Affiliate Summit East 2009 Day 1 Wrapup

Affiliate Summit started off with a bang. The meet market was packed with exhipitors and attendees.  I spent a decent part of my day wandering the meet market and speaking to blog readers.  Although the show is packed it seems like Affiliate Summit did a much better job this time with getting people registered as there were nearly NO LINES!  Great work Shawn & Missy.

One session that I attended yesterday that really stood out was “Offline Affiliate Marketing.”  I was super psyched to see this session but it was a dissapointment.  When I heard “Offline Affiliate Marketing,” I thought it meant the opportunity to generate leads for local businesses such as dentists, real estate agencts etc.  The session was actually about tracking offline conversions to larger retailers.  The speaker, Jonathan Treiber, was super psyched about the opportunities of affiliates using paid search to drive consumers to coupons that have special barcodes that the retailer can scan when the consumer brings the coupon in.  The barcode contains subid so that you can track your conversions.  The only problem is that Jonathan Treiber seemed to glance over all the issues that a coupon can cause for an affiliate.  If your dropping cash on paid search and your prospect prints a coupon, do you really want to risk that the moron working as customer service in the store is going to take good care of your prospect?  How many times do you walk into a store and then leave because the people working there suck?  Also….what happens when the retailer is having a bad month and decides, ok, we’ll give the consumer the discount but we won’t scan the coupon so that we don’t have to pay the affiliate?  It’s like the brick & mortar version of shaving.  Although the speaker seemed intelligent, I think there was a conflict of interest in him speaking on this subject since his company provides this barcode technology.  I think for the next Summit in Vegas, ShoeMoney should be booked for this topic.

After the meet market ended, I went to the Ianteract Dinner sponsored by Elite Profits with Bryn and the Tracking 202 guys.  The dinner was at Molyvos which was a nice medditeranian restaurant.  The food was great but the service was super slow.  Took the waitstaff like an hour to get Bryn a drink.  The dinner was lots of fun though.  There was a total of 19 people there.  At the end, Elite Profits did the PIMPEST thing.  They gave each of us a Vintage 2000 bottle of Dom Perignon.

After Ian’s dinner we went to the ShareaSale Party Under The Stars.  This was good times.  There were lots of Wickedfire people there and just tons of industry people.  Shareasale provided an awesome venue, music and free drinks for all.

Next we headed over to a private party with Pinnacle Dream at the London.  They got a penthouse suite which was totally nice.  We hung out there for a while until the London security kicked everyone out because some ld hag complained that we were too loud.  What do you expect people are gonna do in a penthouse suite? It’s one of 2 things: Wild Orgy (which you know isn’t happening at any affiliate summit sausage party) or rowdy get together.

After this we went to a bar down the street and one of Emily Thompsons friends argued with me that my name was gay and that she’s gonna rename herself “I’m Better Then You” and make people call her that.  She does not understand that Ad Hustler charm 😉

Affiliate Summit Day 1 was awesome.  Affiliate Summit is bigger and better then any other year and I look forward to see what day 2 and 3 have in store for me.

Please Note: I do receive a Press Pass to Affiliate Summit which get’s me in for free however, all statements and thoughts are my own opinions.

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