August 2010

Thank You Affiliate Summit!

by Joe Sousa on August 24, 2010

in Affiliate Stuff

I could go into yet another 1000+ word recap of the awesomeness of Affiliate Summit but there are plenty of posts like that around. Don’t believe me? Check out the following awesome recaps of yet another fabulous event:

Affiliate Summit Recap by Vinny Ohare – 5 great posts detailing some of the days before, after, and during the Summit.

Affiliate Summit East Recap in a NY Minute by Stephanie Lichtenstein – Nice, concise recap of Affiliate Summit by Steph from MicroMediaMarketing.com (BTW, if you need any help with anything related to social media get ahold of Stephanie. You won’t be sorry) 

Affiliate Summit East 2010 Recap by Lisa Picarelle – Quick recap of most of the important stuff

and I am sure there are many more out there.

Also there are some good recaps of some of the sessions. Here are a few that have caught my eye over the past week:

Link Building Victories and Failures – Wil Reynolds - By Eric Nagel – Great recap of a very, very good session

Keynote by Jim Kukral recap by Lisa Barone – No idea how Lisa could either write all this info live or take good enough notes. This is a very thorough recap of one of the best keynotes I have ever heard.

If you want to read more recaps just look on twitter, do a blog search on Google, or make up your own and read that as a bedtime story to your children.

Instead of recaping everything myself I just wanted to take a few minutes to give some thank yous to all the people who made Affiliate Summit great for me:

Thank you to Missy Ward and Shawn Collins for putting on yet another awesome Affiliate Summit. Every year (actually twice a year) they continue to raise the bar for excellence when it comes to conferences. You guys did awesome again and I am glad I was able to attend and be a part of it.

Thank you to my golf partners Brian Littleton and Scott Jangro. While I did do better than last year I still couldn’t hang with you two. Pete Dye got us again this year but eventually we will have our revenge.

Thank you to Wade Tonkin from GTO Management for organizing a great dinner at the Tipsy Parson. I went with the catfish and had some cheddar grits on the side. Great time with some good friends.

Thank you Vinny O’Hare and Deb Carney for letting me interupt your meals a few times.

Thank you to Buy.At for the fun party on Saturday night. Lots of chocolate and good times. And I also won a prize from their booth on Tuesday!

Thank you to Shareasale for the amazing party on Sunday night. This party is always one of the highlights of Affiliate Summit and it was great yet again.

Thank you to everyone who made my wife feel very welcome all week, especially Andrew Bennet’s wife Allison.  She had a wonderful time meeting all of you. And she was able to participate by knitting Jen Goode’s penguin a Brian Littleton-esque sweater vest.

Thank you to Jim Kukral for writing Attention: This Book Will Make You Money and giving one of the best keynotes ever. I usually don’t like sitting in keynotes and sessions but this one was great. Lots of good inspiration and practical information. BTW, have you read my review of Jim Kukral’s book?

Thank you Karen Garcia for making the Affiliate Super Friends a reality. The capes for Jim’s keynote were an awesome touch.

Thank you to Wil Reynolds for his Link Building and Failures session and Jon Henshaw for his Supercharging WordPress for SEO session. I rarely go to sessions at conferences but after these two I might have to make it to more of them. Great, practical information that I will start putting into practice very soon on many of my sites.

Thank you to Jason Rubacky and Wade Tonkin for joining me on the last minute Sports Marketing panel. And thank you for all the people in the audience who put up with us. Hopefully we were able to share some quality information. If you were there and have any questions about that stuff please let me know.

Thank you to all my other friends I have missed here. I could probably list about 50 other people pretty easily but hopefully you all know who you are. So thank you. All you guys are the reason I love my job so much and why this is such a great industry to work in. Without you this industry would suck. Thank you again! Please don’t hesitate to ask if there is ever anything I can do to help you. I have taken so much from all of you I want to know how I can give back.

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The Goal Has Been Reached!

by Joe Sousa on August 6, 2010

in Lose Weight With Joe

Back on June 10th I posted about a weight loss challenge I was giving myself. My goal was to lose 20 pounds before Affiliate Summit East which starts next week. You can read my post about that here.

A quick recap: When I started I was 218.2 pounds so I would need to be at 198.2 to complete my goal.

I haven’t been doing anything too radical to lose the weight. Mostly just eating a bit better and exercising more. I haven’t been taking any Acai berry or hoodia or any gimmicks like that but have (for the most part) cut out a lot of the junk food I used to eat, eat smaller portions when I do eat, and try to walk or run 3-5 times a week.

That isn’t to say I don’t occasionally indulge. Just a couple days ago on Wednesday I ate this:

burger

That burger does look as big as you think. It was probably 8 or 9 inches across and the patty was a full pound. I was able to plow through it in about 10 or 15 minutes and it all went down suprisingly easy. And I finished off a bunch of the fries als0.

So I haven’t been starving myself. And that is only the second “really bad” meal I have had since I started. So one of those a month seems to be acceptable.

Anyway, I got on the scale today and look what I saw:

scale

198 pounds!!!

I was able to reach my goal with about a week left until Affiliate Summit starts. 20 pounds gone and hopefully never to come back. When you see me at Affiliate Summit there will be a bit less of me to see. Now don’t think this gives you the right to not take me out to pizza or bagels or street meat or any of the other great foods New York has to offer. I will still eat with the best of them when the opportunity arises. I can always lose the weight when I get home.

I will probably keep going and try to get down around 190-195 or so and try to maintain there. I don’t want to get too skinny and I will probably start doing more strength workouts to get some of the muscle back but for now I am at 198 and I was able to reach my goal!

There were a few of you who were also gonna try to drop a few pounds. How have you been doing? Remember, I am gonna donate $2 for every pound lost to Affiliate Marketers Give Back. So post your updates in the comments and let me know how you are doing.

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Attention: This Book Will Make You Money Review

by Joe Sousa on August 6, 2010

in Affiliate Stuff,General business stuff

A while back (I can’t remember when) I preordered Jim Kukral’s new book Attention: This Book Will Make You Money.  And somewhere along the line I preordered another copy that I forgot about. So now I am the proud owner of TWO copies of Attention: This Book Will Make You Money.

For those of you who don’t like to read here is a video review I did. If you do like to read and want some thoughts that aren’t in the video you can read those later

I read very few books and I have to say I did really like this book. It is a fairly quick read (many of the chapters are just a couple pages) but it is packed with tons of great information, instruction, and examples of people who know how to use attention to make money. There are many books and articles and blogs that will tell you “use social media to make money” but they never get into how and in this book Jim does a good job of explaining what that looks like and he gives some concrete examples of people who have done that and the benefits they have recieved.

Another thing I really liked about the book is how he goes into how to come up with ideas. I would guess for most people coming up with ideas to get attention or ideas for websites or ideas for a business or whatever is one of the harder things to do. I know I am not the most creative and innovative person in the world but I do really like the practical steps Jim gives for being creative.

I am not a fan of people who take themselves too seriously or feel that when they write a book it needs to be more formal and structured. When you read this book it seems like Jim is sitting right across the table from you or in the stool next to you at the bar and you are just chatting about this stuff and for me that is the kind of book that will help me.

Do yourself a favor and go order Attention: This Book Will Make You Money today. If you take what Jim says and put it into practice I have little doubt the title of the book will come true for you. Great job Jim!

If you don’t want to take my word for it you can check out the review Shawn Collins posted on Affiliatetip.com.  

And check out this review on Benspark.com

Right now (10:30 PST on August 10th) this book is #505 overall and #2 in some different ecommerce and web marketing categories. Go buy a copy today and see if we can get this book into the top 500!

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