Today was another great day, right now I am really tired and posting this blog post and I will be taking a nap before I go and grab some food. So far the day has been great again I was busy with interviews from other affiliate networks, seeing if I would qualify to their networks - not a problem with me.
This morning I went to breakfast with Jason and went to this morning keynote with Jason Calacanis. This is a little controversial because I can agree to an extent with Jason but disagree with him on another extend. One thing that he says and still stick out in my head is "Affiliates are Spammers." ReveNews was blogging this in real time and did a great job with a cool time line on the blog, see block quote below:
photo credit: tris
10:07am Calacanis is remarking about the first iterations of web spam in the mid 90’s. Looks like we’re going down the “affiliate spam is a problem and Mahalo will solve it path.â€
If this is true what is marketing? Marketing alone is spam is it - billboards, bus ads, banner ads, etc. Also if we should be building long term sites rather than short term sites I agree but someone has to start short term to push them to long term. For example, I think a person needs to see a return do push for long term or want to do more long term projects and businesses. If a blogger, affiliate marketer, business person does not see a return on a small short term what will push that person to push for a long term?
I do agree though there are a lot of micro sites or mini sites that act as spam, blog scrapers and arbitrage sites are the worst. Technorati and blog searches pull blogs and a lot are crappy bull shit blogs, just for affiliate marketing. But does this really make affiliates spammers? We are marketing to the people that look for content and content is given, but if its duplicated content it is considered spam - it is a quick fix but it is short term to reach a goal, earn commission.
Besides this controversial issues there at the keynote, I went to the exhibitions. There were a lot of great booths. I met with my affiliate manager Jason from NeverBlueAds and I handed out a t-shirt to an Azoogle Member to give to my affiliate manager Erin. Hope she will enjoy it. It was very busy and very tiring, again I was tired I had to drink 3 red bull drinks just to stay up and keep my energy up.
The booths was very informative - but there are so many affiliate networks springing up and yet not a lot can tell me what makes them different. "Higher payouts" "Better Merchants" " Longer Cookies" - this is almost the same among all the networks.
But one stuck out XY7.com did a really good concept:
photo credit: tris
Sex sells and this lady with a blue headed top stuck out and caught my eye. I met with XY7 yesterday and talk to a great person - that also told me quite a few spots on Vegas to go too. But this really got their booth popular I bet. There were several booths that were handing out many apparel and prizes, for example I won a pimp cup. (pictures soon to come)
I also met with CPAEmpire.com I was interviewed to see if I would be profitable with their network. This was very interesting because non of the other affiliate managers really interviewed me so thorough, they would just ask basic questions. Randy was the one that asked me questions and I did not mind because he gave a lot of good ideas and concepts. This is a first from an affiliate managers that really interviewed me for more than 3 minutes. Very interesting.
Another interesting concept was the blog war room which Mark was holding it down. The only other thing I did not like was the war room was like a closet. Literally.
photo credit: tris
Mark looks very busy blogging and covering the affiliate summit, giving all the information to other bloggers and giving them a room for bloggers to blog about the summit. I saw multiple users sitting down on the floor blogging or doing whatever.
Conclusion:
I hope to get my energy back and get ready for tonight's party, the Affiliate Bash. Last night was very entertaining, I met Shawn Collins who also is a "Jersey Boy" - this I did not know. Me and him conversated for a while, it was great to actually meet him and thank him for the picture! Look forward to the coming days! One more day!
photo credit: Affiliate Summit
Sidenote: I will upload my photos once I get back to the East
