“Jamie Streib, Jamie Streib” Takes on Affiliate Summit West 2008
February 29th, 2008Every 6 months, the affiliate world gets together for Affiliate Summit. These events are the biggest and most well known affiliate conferences in the country. I had the opportunity to attend Affiliate Summit East in Miami in July as a first-timer, and it was a little intimidating. This time I had more experience and knowledge under my belt, and it was a blast!
Day 1, Sunday February 24: I got to the gate with approximately one minute to spare for my flight to Vegas. The good news is that our flight got in on time; I made it to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino (they do it right for the Summits) by 10:30 am, and was ready to change and start networking! Unfortunately, since it was so early, there weren’t any rooms available. So I had to check my bags at the bell desk and wear my sweatpants to play video poker for about an hour…classy. I finally got a room, changed, got my business cards ready, took a Dayquil, and I was finally ready to work it!
I got down to registration (which was about one mile from my room), got my swag bag and hoofed it into the Meet Market. There were about 50 tables set up with businesses ready to hand out goodies and show you what they could offer. The purpose of the Meet Market is basically to network for a few hours with an open bar before the Shareasale party that evening. Unfortunately for me, I was sipping water because of my lovely cold virus that would not leave me alone. Also, no one really wants to shake your hand when you pronounce your “m’s” as “b’s.” Weird.
It was when I got to my buddy Durk Price’s table (eAccountableOPM) that he pointed out my name tag said “Jamie Streib, Jamie Streib” instead of “Jamie Streib, Indigio Group.” While people were initially impressed that I opened my own agency, I decided to cross that out and write in Indigio Group where the company name should have been. Too much explanation, and it cost money to get a new one printed and I’m cheap. I found quite a few attendees had crossed out nametags, so I wasn’t the only one.
I got to see a few of my COMA pals, Alan Rappaport and Jeannine Crooks while I was down at the Meet Market. COMA is a group I attend, Colorado Online Marketing Association. It’s always fun to catch up and they introduced me to a few other people in the business. I also got to learn Popshops, which was on my list of things to do. Popshops signed up as one of my affiliates on DiscountAnabolics.com and they essentially take your product datafeed, chop it up and offer it to other affiliates to use. In their words: “Getting started with PopShops is as easy as 1-2-3! Pick your products, customize your shops, and pop them into your website or blog.” It’s a very handy tool, and they don’t do it for all merchants, so I felt very lucky to be one of the chosen! Another bright spot was that the back of my head was included in a few photos on the Affiliate Summit Flickr page.
The Shareasale Under the Stars party was in the Palms Hotel Sky Villa. It was one of the coolest freakin’ hotel rooms (excuse me, suites) I have ever seen. It was a two-story suite with a revolving bed in one of the rooms, a wet bar, a pool on the balcony, a glass bedroom with a fireplace, and a giant TV that sprung out of the footboard of the bed. The party was pretty fun, but by that time I had started to lose my voice from talking so much and the fact that people can smoke everywhere in Vegas and I was getting the black lung from secondhand smoke. I went back for a nice relaxing night of Nyquil and the post-Oscars fashion police.
Day 2, Monday February 25: Breakfast and Lunch are included in the full-conference passes, so I headed down to the dining rooms for my free fruit and pastries at around 9 am. After that, it was on to the Keynote Address given by Jason Calacanis. Jason was already a controversial figure in the online marketing world, as he infamously denounced SEO as “bullshit” and those doing SEO as “snake oil salesmen,” a position widely disagreed with. He is most recently known for founding Mahalo.com.
Calacanis started out the address with showing UseNet and the very first spam, the greencard lottery note that went out to all users of UseNet in 1994. He went on to say that the internet is supposed to be used for information, and that UseNet went away because it was so easy to spam. He demonstrated that on Google, when a user searches for a word, most of the organic listings are for products and services, therefore he considers it spam. Calacanis warned that once users tire of spamming, they create something new. First it was Friendster and MySpace, now it’s Facebook and LinkedIn because it’s less easy to spam on those networks. First it was YouTube, now it’s Hulu.com, and etc. His bottom line was that most affiliates out there do unnecessary spamming to make quick money, and he was appealing to them to put in hard work for quality sites to make real money. Needless to say, most of the audience was taken aback and became quite offended. As I attended seminars throughout the day, there was at least one mention of his keynote address in each session.
I also attended the session titled “Affiliate PPC: Brand Enhancement or Bid Escalation?” led by Kevin Lee of DidIt, David Lewis of 77Blue, and Marty Fahncke of Fawnkey & Assoc. The session was supposed to be a debate moderated by Fahncke and argued by Lee and Lewis, but the reality turned out to be more Hillary and Obama. They agreed on about 95% of the points. Basically, they said that permitting affiliates to use PPC marketing to promote your product is something that should be done carefully. They can add to the total real estate your product has on a search page without taking away from your brand name listing, as long as you set some ground rules and police it regularly. Protect your brand!
Next was Andy Rodriguez’s “Developing the Right Merchant Mindset.” I was excited for this session because it was all about how not to run your program on auto pilot. I was a little disappointed because there was a large merchant checklist, and I actually was doing 99% of what was on it! I was glad that I was a “good” merchant manager, but a little disappointed I couldn’t learn a whole new world.
That night was the Affiliate Bash at Tao, but since I couldn’t speak above a throaty whisper or breathe through both nostrils, I decided to skip it. I heard that it was basically the same as the Shareasale party, so I’m ok with the decision.
Day 3, Tuesday February 26: Breakfast again, but this time breakfast sandwiches! Yum! I checked my email on my Blackberry since my 76th request for a new Ethernet cable in my room was ignored and I just gave up. I went to an Ask the Experts session, where there were about 10 or 15 tables set up so you could ask industry experts questions about the business. I heard a few questions from affiliates about why they should work with an OPM (outsourcing program manager, which I am), and I was glad to hear that they were interested. OPM’s are specially trained in affiliate program management and tend to stay on top of the trends and attend events to keep them relevant.
After that session I attended “Super Affiliate Strategies that Work.” I attended a similar session last Summit led by Amit Mehta (superaffiliatemindset.com) who also was a part of this one. He was joined by Kristopher Jones of Pepperjam, John Chow of TTZ Media, and Zac Johnson of MoneyReign, Inc. I like to attend at least one session geared toward affiliates not only so I can get inside the affiliate’s head a little bit, but also because one of Andy Rodriguez’s tips for being a great merchant is to become an affiliate yourself. That way we know exactly how the affiliate thinks and feels. This was more of a question and answer type session, and of course a question came up about how the speakers felt about the keynote address. Zac Johnson (who I thought was going to cry for a minute there) got a huge round of applause when he said that the affiliate marketing industry was one he was proud to be in and would never change. A question came up about PPC marketing, and Amit explained that if an affiliate is banned from using branded terms in their PPC campaign, that sometimes long-tail terms are the way to go. They are not highly competitive and are super specific leading to higher conversions. They also suggested to any merchants in the room that you can “use” your affiliates to test some of your ad copy for you. You can use your regular ad, and let them use another to test them against each other. One of the main points that kept arising was that social networking applications were “so hot right now.” Good thing Indigio has two!
After that, it’s time to go home….till next time at Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston!
