Hopefully the last you'll hear about the Summit for now...
Ok, so I left off Sunday night. Not much happened, I was exhausted and sore, so when I went to dump some stuff in my room after the networking and lay down to rest my back for a few minutes and woke up Monday morning, I wasn't too surprised.. lol I really needed the rest. You'd really be surprised at how even 3 hours can make a difference when it comes to jet lag!
Monday morning came around and I grabbed a bite to eat and went to the first session of the day, the Keynote speech by Corey Newhouse and a fabulous session with Anne Holland of Marketing Sherpa. Check out (there's still a day or 2 left) this link - it will show you the slides we saw and a lot of what Anne said at the session. Fascinating information about industry financials, email lists, untapped niches and more. Next up was Declan Dunn who was perhaps mis-scheduled for the first session since I think we were all still too tired for his boisterous but awesome presentation on how to create buzz marketing with blogs and podcasts.
Then it was lunch time with some lovely salads, cold cuts and cheeses (and some desserts which I didn't partake of) courtesy of the Summit. Much more networking ensued of course until the next session with James Martell. I was expecting to know quite a bit of what he was going to say already, but I was wrong. I knew all of what he said already. I found it a fairly dry session as well full of technical glitches. More useful for my friends who don't follow him than me.
That ended up being my last session of the day as the other ones weren't really useful to me. So after visiting with everyone at the Cafe Press booth, it was back to my room for a quick nap and getting ready for the Shareasale party at the Palms. It was held in the Celebration suite, and for those of you who are "The Real World" fans, this is where the Las Vegas version of the show was filmed. Also, if you've heard of the show "Inked" about a tattoo parlour (don't watch either of them myself) the Palms also houses this show and while we were waiting for everyone we got to see quite a bit of the show being filmed. Pretty cool stuff! The party was much more fun though. Seems there was some yummy food though I had just eaten downstairs so I skipped it, but the free booze was nice! We sat around and chatted for a while until I finally grabbed Colin's attention, which I've already told you about :) So after chatting and gambling for hours, most of us headed back to Bally's around 4-5 am (memory fuzzy about the time) and went to bed. Some of my new friends stayed behind to gamble till around 6:30 am so I heard - crazy shit!
I knew due to the late hour there was NO way I was making it to the first session - or the 2nd as it turns out - so I decided to sleep in a bit. After getting up to tell Eric about my night, I spotted Andrea online and sent her a huge thanks for bugging me to talk to Colin. At this point, she decided to call her friend Rob who's standing at a booth in the exhibit hall to tell him about me. HE then calls me and says, well, come meet me, John, Jim and Gary in my room. Knowing that he meant Gary ANTOSH (guru of web content, not just creating it, but buying it) and that John was someone from one of the forums I frequent, I RACED my way across the hotel to the south tower. At that point I entered an awesome, fantastic, amazing conversation with all 4 men, but mainly Gary and John (after Jim and Rob decided to go eat) that lasted probably around 2 hours. Wow, did I ever learn TONS of new ways to write articles - that will definitely help. Plus Gary gave me some great advice when it comes to hiring authors and using PLR articles (he gets 3 THOUSAND a month - see Chrissie, you're not that bad!!) that I can't wait to put into play!! Just as soon as I kick this damn infection, though I am writing this from work right now, I'm going to be getting back into my sites with full energy as I've got a BUNCH of great ideas for sites I want to get off the ground NOW.
Anyway, back to the Summit. The only session I really attended on Tuesday was one that was supposed to be with Rosalind Gardner, Super Affiliate, and the one session I REALLY wanted to attend the entire summit - but for whatever reason, she cancelled and was replaced by Joel Comm. I have to admit, I wasn't happy when I heard that, but I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation that followed. Joel was a very entertaining and informative speaker and I have to say I was impressed at his openess by picking apart both the back and front end of one of his sites. We got probably full access to everything about that site. Which of course is not to say I'm going to go out and recreate what he did, but there are certainly bits and pieces that I can apply across my own sites. Really cool stuff.
