The time has come for yet another Affiliate Summit. So since I am an affiliate marketer with a blog I guess it is mandatory to do an Affiliate Summit post.

So here is my general agenda. Obviously this will change many, many times while I am in New York but here is my plan:

Thursday, August 12th - Plane arives around 7 AM. Gonna be a long overnight flight. This time I won’t take the NotSoSuperShuttle after my experience last year. Just gonna get a car service or limo or something. After we arive (yeah, I said we. Gonna bring my wife this year so she can meet all you guys) will probably take a nap and then head out and do some sightseeing.

Friday, August 13th - My wife will be headed to Pennsylvania for a wedding so I have the day free. Anyone want to do anything? 

Saturday, August 14th - Golfing. This should take most of the day (36 holes) and then hanging out in the evening with whoever is in town.

Sunday, August 15th - The conference starts! Here are some of the sessions I am thinking about checking out (BTW, be sure to check out the #ASE10 schedule maker: http://ase10.sched.org/:

1:30 - Either the New Lead Generation Models with Declan Dunn or Supercharging Wordpress for SEO. Declan is a legend in the marketing industry and I don’t know enough about Wordpress. So probably one of those two sessions.

And I think that is all for the sessions on Sunday. I will take a stroll or two through the Meet Market though. And at 6:30 I will be going to the Affiliate Summit Newcomer Program Meetup with whoever my mentee is.

Also my wife will get back on Sunday so that will probably be a good day for you all to meet her. Anyone have lunch plans? Thinking of heading over to the Soup Nazi’s place a couple blocks from the hotel.

Monday, August 16

9:45 If I can crawl out of bed I will try to make it for the keynote.

11:30 - Probably hit Will Reynolds Link Building Victories and Failures session. I suck at link building and hopefully I can learn something I don’t already know.

2:00 - Maybe the Facebook session or Social Media Marketing for Affiliates. Or I might just hit the exhibit hall during this time.

3:30 - The SEO Site Review Clinic is usually pretty decent so I might pop in there for a few minutes and see who’s site is getting ripped apart.

After that I don’t have anything planned.

Tuesday, August 17th

10:00 - I will be heading to Jim Kukral’s keynote. I have know Jim for a couple years now and can’t wait to hear him speak.  BTW, have you ordered his book yet? Well, you should. Go to Amazon and order Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue today. I am sure if you see him during the conference he will be happy to sign it also. Or maybe you can just throw the book on stage while he is speaking. Either way.

11:30 - Maybe How to Turbocharge your Business. See if I can get a tip or two to make me more productive.

12:10 - Processes for Building Profitable Affiliate Websites - Worth a shot to see if there is any tidbits I am missing. I know I am leaving a ton of money on the table and maybe I can find a way or two to pick some of that up.

After that I don’t know which sessions if any I will hit up.

And obviously there will be different parties and hangouts every night so when those get announced I will update this post. There is also a good chance I won’t make it to the sessions I have planned on going to. I usually make plans like this and then those get derailed rather quickly once I get to the conference.

Wednesday, August 18th - My wife and I will head upstate to visit her sister and brother.

Thursday, August 19th - Drive over to New Hampshire to visit some of Kate’s family and friends.

Friday, August 20th - Head back to NYC and do some sightseeing. And by sightseeing I mean trying to find the best restaurants in the city.  I’m not looking for fancy, I just want good food. Bagels, pizza, burgers, deli, etc. Any suggestions? Obviously the street meat outside the hotel is a must.

Saturday, August 21st - More sightseeing (we will probably need to find some cool yarn stores for Kate) and the Yankee-Mariners game. Is it crazy that I am a Mariners fan living in Washington and in the past 2 years I have been to zero games in Seattle but 3 in Yankee Stadium?

Sunday, August 22nd - Some sightseeing and then fly home.

So it will be a nice long trip.

If any of you want to do lunch or dinner or anything else while we are in town please let me know. We don’t have much planned for most of the trip and 90% of why I am going to the conference is to hang out with friends. Twitter me, IM me, email me, leave a comment… Whatever works for you.

Can’t wait to see many of you in just a few weeks.

