The Eagle Has Landed – Affiliate Summit West 2010 In Pics and Words Part 2 February 2, 2010
Posted by Andrew Wee in : affiliate marketing , trackbackContinuing on the people and companies I met up with at the recently concluded Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas, it was great to have met up with many people, some of whom I’ve known and talked regularly with for 2 years or more over skype and AIM.
Note: If you missed the first part, you can find it here: Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Pics and Words Part 1.
The Ryan Eagle vs Maxbounty drama
As Nickycakes mentions in his post summarizing some of the “drama” at ASW, I stepped into the meet market and heard that Maxbounty has a poster featuring a shady character that looked like Ryan Eagle (owner of the Eagle Web Assets CPA network). I wasn’t aware that the Eagleman was angry or shaking about the picture. I did follow him to the booth to have his picture taken.
The Birdman with the Maxbounty Ad
As we were taking the picture and Ryan was laughing about it, it was funny to see one of Maxbounty’s owners JP Sauve who was manning the booth and talking to prospects, try to grab the poster from Ryan.
The episode was mildly entertaining.
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I also sat in on the SEO Site Review clinic, moderated by Sugarrae, with a panel comprising Michael Gray (Graywolf), Streko and Greg Boser.
SEO Site Review Panel Streko, Graywolf, Greg Boser
I often hear how such panels can be brutal. On the contrary, I thought the SEO experts gave frank, relevant and constructive advice. If you think that’s “brutal”, you probably need to be in a different industry.
10e20’s Rebecca Kelley gave a comprehensive roundup of the panel’s tips at her post “Top tips from the SEO site review clinic…”
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Hanging with the TriFoxMedia (TFM) crew
I hung out for most of the summit with the guys from TFM, a boutique CPA network, with owner Josh Todd and senior affiliate manager Boone Riddle. They took good care of me, and we went to a number of the parties together.
Josh Todd, me, Boone Riddle
Since we already talk about business regularly over AIM, it didn’t make much sense to talk (much) business in Vegas. So it was pretty much 3 days of partying and our most frequent conversation topic was deciding which party to head too next.
The major takeaway I got from this summit is I should probably RSVP to all the parties I get invites too because:
- The bouncers don’t let you into the suites at the Palms unless you have a bracelet
- The registration/bracelet table closes within an hour of the party starting, so no table = no bracelet = difficulty getting in.
I saw a couple of douchebag affiliates try to weasel their way into some of the parties. In most cases they were stopped cold at the door, and in other cases, they managed to get in (maybe with the possible threat of projectile vomitting?)
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The Wickedfire crew
There were a couple of meetups for the members of the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum. I didn’t head to them, though I bumped into several groups of them during the conference.
I bumped into Nickycakes early the morning he won “Affiliate of the Year”.
What the fork? Nickycakes makes it rain at the Pinnacle Awards
The Bofu2U “Tweet My Ballz” meme:
Robert Adler (Bofu2U), guy-who-must-not-be-named (cos I don’t know it), Josh Ziering
At one point, I saw Bofu2U had a tweet saying he was so bored he might as well “Tweetz his ballz”.
Helping him out, I sent out a tweet saying he needed to “get his ballz tweeted”. Apparently it took on a life of its own, with the typically juvenile members of WickedFire tweeting and retweeting that message to the extent that Bofu2U has other ASW attendees walking up to him and asking about his balls.
Nothing like good clean fun.
I bumped into Riley Pool in the midst of another WickedFire mob congregating in front of the Convert2Media booth.
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People and Places
Having spoken to Andrew Payne and having met him at previous affiliate summits, it was good to see him again. I didn’t realize he was the Meetup202 organizer for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Eric Nagel: I’d briefly spoken to Eric Nagel over AIM a couple of times and his fancy synchronized Christmas lights have got him a fair bit of attention. He’s a friendly and knowledgeable guy and gives some great free scripts on his site.
Dylan McDanniel: Dylan is one of the co-founders of Epicenter and has expertise in PPC arbitrage and he and partner Smokey Burns later expanded Epicenter to include CPA offers. He’s a knowledgeable and well-rounded marketer, I had a good meeting with him.
Brian Littleton: Founder of the ShareASale affiliate network, Brian’s one of the most humble, yet knowledgeable people in the industry. I like how they take a proactive stance on many issues facing the industry. Although I didn’t make it to their “Party under the stars” this year, I peeped in early and saw they had like 5 driving simulators and a bunch of other cool stuff at their party.
Jason Rubacky, Amanda O (Phillian): Jason’s been developing a fair amount of affiliate resources at ShareASale, while Amanda’s pretty engimatic. And yes, she’s a real person….
The hard work has paid off for Wes Mahler (above) and Steven Truong, with Meetup202/Revolution202/Prosper202’s acquisition by the Bloosky affiliate network. Wes played a great video showing how they bootstrapped the company in San Franciso. I think one guy had his office in the bathroom.
Product datafeed service provider GoldenCan’s Asif Malik: Each year we meet at the summit, we say we’ll contact each other soon after the event. I hope your email’s work, Asif!
With affiliate marketing consultant and outsourced program manager Greg Hoffman (above) (famous for having sent a box of doughnuts to Kowabunga’s Rachel Honoway to get a gig there). Boutique affiliate management outfits like Greg’s are a key component of the industry and it helps to have someone experienced like Greg at the helm.
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“What the fork?!” hahah…
Nice recap Andrew. It was great meeting you in person.
Likewise.
The man. The myth. The legend. Wee is everywhere and everyone at the same time.
Wee will rock you.
Yo u forgot me asshat…
Oh shit justkidding mangz. It was good meeting yo_. Sorry to see ur wrist was badfrom too much ppv.
Who’re you?
Nice to seeya at Bloosky, even though you had the sickies.
I can’t believe I missed you there this time Andrew. 4k people is a lot, we never crossed paths.
@Jim – it’s happening more each year.
I saw BillyKay all of 10 seconds in the meet market and missed a bunch of people too.
I guess if you’re delivering the next keynote, I won’t miss you?
I can’t believe you didn’t talk about meeting me in the elevator.
EDIT: “I had a weird guy yell “Who is andrew weeeeeeeeee?” in the elevator at the Palms as we were going to the PPC.bz/nickycakes/nb/pof party. I later found out he’s Dullspace/cyrus.”
Happy?
I got lucky! Andrew found me in the hallway. Too bad he looks constipated in our photo. I was happy to meet him though.
The-guy-that-must-not-be-named is Russell Parr.
And you didn’t get my beer in the picture like you wanted. =(