After that I headed back over to the CP booth for a while, hung out with Warren and eventually sat at the back of the ballroom with Matt, Jen and Adam (truly, check out their sites, they've got some awesome products, some of which I'm buying myself!) just discussing things we'd learned and the people we'd met. Good times. After that it was basically run and get ready for the Chocolate party at the Wynn hosted by oneNetwork and PartnerCentric (2 great companies) and then off we went. Awesome party with fantastic open bar, chocolate like I've never seen and a good band. We all got a little too drunk I think (or at least I got WAY too drunk) and when the party was over we headed to a bar in the Wynn where I stayed until the room started spinning and headed back to Bally's. All in all, I had a phenomenal time, much better than I had hoped for even! The only part I could've done without was the disastrous flights home I had (every plane I LOOKED at was delayed, even after being re-routed because I was going to miss my connection and we got home 3 hours late) but even at that, not enough of a negative to not go again... just not for a month or 2 ;)
I can tell you the thing that I look the most forward to when I start making some real money is traveling. I LOVE traveling. And I can't wait to take Eric to Vegas, with or without a reason, because I had such a great time. I can NOT stress it enough though to all of you conference noobs - start saving your money NOW. If I can I'm going to try and go to CJU in September. I don't know if I'll be able to do both the Summit in July AND CJU and if I can only do 1, that's fine. But CJU is a little cheaper and it will offer a different perspective of people and place that I'd like to experience. No matter what though, I GUARANTEE that Affiliate Summit West '06 is not my last conference, only the first of many to come. I hope I'll see all my blogging buddies at the next one, whichever/wherever that may be! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me or leave me a comment. Now this entry is quite long enough, so that's it for today, hope you've enjoyed the chronicles of my trip!
Tara :)
Monday morning came around and I grabbed a bite to eat and went to the first session of the day, the Keynote speech by Corey Newhouse and a fabulous session with Anne Holland of Marketing Sherpa. Check out (there's still a day or 2 left) this link - it will show you the slides we saw and a lot of what Anne said at the session. Fascinating information about industry financials, email lists, untapped niches and more. Next up was Declan Dunn who was perhaps mis-scheduled for the first session since I think we were all still too tired for his boisterous but awesome presentation on how to create buzz marketing with blogs and podcasts.
Then it was lunch time with some lovely salads, cold cuts and cheeses (and some desserts which I didn't partake of) courtesy of the Summit. Much more networking ensued of course until the next session with James Martell. I was expecting to know quite a bit of what he was going to say already, but I was wrong. I knew all of what he said already. I found it a fairly dry session as well full of technical glitches. More useful for my friends who don't follow him than me.
That ended up being my last session of the day as the other ones weren't really useful to me. So after visiting with everyone at the Cafe Press booth, it was back to my room for a quick nap and getting ready for the Shareasale party at the Palms. It was held in the Celebration suite, and for those of you who are "The Real World" fans, this is where the Las Vegas version of the show was filmed. Also, if you've heard of the show "Inked" about a tattoo parlour (don't watch either of them myself) the Palms also houses this show and while we were waiting for everyone we got to see quite a bit of the show being filmed. Pretty cool stuff! The party was much more fun though. Seems there was some yummy food though I had just eaten downstairs so I skipped it, but the free booze was nice! We sat around and chatted for a while until I finally grabbed Colin's attention, which I've already told you about :) So after chatting and gambling for hours, most of us headed back to Bally's around 4-5 am (memory fuzzy about the time) and went to bed. Some of my new friends stayed behind to gamble till around 6:30 am so I heard - crazy shit!