Over the last couple weeks I have built a few new sites and ran a few test and thought I would share my results with you. Some have been failures and some have been successes. Hopefully you can learn from what I did wrong and also pick up some tips from what I have done right (and if you are really nice you can give me some other suggestions to try out).

Test 1: Lebron James Jerseys

As most of you probably know Lebron James switched teams. Whenever a superstar player switches teams their jerseys are usually the top selling jersey for the year and Lebron James is sure to make that happen.  Lebron went to the Miami Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers. I do feel bad for Cleveland fans that they lost a great young superstar but the bottom line is Cleveland didn’t do enough to build a championship team around Lebron. I think Lebron should have shown the Cleveland fans a bit more respect and went about leaving in a different way but whatever… that doesn’t have much to do with this experiment.  (And for the record, I wish he would have gone to New York. Much bigger stage than Miami and he could have built a total empire).

Of course since I do a bunch of stuff with sports jerseys and merchandise already I decided to build a Lebron James site and sell Lebron jerseys. I had thought about this a few months ago but couldn’t think of what domains I wanted to register. I thought about lebronisaknick.com and lebronisabull.com and stuff like that but didn’t really like it. So the day before he announced his signing I registered 5 different Lebron James domains. Two of them were general and 3 were team specific (Heat, Bulls, Knicks).

Since we didn’t really know where he was going I decided to start with one of the generic domains and went with http://www.lebron-jersey.com (totally ugly site). I know you are probably freaking out because of the hypen but in all honesty I don’t really mind them. Some of my best domains are hyphenated.  And especially with quick hitters like this I really don’t mind.

Also, because we didn’t know where he was going I couldn’t really put up any jerseys for sale yet. So I set up this page: http://lebron-jersey.com/what-jersey-will-lebron-wear/ and started collecting email addresses through my Aweber account so I could notify people as soon as the jerseys went on sale (which was pretty much right after the announcement was made).  I bought some PPC traffic fairly cheap (less than 20 cents a click) for keywords like “lebron james jerseys”, “lebron james heat jerseys”, “lebron james knicks jerseys”, “lebron james bulls”, and so on.  Probably about 20-25 keywords total.  I also made the mistake of bidding on “lebron james” but more on that in a minute.

I had it all set up and running about 3PM and was watching the stats fairly closely but then had to run out for a couple hours and I got back home at 8 PM after Lebron had made his announcement.  I looked at all the stats and saw some suprises.

• Total clicks:  1,578 (in just a few hours). 1,413 of those were for the keyword “lebron james”
• Signups to be notified about the jerseys:  29

So we are looking at a 1.8% signup rate.  Not very good at all. I was expecting closer to 10%

When I got home I sent out a couple emails with links where people could buy the jerseys. 16 of the 29 people opened the email and 14 of them clicked on the links.  Out of 1578 people who came to my site only 14 ended up on the merchant.

And after all that I think I saw 3 sales for a whopping commission total of $17.49.  All in all I lost about $350-400 on this. Yeah, there will be some other sales that come in later but for now it is a pretty big failure.

The Verdict: Failure.

Why did this fail? What did I learn?

1. “Lebron James” is way too broad of a keyword.  I thought the ad would keep people who were just looking for news or info about his decision program from clicking but that wasn’t the case.  So that was a bunch of wasted money.
2. Since there were 4 teams involved (Heat, Knicks, Bulls, Cavaliers) maybe only 25% of the people searching for Lebron James jerseys were actually Heat fans who would be the main ones buying a jersey.  That is some more wasted traffic.
3. The jerseys are only available for pre-order and they won’t ship out for at least another week. I think when people see that they would just rather go down to the store (especially if they live in Miami) and get one.
4. I just bid too high.  Should have kept all my bids at .10 and not worried about the “minimum first page bid”.
5. I don’t think people want to sign up to receive information on where to buy something like a jersey. There are some products where that can work but I don’t think this is the market for that sort of thing.

Oh well, I learned from my mistake on this one. I will be much more careful in the future.

Test 2: Lebron James Jerseys #2

Time for the second Lebron James experiment.

This time since I knew Lebron James was with the Miami Heat I set up http://www.lebronjamesheatjerseys.com . Once again it is a pretty simple site with just links to some of the Lebron James jerseys that are available.

