Affiliate Summit is the biggest tradeshow/conference of it’s kind specific to the affiliate marketing industry.

Although there’re 2 shows: Affiliate Summit West (in Las Vegas), held early in the year (usually Jan) and Affiliate Summit East (usually in New York, but it does move around sometimes), I’d recommend going to the Vegas show if it’s your first time, or you want to get the most leverage for your buck.

The reason? More people go for the Vegas show, the parties are crazier, the networking can help bring your business to the next level.

The next Affiliate Summit, which happens to be Affiliate Summit West 2011, will be held from Jan 9-11 at Wynn in Las Vegas. The last couple of ASWs were held at the Rio, which is off the Vegas strip, though it has a nice spaces for the conference/tradeshow. The Wynn is a newer and fancy place and I’m sure networks will be booking up suites to host affiliates.

There’re 4 classes of passes – Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond (in ascending order of benefits and costs). So if you’re new to this, which should you choose?

Silver: This is the basic pass and the key features are access to the meet market and trade show. You won’t have access to the conferences, except the keynotes. So if you get this, you will either: a) have arranged all your face-to-face sessions and networking meetings ahead of time
b) have prepped to go visit the Grand Canyon, or go eating and shopping during the day
c) sleeping during the day, so you can go to all the parties which start about 8-ish and go on all night

Gold: New affiliate and need to bone up on your knowledge? The Gold pass will give you access to most of the Sunday conference sessions which will give you ideas on setting up and optimizing your campaigns. You also get access to the tradeshow and some video recordings of conference sessions. If you want to attend the Monday and Tuesday conference sessions you’ll need to get a platinum pass.

Platinum: Like the Gold pass above, but gives you access to the Monday and Tuesday sessions too.

Diamond: Same as the Platinum pass, and you get DVDs of the recorded sessions. I did a rough count of the amount of time the conference sessions would add up to. It’s going to be more than 40 hours of video according to my estimates. For what you’d be paying for a Diamond pass, you probably couldn’t get any kind of “coaching” program at other “Make Money Online” conferences. I’m fairly confident you could make back 10 times what you pay for a Diamond pass, but only if you take action after watching the videos.

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Regardless of which pass you choose, there’s opportunity to make contacts and pick up tips and techniques to grow your affiliate business and this is the one conference I’ve been attending for the last 4 years (and having spoken at 3 of those conferences).

As a bonus for my readers, I’ve got a discount code that gives you 10% off any category of pass.

To use it:

• Click here to go to the Affiliate Summit West 2011 conference website (opens in a new window)
• Click the register button
• Use discount code “ASW11WIAW”