I knew due to the late hour there was NO way I was making it to the first session - or the 2nd as it turns out - so I decided to sleep in a bit. After getting up to tell Eric about my night, I spotted Andrea online and sent her a huge thanks for bugging me to talk to Colin. At this point, she decided to call her friend Rob who's standing at a booth in the exhibit hall to tell him about me. HE then calls me and says, well, come meet me, John, Jim and Gary in my room. Knowing that he meant Gary ANTOSH (guru of web content, not just creating it, but buying it) and that John was someone from one of the forums I frequent, I RACED my way across the hotel to the south tower. At that point I entered an awesome, fantastic, amazing conversation with all 4 men, but mainly Gary and John (after Jim and Rob decided to go eat) that lasted probably around 2 hours. Wow, did I ever learn TONS of new ways to write articles - that will definitely help. Plus Gary gave me some great advice when it comes to hiring authors and using PLR articles (he gets 3 THOUSAND a month - see Chrissie, you're not that bad!!) that I can't wait to put into play!! Just as soon as I kick this damn infection, though I am writing this from work right now, I'm going to be getting back into my sites with full energy as I've got a BUNCH of great ideas for sites I want to get off the ground NOW.
Anyway, back to the Summit. The only session I really attended on Tuesday was one that was supposed to be with Rosalind Gardner, Super Affiliate, and the one session I REALLY wanted to attend the entire summit - but for whatever reason, she cancelled and was replaced by Joel Comm. I have to admit, I wasn't happy when I heard that, but I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation that followed. Joel was a very entertaining and informative speaker and I have to say I was impressed at his openess by picking apart both the back and front end of one of his sites. We got probably full access to everything about that site. Which of course is not to say I'm going to go out and recreate what he did, but there are certainly bits and pieces that I can apply across my own sites. Really cool stuff.
After that I headed back over to the CP booth for a while, hung out with Warren and eventually sat at the back of the ballroom with Matt, Jen and Adam (truly, check out their sites, they've got some awesome products, some of which I'm buying myself!) just discussing things we'd learned and the people we'd met. Good times. After that it was basically run and get ready for the Chocolate party at the Wynn hosted by oneNetwork and PartnerCentric (2 great companies) and then off we went. Awesome party with fantastic open bar, chocolate like I've never seen and a good band. We all got a little too drunk I think (or at least I got WAY too drunk) and when the party was over we headed to a bar in the Wynn where I stayed until the room started spinning and headed back to Bally's. All in all, I had a phenomenal time, much better than I had hoped for even! The only part I could've done without was the disastrous flights home I had (every plane I LOOKED at was delayed, even after being re-routed because I was going to miss my connection and we got home 3 hours late) but even at that, not enough of a negative to not go again... just not for a month or 2 ;)
I can tell you the thing that I look the most forward to when I start making some real money is traveling. I LOVE traveling. And I can't wait to take Eric to Vegas, with or without a reason, because I had such a great time. I can NOT stress it enough though to all of you conference noobs - start saving your money NOW. If I can I'm going to try and go to CJU in September. I don't know if I'll be able to do both the Summit in July AND CJU and if I can only do 1, that's fine. But CJU is a little cheaper and it will offer a different perspective of people and place that I'd like to experience. No matter what though, I GUARANTEE that Affiliate Summit West '06 is not my last conference, only the first of many to come. I hope I'll see all my blogging buddies at the next one, whichever/wherever that may be! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me or leave me a comment. Now this entry is quite long enough, so that's it for today, hope you've enjoyed the chronicles of my trip!
Tara :)
posted by Tara at
10:09 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for writing that Tara, what with your infection etc real good read
Thanks Mark. How I would love to go to one of those one day and meet all these interesting people.
By
Mark, at January 19, 2006 2:57 AM
lol thanks Mark, getting better everyday thankfully! You could totally go to these things - just start saving now - if it takes 2-3 years, just think how many sites you'll have by then and how much more you'll appreciate it. But hey, I was hanging with a guy from the UK the entire time I was there, so you never know :)
Tara :)
By
Tara, at January 19, 2006 10:22 AM
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