Instead of Adwords I decided to try Facebook Ads with this one. I have only done a few Facebook ads and haven’t really spent much time on them but I figured it was a good way to target Miami Heat fans, Lebron James fans, and people who live in the Miami area.  So I set up my ad and it got approved in just a couple minutes.  Soon the stats on Facebook were showing I was getting clicks but I was looking at my access logs and not seeing any traffic.  Then I realized I put in the wrong URL in my ad so a competitor got 40 free clicks. YOU’RE WELCOME!!! 

I got the ad fixed and I was seeing a fairly decent CTR (at least in my limited experience with Facebook ads). 593,396 impressions and 437 clicks for a CTR of .074%.  CPC of 18 cents.  It also turns out that 34% of the people who visited this site clicked on at least one of the links so that means people are going to the merchant which is good.

You can see a heatmap of where people clicked on the site here:

It turned out that most clicks (21%) were on the “I don’t want to read, just take me to the jerseys!” link near the top of the page. That was going to another site of mine but I decided to send it straight to the merchant and see what happens. 

So far the facebook traffic has resulted in zero sales. At least this was only a $70 lesson or so. 

What I learned:

1. People don’t really care to read, they just want to buy when it comes to something like this. I think that is why that “I don’t want to read” link was the most clicked on. Maybe I need to try some links like this on some other sites and see how they convert and how the clicks shake out.
2. People don’t want to order a jersey today that won’t ship for at least a week to ten days. I will probably shut down the traffic until the jerseys are actually ready for sale.

Test #3: Stephen Strasburg Jerseys

Once again, I decided to take a hot market and build a site around it.  When Stephen Strasburg debuted a few weeks back I set up http://www.stephenstrasburgjerseys.com.  This is a more complete site than the other two and I spent quite a bit more time on it so I think it looks pretty decent.

Anyway, I got the site up and running, worked a bit of magic, and within a couple days I ranked #1 for “Stephen Strasburg jerseys” on Google. In the last couple days it dropped to #2 but that is still good enough for me.

I have been adding content fairly regularly and updating pages when needed. Every few days I try to add in any new products that are out there also and I plan to keep this site updated fairly regularly through the baseball season.

As of today this site has received around 1000 visitors from the search engines and other direct links. That traffic has resulted in 17 sales (I think a 1.7% conversion for a site like this is pretty solid) but the main problem is people aren’t buying jerseys. There has only been one sale on an authentic jersy (retail: $234.99) and most of the sales are for the player t-shirts which are $19.99-$22.99.  So the revenue isn’t anything to blow you away. To date this site has made $52.  But that is only in one month. If it can stay around that for the next few months and then do what it should around Christmas I think it will be worth the time to post an update every week or so. And it gives me a chance to write about baseball so that is a plus.

What did I learn

1. Comparing this site to the Lebron James sites it seems worth it to spend a couple extra hours making it a somewhat “real” site
2. Baseball fans don’t buy jerseys as readily as NFL fans. The shirts are much more popular.
3. I need to find some replica jerseys and feature them more on the site. $99.99 for a replica is probably more attractive than $250 for an authentic.
4. Small, targeted sites like this can work. There are hundreds of players I could do this for. 100 sites making $50 a month? Not too bad. 500 sites pulling in that much? Nice.

So there you have it.  2 somewhat failed experiments and 1 mild success. But I will take what I learned from the failures, apply it, and move forward. I know we all have failures and in most ways I welcome failure because I can learn from them and that will make the successes that much bigger. Also a lot of the failure on these two was just my lack of attention to detail and laziness, two things I can overcome. I didn’t necessarily fail because of a lack of knowledge or anything like that.

And I am not giving up on Lebron James jerseys yet either. In a couple months those sites could be drawing some good traffic and bringing in some pretty good money so eventually I am optimistic I can put them into the success category.

Do you have any similar stories to tell? Did you learn anything from my 1700+ words of rambling? Leave a comment and let me know.

Time for another update. When we last spoke I was down 8.2 pounds to 210 so I still had 11.8 pounds to go to reach my goal of 198.2 and 20 pounds lost.

