Affiliate Marketing Tips from Super Affiliate Zac Johnson

Today kicked off day 2 of Blog World Expo in Vegas. With another jam packed schedule, I hit up two sessions for the day. The first was called “Are You Getting the Most Money Out of Your Blog?“. Most of the previous sessions I had attended were covering all of the basic stuff. This panel was actually decent and showed what the panelists were doing on their blog to make money. The panelists were Dave Taylor, Tim Jones, Chris Pirillo and Chloe Spencer. Not well known for being “big money” bloggers, but still a great learning source for people in the audience from speakers covering a wide range of blog topics and size. Chris Pirillo also talked about how much more effective it was for him to release videos on YouTube to sell / review ebooks/products vs. making blog and twitter posts.

Monetization methods used and discussed were from revenue generating services Kontera, VibrantMedia, BlogAds, Technorati Ad Network, Izea / SponsoredTweets and TextLinkAds. Most of the panelists were relying on a combination of the networks above and Google Adsense.

As I mentioned yesterday, instead of hitting the usual affiliate marketing & blogging sessions, I made it to a sports blogging session as well. The session was called “Incorporating the Web Across Multi-Platform In Sports Media“. The main reason I wanted to attend this session, is because it included former NBA star Jalen Rose. However, after the session started, it was actually one of the better sessions of the event. Rob King of ESPN was also on the panel and he talked about how he used the internet and setting up a web page to secure his first big job. This was back in the mid-late 90s and having a url on your resume was huge. Across the board, this was an excellent session and can’t be summed up in a few sentences. I hope Blog World Expo releases video this year of the sessions they record.

Tomorrow is the last day of blog world. There are another few sessions I am looking to attend, along with my speaking session with Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and John Chow on the “Blogging Super Panel” at 3pm. If you are at Blog World, be sure to stop by and have your blog critiqued by some of the best bloggers in the world.

Next time you go to a conference, make you sure go outside of your comfort zone, or the sessions your used to. You might just be surprised what else is going on outside of your little niche.

I’m here in Vegas for BlogWorld New Media Expo 2009. BlogWorld has quickly become one of my favorite events to attend. The even is run by a great guy, Rick Calvert and it’s not just focused on “make money bloggers”. Instead the event covers a wide variety of blogs, focusing on milblogging, social networking / twitter, make money blogging and sports blogging. Here’s how the first day went down.

Since the conference covers so many different topics, there are usually four or more different sessions going on at the same time, so there is a lot to choose from. Instead of hearing the same things over and over again about twitter and how important social media is, I actually went over to a few milblogging (military blogging) sessions, and they were quite interesting. It’s a whole new word in the milblogging area, and not much talk of monetization or methods to make money. Milblogging is more personal and about keeping in contact with others in the same situations. The first milblogging session was with three army wives who blog while their husbands ore on duty. While us internet marketers struggle with issues like the FTC cracking down on full disclosure, milblogging has to deal with issues of what they say, how much information can be released and what information is actually correct. Remember, these are real people blogging about their families battling around the world. This is a whole new world of blogging I never really looked at, but the sessions were well worth attending.

Members of the Milblogging Session, talking about expanding blog reach and sharing information.

Another session I attended was a keynote with Ted Murphy and a few others on a “Sponsored Conversations” panel. The whole keynote was focused on the new FTC act to require bloggers to disclose any posts related to being compensated or paid for their writings. There are so many questions about this topic, it was pretty much a Q&A the whole session. While many questions were answered, we are still at the mercy of whatever the FTC decides to go forward with on December 1st, 2009 when the act goes into effect. No matter what the ruling, Ted Murphy stressed that all bloggers should have a disclaimer on their web site.

CEOs, Lawyers, Marketers and the audience, all talking about “Sponsored Conversations”.

If you weren’t able to make the event this year, it’s always a good reason to visit Vegas. I’ll follow up tomorrow with day 2.