Affiliate Summit | Affiliate Marketing Tips from Super Affiliate Zac Johnson

Networking at Affiliate Summit East 08

Walking the exhibit floor at Affiliate Summit is probably the most beneficial part of the event. Not only will you get to see all of the people working at the exhibits and networks, but it’s where you will meet everyone else you were hoping to meet, and even more! I can’t count how many times people came up to me and introduced themselves just to let me know that they were blog readers of mine. I really appreciate and love meeting everyone in person. I was amazed at how many of my blog readers and Twitter followers were able to make the event. Here are just a few of the many I was fortunate enough to meet up with at Affiliate Summit East 08 in Boston.

It wasn’t til the last couple hours of the last day, that I actually got to start meeting everyone that I was hoping to run into. Here I’m pictured with my awesome Advaliant affiliate manager Rich. I wasn’t able to make their fishing cruise the day before the Summit, but I’m sure it was awesome.

The Blogger Room was a massive improvement this time around vs. it’s appearance and size at Affiliate Summit West 08 in Vegas. The room was a lot bigger this time, had enough table space for anyone wanting to come in and out of the room, and best of all… they had a huge tv with a Wii setup… so I had to school everyone on Wii Bowling a few times. Here I am with Affiliate Summit Veterans Jim Kukral, Shawn Collins, Todd Farmer and Debby of Market Leverage.

Even if you were to stay in the Blogger Room for a while, you were sure to meet up with new and old friends. Mark from 45n5.com was the Blogger Room captain again, and I’m also pictured with John Hasson and Ian Fernando.

In the Blogger Room with Charles Ngo

Walking the floor throughout the day, I also got to meet up with many other blog readers and bloggers of their own.

Andrew Payne, Benny Tejeda, Myself and Dave Martinez

Affiliate and Bloggers NickyCakes, Jonathan Volk

This was just a quick collection of a few of the people I met at Affiliate Summit. I would highly recommend you try and get to at least one of the Affiliate Summit events each year. There is no other networking experience like it.

13 August, 2008 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Summit, Blogging, Make Money, Zac's Life

Affiliate Summit Last Day Recap

The second “official” day of Affiliate Summit started with an early 9-10:30am with 9 different speakers in the “Ask the Experts” session. Apparently this was still way too early for the majority of attendees as I would say less than 20% of all attendees actually made the session… not to mention 2 out of the 9 speakers weren’t even there for the start! That didn’t bother me so much, just more people to talk with during my session. I covered the area of “Growing a Blog” and pretty much answered questions, gave new ideas and case studies to everyone at my table. It ended up really great and I think this session would have done even better if it was later in the day, so more people could have attended.

123 by you.

Zac Johnson on Growing a Blog

Besides my own speaking session, there was only one other session I was planning on attending for the day, and that was the “Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing“. The main reason for attending this event, was the collection of speakers on the panel and to see what they had to say. This has been a battle back and forth over the years with affiliates, merchants and networks on what qualifies as “ethical” and “non-ethical“. With all of battling and sporadic demand for something to regulate the affiliate market, it seems like nothing ever really gets established, nor has made that much of a change. (ie: did CAN-Spam ever clean up your inbox at all?) Nothing will be changed in this market until the people in control and with power, start naming names and make examples. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see and hear what others are “trying to do” to regulate and clean up the affiliate space…

157 by you.

After Affiliate Summit sessions came to a close, the exhibit hall was torn down and the un-keynote took place. Several Affiliate Summit veterans and newbies came up to the mic and gave a few words on the event and their experience. Afterwards many Affiliate Summit stuffed themselves into taxis and headed over to the insanely thrilling Boston Red Sox game vs the Texas Rangers… which ended up with a final score of 19-17, in favor of the Red Sox!

Affiliate Summit East Boston Red Sox Baseball Game by you.

Affiliate Summit East 2008 has come to a close, but there are still plenty of posts on the way! Look forward to seeing more pictures of who I met up with at the conference, some of the exhibitors, ways to improve Affiliate Summit and why you should definitely make the trip out the Vegas for ASW09!

13 August, 2008 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Summit, Blogging, Make Money, Zac's Life

Affiliate Summit Boston – Day 1 Recap

The first “official” day of Affiliate Summit East has come to a close. The main highlights so far are meeting with a ton of new blog/twitter readers that have been following my writing over the past several months. It’s really great to see of the new faces that were able to make it to the event this year. I will make an upcoming post on all of my contacts, and if you are at Affiliate Summit yet and still want to meet. Find me tomorrow at the “Ask the Experts” session (at 9am), or send me a message on Twitter.