Last week was a bit of a setback. I spent the week at a camp with 65 high school and jr highers from my church. These camps aren’t condusive to good eating so it was a week of not so heatlhy food. I kept my portions at the meals under control for the most part (i.e. one hamburger instead of 2 hamburgers and a giant hot dog, 3 tacos instead of 6 tacos, etc.) but there was more snacking than I would have liked. But my activity level was pretty high and I did a fair amount of running around so it wasn’t a total disaster. By the end of the week when I got home I was up to 214.

Time to get back to eating well. I made it through the 4th of July without any gluttonous indulgences and over the past few days the scale has been showing smaller and smaller numbers which is good to see. The extra pounds I put on last week quickly went away.

So I step on the scale this morning and I saw the smallest number yet: 207.8.  That is a total loss of 10.4 and I still have 40 days or so to go. I don’t think it will be too hard to drop another 10 pounds if I keep eating well and walking or running 10-15 miles a week.

Total Weight Loss:  10.4

Anyone else have any updates? Post a comment and let me know.

It has been two and a half weeks and I figured it is time to give an update on the weight loss.  If I were a betting man I would have bet that I would have given up by now. But that isn’t the case!

As far as food goes I have been doing pretty well. There have been a couple indulgences here and there (6 pieces of fried chicken and 3 biscuits wolfed down in about 20 minutes is probably at the top of that list) but even with graduation parties, picnics, fathers day meat feasts and other stuff like that I have managed to do a pretty good job of keeping the junk food away.

I think in those two and a half weeks I have logged about 12 miles or so walking/running, 3 games of softball, a couple rounds of golf (BTW, during a recent round of golf I walked 6.16 miles. I thought it would be closer to 4 miles) and a couple other various activities. I think I still need to do a better job of walking and running though. I said I wanted 15 or so miles a week. That might be a bit too ambitious but even 10 miles a week would be a good start.

So now for the weight total: My starting weight was 218.2.  When I weighed myself this morning the scale showed 210. So in about two weeks I have dropped 8.2 pounds. I am pretty happy with that overall.  If I keep eating well and start running a bit more I hope I can repeat that for the next few weeks and be down to 198.2 by Affiliate Summit East.

Total weight loss for me so far: 8.2 pounds.

I also have a few people joining me in this quest so lets hear how you are doing in the comments below. Also, if you want to join up you can read my previous post to see some of the details and join me in raising some money for Affiliate Marketers Give Back. Remember people, I will give $2 per pound lost for anyone that wants to join me. So far I have Vinny, Eric, Kate, and Victor along for the ride. Join up and help me raise more money for charity. Just let me know how much you plan to lose and keep me updated on your progress.

As I mentioned in a tweet yesterday my plan is to lose 20 pounds by Affiliate Summit East which starts August 15th.  That gives me 67 days.  Actually I started last Saturday so that gives me a couple more but all in all it isn’t a ton of time so it is time to get started.

Here is my plan:

1.  More exercise - For the next couple weeks I want to try to log 15-20 miles walking/running. If I see some good weight loss from that I will keep it going. If not I will probably add in some other sort of workout. Either way I will probably add in one or two weight workouts each week just to make sure I lose fat and not muscle.

2.  Eat better - I love burgers. I love chicken wings. I love pizza. I love bacon.  I love Reese’s Cups.  Pretty much if it is bad for you I can eat a ton of it. But that is gonna start to change. I will do my best to try and limit myself to one fast food meal a week. I want to try and get more fruits and vegetables in also. Generally speaking I love fruit but I just don’t eat enough of it.  No more cake and ice cream. Only 1 cookie instead of 6. 

Also I am gonna try to make the portions smaller. Instead of the 44 oz steak I will try a 12 oz one. Instead of a double cheeseburger I will go with a single (or even a grilled chicken sandwich). Instead of eating 2 pounds of chicken wings I will cut back to maybe a half pound. And also I will try to get rid of the fries. Basically I will try to just eat reasonable portions. Not necessarily the serving sizes listed on packages (have you seen how little 3/4 of a cup of Capt’n Crunch is???)

And better snacks. Instead of sitting down and eating a half bag of Doritos I will eat some carrots. Instead of a big plate of cheese and crackers I will eat an apple.  And I will stop considering a Quarter Pounder a snack (was I wrong to think of that as a snack? I mean, come on… I didn’t even have fries with it).

