a viable product. You have to be organized, your ideas and structures needs to sync properly and Sergey spoke more about tools to make sure you systematically get your product out the door and ready for marketing.
Coast Law Group, were the platinum sponsors of the meetup and they provided viable information about what is currently going on in the affiliate space especially with a specific doctor being targeted and targeting advertisers. He showed a video that has been seen all over the web and explained each section, this by itself was flawless as I recently became an advertiser in 2013.
Zack, I think was the cake of the show. The reason is because he explained that we have the skills! Marketing is marketing and if you don't know how to market then you can't branch out. I complain about this all the time on the blog about certain people and even services. You will also see this in the affiliate space because you will see affiliates you knew 3 years ago are not even in the space, the attendance at the meetup even shows the change in the industry.
But Zack spoke about taking our skill set and utilizing it in other aspects we wouldn't see. Particularly in investments. He show case how we can literally take our skills and use it where it has never been before. Literally he says we know marketing, we know analytics, we know testing, we know a lot and it is time to use it outside the affiliate space.
I can't agree with Zack more because it what I have been doing ever since I have been online. Each one of these speakers showcased a part of me in a different part of my online career. I had a digital product, I sold a company, I created a software service, I started investing, I bought real estate, I am a marketer!
In other words, the skill set you learn as an affiliate marketer makes you a better marketer overall. It definitely is the bottom barrel but the best place to learn about online marketing. I always tell people to start with affiliate marketing because you learn so many aspects and you can then in turn use it to start a product or consultation. A lot of people think that they can start a product but then they don't know how to market and they trust others to market without even understanding their own numbers.
Again the A4D Meetup is definitely something I will want to keep attending, the content is just raw and it is only meant for affiliates, meaning no networks hagging you.
Now some pictures...