The day started out with keynote speakers Cory Booker, than regular sessions began. Here’s a recap of the few I attended.

The first session I attended was “The State of Ad Networks“, which features the CEOs of Epic Advertising, MarketLeverage, Buy.at and ClickBank. While there wasn’t anything earth shattering about the session, it was cool to see the collection of CEOs from such great companies. During the session, discussion focuses on how networks pay affiliates, collect funds, what type of tracking softwares they use and how their networks best specialize and accomodate affiliates.

The next session that I attend was “Anatomy of a Great Affiliate Program“. The main reason why I attended this session, was because my friend Ian Fernando was on the panel. The concept and discussions around this session, were pretty basic questions on how affiliate networks manage their programs, run incentive programs and also how they are viewed by affiliates.

In between sessions, I found some time to hit the exhibit floor and meet with some new people and companies. I found that the short amount of time I spent on the exhibit floor, networking with others, proved a lot more beneficial and knowledgable than attending a few of these sessions. Unfortunately the majority of what’s being discussed, seemed to be so introductory and such basic information. After this session, I attended one more… but it seemed to keep the same tone and non-informational concept… so I skipped out early on. This is when I then headed to the exhibit floor and made some nice contacts.

After hitting the exhibit floor, I headed back to the hotel, then made my way back to the last session of the day. Amit Mehta was the speaker and his session was called “PPC Super Affiliate Strategies You Must Know“. This is the second time I’ve seen Amit speak and even though his presentation (slideshow) was most of the same material from the first time I saw him, he is still a great speaker and his real life examples and experience, makes you want to get to work and make more money than ever. Amit took the time to answer any questions attendees had, then stayed quite a while after he was done to talk with everyone that went up to him afterwards.

At the end of the conference day, the Affiliate Summit Road Rally took place. It costs $100 to enter (goes to charity), and the winner receives a free booth at the next Affiliate Summit ($4995 value). Of course at the previous Affiliate Summit (in Vegas), when I entered the race, there were around 20 race cars… this time there were only 3! Shareasale blew away the competition and won the race!

Tonight there is another networking party, and I look forward to meeting some new friends and getting more pictures to post for all of you. Tomorrow should be an exciting (closing) day for Affiliate Summit Boston 2008!

11 August, 2008 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Summit, Blogging, Make Money, Marketing, Zac's Life

Live from Affiliate Summit East in Boston

What seemed like mission impossible, is now finally a reality… Yes, I am in Boston at Affiliate Summit East 2008. Having anxiously waited months for the event, and having never missed an Affiliate Summit so far… I would not want this to be my first. Two days ago I started feeling horrible and went to the doctor and was told I had a stomach virus. At one point I was ready to cancel the 5 hour drive up to Boston, and possibly miss the first day or the whole event. Fortunately I felt better the next day (and pretty much back to normal now). My father came over and we were getting ready for the trip… right as we were leaving we noticed the car had a flat tire! It seemed like I was just not supposed to get here this year, but despite the problems past I have made it!

Unfortunately we arrived right before the Meet Market closed, but other than that, everything has been great so far. The Boston Seaport Hotel is real nice and has a nice desk and computer setup in every room. I’ve already run into several of my Twitter followers and blog readers and excited to see who I meet throughout the event.

Check back often as I will continually update the blog with my happenings and events at Affiliate Summit. Hopefully I can grab some nice gifts from the exhibit hall and give them away on the blog!

10 August, 2008 Posted by: Zac Johnson Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Summit, Blogging, Make Money, Marketing

Six Degrees of Affiliate Marketing

The latest issue (#2) of FeedFront magazine was sent out earlier this week and I received mine yesterday. If you were subscribed to receive the first issue, you will immediately notice that the second issue is nearly double in size. Not only does it provide for more useful content, but also more space to sell ads in the magazine! Also, if you haven’t received your copy yet, you will also find that this issue will double as the program for Affiliate Summit East in Boston later this month.

Just when you thought FeedFront magazine couldn’t get any better… there’s more! Since Affiliate Summit is just days away, I wanted to share my experience and stress the important of networking, in an article I wrote, which is titled “Six Degrees of Affiliate Marketing” (and you can find it on page 28). In short, the article covers the importance of networking and how my first Affiliate Marketing conference changed the way I ran business online forever. The contacts, life experience and knowledge you get from attending these conferences is amazing. Click here to read the full article.

Speaking of networking… I look forward to meeting with many of you at Affiliate Summit this weekend in Boston! If you haven’t subscribed yet, head over to the FeedFront web site and get a free subscription, or view the full issue on PDF.