3.  Drink better - For the most part I usually down 4-6 cans of soda a day and maybe have 2 glasses of water.  That will change. I am gonna do my best to limit myself to one can of regular soda per day. For the most part I hate diet soda but diet Mt. Dew isn’t terrible so I might have a couple of those.  But gone are the Super Big Gulps. Also I will try to drink more water. And taking a cue from a friend of mine try drinking more tea.

So that is my basic plan. Nothing earth shattering. I don’t want to call it a diet or anything but I think it might be time to start eating a bit better. When I started last Saturday I was 218.2 so I need to get to 198.2 to meet my goal.

Does anyone want to join me in this challenge? You don’t have to commit to 20 pounds or anything either. It could be 10, it could be 5.  But if you are interested in losing weight alongside me just leave a comment below. Not enough motivation?  OK, how about this: For every pound lost by the people who comment below I will donate $2 to Affiliate Marketers Give Back.  (and just so I don’t go broke I will cap my donation at $500)  Just leave a comment below and let me know you want to join me and let me know how much you would like to lose. I will post weekly updates on my progress and you can just leave your progress in the comments.

So leave a comment below and join me in losing 20 pounds before Affiliate Summit.

The Advertising Tax Hurts Affiliates

I haven’t said much about the advertising tax on this blog but I figured it is time I mentioned it. There are plenty of other people who know much more than I do about it but here is a quick video I put together explaining how this tax would be detrimental to me, to any affiliate, and to the states that try to pass this tax:

As an active member of the affiliate marketing community, I am opposed to any state legislation that would attempt to use affiliates to establish nexus for out-of state merchants.

Also the Performance Marketing Association put out this unified message that I totally agree with that will be able to state things better than I can:

I depend on my relationships with many out-of-state merchants for my livelihood. I put their advertisements on my website and earn a commission when someone clicks on that link to make a purchase or registers with that merchant. I am not an employee of any of these companies. I do not collect any money. I do not make the transaction. And I do not ship any goods. I simply advertise these offers to consumers for merchants.

This type of business model does not meet the definition of nexus.  If bills like this pass in my state, many retailers will terminate their relationships with me and I will lose a large percentage of my income. That will impact my ability to provide for my family. I t will also impact the levels of income tax I pay to the state.

In fact, a handful of states that have passed legislation of this type (such as Rhode Island) have publically admitted that the states never realized the projected revenue and lost many small businesses in the process.

I want the affiliate marketing space to continue to thrive and grow. These types of laws will put small businesses, like mine, out of business.

So please do what you can to fight this. I will do my best to learn more about this, learn how I can better fight this, and how I can support those who are fighting for us daily.

Simple answer? Yes, The Video Boss is worth the price ($1997 if you are curious).  Want more of an explaination?  Read on…

Let me start out by saying a couple things:

1.  I HATE the sales letters, internet “gurus”, all the terrible training programs that seems to come out every week, and all that crap. I have hated them for years and when I see one I want to puke. For the most part they are pretty bad. Of course there are some good ones out there from time to time but I could probably easily say that over 90% of them are pretty worthless.

2.  I only would recommend one of these products to someone if I knew the people behind it and saw it as something I would actually use.

With that said hopefully you will believe me when I say this:  Based on the preliminary videos I have watched, The Video Boss is pretty dang awesome. What is the Video Boss? It is a new video coaching program put out by Andy Jenkins. I am almost positive I met Andy a few years ago at a conference a few years ago. It was a “sales letter” conference with a bunch of the top “gurus” and such pitching their products. When I see stuff like this my BS detector usually goes crazy but it didn’t with Andy.  This guy really knows his stuff when it comes to video, video production, and marketing.

I already do some video stuff.  I film a quasi-weekly video for my football jersey site, I do some videos to promote some of my other sites, I do some videos for some local companies, etc.  So I know enough about video to kind of understand it. And I do plan to make more posts on how I use video. By no means am I an expert but I do know enough to be able to tell if a video training program is good or a piece of junk.  Hopefully when I tell you Video Boss is worth the money you will believe me. Yeah it does cost $1997 (Or just 6 easy payments of $388!!!) but based on what I have seen with the videos I have done and after seeing even the pre-release videos Andy has done I can confidently say that if you take the information Andy gives,  learn what he is saying, apply what he is teaching, and go out and make your videos you will make that money back.  I can’t guarantee that of course. It is mostly up to you and the amount of effort you put forth.

