I appeared at the Affiliate Summit Sunday and Monday of the total 4 day event. First of all I'd like to thank Joel Comm who made it possible for me to attend - Really, thanks Joel! I got to meet him in person for the first time, and he's a genuinely nice guy. I went to Joel's special AdSense Workshop Sunday and I estimate there were around 75 in attendence. The session went well and although I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable AdSense publisher, I heard some interesting things and the interaction of audience questions and Joel's insight made for a more useful session than others I attended :^)
Sunday night I went to the Speed Networking event - my list of 8 people to meet in hand. I got to meet with 6 out of 8 - not bad since a number of people had 50% no shows. Most of the people I met with I had requested to meet with them, either because I use their product, or hoped to hear more about what they offered that I may want to tap into as either an affiliate or to our Cash Keywords users.
Here's who I met:
Magdalena Giacone - Loved her! They lost her meeting list so she was meeting anyone she could. She had a neat giveaway of a paper cone with her card, 2 free pints of ice cream coupons (Who doesn't like that?), all wrapped in cellophane. Magda is Affiliate Marketing Associate for IMarketing LTD.
Susan Milligan - Co-founder of Basic Templates.com. She also wrote about her experiences at Aff Summit. I have bought their templates in the past and they are really clean, with external CSS files and designed with interchangeable graphics. I love that it's easy for a design challenged person like me and the prices can't be beat. Susan was very nice and genuinely glad to meet a customer in kind of an unexpected place.
Samantha Hensch - Wow! What a bubbly lady! She certainly got alot of info about Digital River in a short 5-8 minutes of meeting. Samantha is strategic marketing manager, and while I am already a Digital River Affiliate - not doing anything with it - and she made me rethink that I need to look at them more seriously.
Ankush Nayar and Anik Singal - AffiliateClassroom.com - I was really wanting to meet these guys and that's why I scheduled both of them. Anik and I had a shorter amount of time to talk, but Ankush and I had longer. I actually got a call back today from Ankush, so look for an article from me or some other CK related content/ads in Affiliate Classroom Magazine this spring! They have been publishing a beautiful online magazine - FREE - since 2004 and it coming from the perspective of the affiliate webmaster, so make sure to take a look.
Noreen Thurston - Godaddy.com's Affiliate Manager. I am a longtime Godaddy customer and I wanted to hear if they had anything new that I should know about. Noreen and Mary Diers, the Advertising Manager, were alot of fun and obviously serious about communicating with their affiliates. They are the kind of affiliate managers I like to work with. We ate at the luncheon the next day, laughed alot, and all I can say is "Girls Rule!" If the "Godaddy Girls" aren't at my next conference, I will be very disappointed.
Clark Stephens - Overstock.com's Affiliate program manager. I wanted to meet Clark out of curiosity because I enjoy sneaking a peek at Woot.com and I knew there is a connection with Woot and Overstock (he explained all that). Also as I look at products and profitable keywords from a top paying keyword standpoint, Overstock has a tremendous variety of goods and at very competitive pricing. If you mix AdSense and Affiliate links on the same page, Overstock probably has a retail product to match your topic. Not sure if Clark could see where I was going with a connection between what I do at Cash Keywords and Overstock, but I see one and will get some ideas out to him.
Day one and speed networking ended at 10:20 pm, and left alot of East Coast attendees yawning (it was 12:20 am there), but overall a good start for many of us. I can tell you the contacts I made just at the speed networking event will lead to some long term relationships for sure.
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