This really isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme.  You will have to put in a lot of time learning and producing videos. But don’t be scared by videos. They really aren’t as hard as they seem. With a $100 Flip camera and some other cheap equipment you can produce some great videos. Lots of people get nervous about being on camera, speaking in public, etc. but you don’t really need even need to be on camera.

I can’t go over every thing contained in this course here (because there is really a lot of info) but here are some of the key modules:

Module 1: Video Universe - Covers development, script writing, post production, distribution, and other general video stuff

Module 2: Video Laboratory - Real world experience, how to create slides, voice overs, and more practical “how to build your video” type stuff.

Module 3:  Live Video Production - Lighting, how to build a home studio, how to film live videos, etc.

Module 4: Edit Like A Pro - Teaches you editing techniques. Over 35 different chapters in this module.

Module 5: Traffic Boss - Covers Video SEO, Link building, Social media, and other stuff like that to actually start making money off your videos.

Plus a bunch of bonus modules.

Here is what I would suggest you do:  Go check out the first 3 videos Andy released. Just watching those 3 videos will give you plenty of info to get started with videos.  If you decide you like what he is teaching buy the course to learn a lot more.  If you watch those videos and realize that video isn’t for you?  Don’t buy!  Don’t waste your money on something you won’t use.

So go check out Traffic Boss and let me know what you think. 

*** Disclaimer*** the links above ARE affiliate links. If you click on them and buy something I will make money.  If you don’t want an affiliate link you can just click here but come on people. I have a wedding to pay for soon. Help me out here.  This isn’t a paid post or nobody put me up to reviewing this product but if you do decide to buy you can help me out by clicking on one of the links above. *** End Disclaimer***

Also if you ever do anything with video you should also check out Traffic Geyser. In Module 5 of Traffic Boss Mike Koenigs (one of the co-founders of Traffic Geyser) talks about video distribution and stuff like that. This guy really does know his stuff. And my company is one of the other partners in Traffic Geyser also so I pretty much have to tell you how great it is.  But hopefully you believe me when I honestly tell you it is a pretty good program with a TON of features in it. So check it out and I would also love to hear what you think about it.

I really hope this post doesn’t come off too salesy or anything. I really do hate stuff like that. I rarely will recommend a product like Traffic Boss unless I really think it is good and from what I have seen so far I think Traffic Boss will be very good. But if you would like to never see a product review or recommendation like this again from me please leave a comment and let me know. I don’t want anyone to think that I am just promoting every product out there just to make money (although I am realizing how expensive weddings can be so you could just buy Traffic Boss and help me out a bit.)

Of course you want to hear my opinions on some recent happenings in the world of affiliate marketing.

Since I don’t really want to take the time to focus on one specific topic I think I will just briefly comment on some of the stuff happening in the industry over the past couple weeks.  Let’s jump right in:

The “affiliate tax” hearings in Colorado: I will readily admit I don’t know anywhere near enough about this tax issue.  I have been a total slacker in doing my research, writing to my state legislators, and all in all getting involved on this issue. Luckily there are some great people like Jen Goode, Jennine Crooks, and others that took up the fight in Colorado. It was a close vote and for a while it looked like the law could pass but through the hard work of those ladies and hundreds of others the bill was passed but it didn’t include a tax on affiliates.

So if (more likely when) this becomes an issue in Washington I will definitely be calling on my friends for help and information in fighting this issue.  If you want to read more about what happened there are many more people who know much more than I do: 
http://www.jgoode.com/things-i-learned-from-battling-the-government/
http://affbook.com/what-really-happened-in-colorado/
and http://www.performancemarketingassociation.com/blog/2010/02/08/colorado-advertising-tax-is-dead/ are good places to start. Thank you all for your hard work!

Affiliate Summit West is moving from the Rio to the Wynn!

http://missyward.com/2010/02/08/affiliate-summit-west-2011-january-9-11-at-the-wynn-las-vegas/
http://www.affiliatesummit.com/2010/02/08/affiliate-summit-west-2011-at-the-wynn-las-vegas-%e2%80%93-save-the-date/ 

I gotta say, this is one of the best announcements I have heard lately. I for one hated the Rio. I love Affiliate Summit, I love Shawn and Missy, but the Rio pretty much sucked. The walk to get back to the conference was like walking down an endless hallway in an Escher drawing. The rooms were nothing special. The casino was pretty lame. The restaurants (other than the 50 cent wings at the All American Grill) were pretty lame. The Wynn is a HUGE upgrade from the Rio and the rooms probably won’t be that much more. Also since it is on the strip there are a ton more good lodging options for attendees. This last Summit I stayed at the Palazzo and having the conference at the Wynn could have saved me a couple hundred in cab fares.

Also since it is the 9th-11th that means I will once again be in Vegas on my birthday. So keep that in mind for next year.

Legacy Week from Legacy Learning Systems: For the second time in the past year Matt McWilliams ran the Legacy Week promotion. http://www.legacyaffiliateblog.com/bonuses/legacy-week-final-398  All in all they paid out just over $2300 in bonuses. This is just one of the reasons Matt won the Affiliate Manager of the Year Pinnacle Award.

On the Both Sides of the Tracks podcast a couple weeks ago Jason and Eric were talking about running contests and this Legacy Week promotion was a perfect example of one that works. In my mind an affiliate contest should have three main goals: Recruit new affiliates, encourage existing affiliates to get off their butt, and reward performing affiliates. With the 6 different incentives Matt used I think he accomplished all three.

I for one already work with Legacy and I sell a few ballroom dancing courses a month. Nothing huge. But when I saw the triple commissions on the painting course for the week I decided to give it a shot. So throughout the week I think I ended up selling 10 painting courses. Without the triple commissions I might not have tested it out but now I see that it converts better than the ballroom dancing and I will definitely be promoting that more in the future. So because of the bonuses I was able to find another program I could make money with.  And I know a couple affiliates who tried out Legacy for the first time.  Well done Matt.

Google Buzz launches:  What is Google Buzz? Kind of like Twitter but different. Kind of like Facebook but different.  Basically it is another “social media” type site that pulls in content from your profiles on Twitter, Youtube, Picasa, Youtube, and other sites. The thing I like about it is that it is right there when I go check Gmail so it isn’t really another social site I need to think about going and visiting. I don’t know if it will hurt Twitter that much but I really do like the threaded discussions.

The Saints Win the Super Bowl!!! Well, this doesn’t really have a ton to do with affiliate marketing but it does give affiliates a bunch of new stuff to promote. Within a couple hours of the game concluding I put up Saints Championship Gear and today I finished it off by adding in over 300 products from a datafeed. Hot markets like this are always good ones to jump on. It doesn’t have to be sports though. Maybe you want to somehow capitalize on an oscar winning movie or some merchant or product mentioned on Oprah. There isn’t necessarily a ton of long term potential for stuff like this but I do still see some sales now and then from the Phillies World Series win a couple years ago and the Steelers Super Bowl last year.

The Video Boss: Don’t want to say too much as I might keep this for a longer blog post but I am very impressed so far. I usually hate this type of stuff but Andy Jenkins knows his stuff and his new Video Boss videos are pretty awesome. Can’t wait to see the final product.

I think that is all for now. It seems like I am missing something. Was there something you would have liked to see me talk about? Leave a comment below and let me know.

It finally happened. You read the title right. Joe is engaged! Well, to avoid doing the rest of this post in third person I will rephrase:  I AM ENGAGED!!!

So who is the unfortunate victim?  Her name is Kate. She is originally from Columbus, OH but she moved to Spokane, WA just over 4 years ago. I have been friends with her sister and brother in law for a number of years now so I have kind of know her for most of that time but I really met her a bit over 2 years ago when she started working in the youth ministry with me at my church.  Apparently she started liking me almost immediatly but being the bonehead I am I wasn’t too aware of that for probably a year or so.

Let me back up a bit and give you a bit of my history with the ladies… Basically there is very little.  I was never the type of person who wanted to date someone just for the sake of dating them. If I ever dated someone I wanted there to be a VERY strong chance it would end up in marriage.  So because of that I never had a girlfriend of any sorts and had maybe been on 1 or 2 dates my whole life.  I had many people recommend many different awesome girls over the years to me and push me to ask them out but I never felt right about doing it. I would pray about it and God would end up telling me no. This really frustrated a lot of different people over the years but I stuck to my guns.

There were a couple girls I did ask out at one time or another but I got shut down there. It did kind of suck in some ways but it was also encouraging because I knew that if God didn’t want me with those girls he had someone better out there for me. And that made me very excited. So I kept waiting.

It was probably about a year ago that I started noticing Kate more. We would hang out in groups, see each other at church and got to know each other more and more. 2 winters ago I remember following her home after a bad snowstorm and I think I helped push her car out of the snow about 8 times during that trip. Then a year ago at Christmas we had another bad snowstorm and I had to make 3 different trips to the airport with her since I had a 4 wheel drive.

months went on and we started talking more and more.  I think around March 14th I texted her bragging about the awesome grilled lamb with pomegranate molasses I made and that started our semi-regular texting conversations. But I was an idiot. I would text her and then not text for two weeks or so. It wasn’t anything I was doing on purpose but apparently she noticed that.  Thinking back I feel like a real dork for that but oh well, we live and learn.

Around August or so I realized that I either needed to ask Kate out or tell her that it wasn’t gonna work out with us. I spent a lot of time praying and talking to other people and came to the conclusion that I really did want to start dating her. After that it only took about 2 more months for me to finally man up and take her out to dinner (I think it was November 2nd or so). I was helping her set up a blog so she was over at my house and we started talking and it was dinner time so I said “Do you want to go get some dinner?” and of course she said yes. Then the following Wednesday I asked her out on a “real” date.

Over Thanksgiving weekend we eneded up spending a lot of time together, stayed up way too late talking, watched some football, and all in all had a great time together. After this I pretty much knew than an engagement was necessary.

Kate is everything I have been looking for in a wife. When I look at the passages in the Bible describing a Godly woman, wife, and mother she either fits them perfectly or she is striving to fit them perfectly. She is what I have been waiting for for the past 37 years (well, I guess I wasn’t really waiting when I was a kid so lets say the past 19 years or so).  I am truely blessed that God has given me such a great gift.

So I started looking around for a ring. I wasn’t super urgent at this time so I would just pop into jewelry stores when I was driving by to see what they had. I would look online for diamonds and see what different kinds of settings there were. I pretty much figured out what I wanted but now there was just one more hurdle: I had to meet her parents and family.

Kate is the second oldest of 11 children so her family is quite big. This past weekend we finally got a chance to fly out to Columbus to meet her parents and her 6 brothers and sisters who are still at home. Her older sister Melissa lives here in Spokane and I have know her for a few years, her two oldest brothers Austin and Tyler live in South Carolina, and her next oldest sister Claire lives in England although she is moving here soon.  So we wake up early and fly to Columbus and a big van pulls up containing her parents Brian and Judy and her 6 siblings Rose, Beau, Charlotte, Cole, Sophie, and Graham.

I know her mom looks like she is disapproving but she really isn't

We had a great weekend visiting them that was filled with driving, hiking, games, Wii, talking, and LOTS of food. Sunday morning her dad knocks on my door and says “Wake up, lets go to Waffle House” and we have “the talk”. Thankfully he approves and is happy for his daughter and says if I can live up to his other son-in-law I am in good shape so that is good. Thanks to Isaiah for setting the bar low.

And all that brings us to now. This past Thursday I stopped by the jeweler and picked up the ring. The only guidelines Kate gave me was she wanted something sparkley so I bought something really sparkley. On Saturday I gave her the ring and asked her to be my wife and spend the rest of our lives together. It wasn’t anything fancy or elaborate because I didn’t really want the event to overshadow the meaning. Also I was pretty sure she already knew it was coming that day so I really had no chance to suprise her. But I am fine with that because she said YES!  When I look back at my life this day will be right up near the top of my favorite days ever.

Sorry guys, I took an awesome woman off the market.  You can try to find someone that matches up to Kate but I don’t think you be able to come close. And all the single ladies? You can now breathe a sigh of relief because you won’t have to worry that you will end up stuck with me out of desperation in a few years.

So that is about it. I am engaged. You can’t believe how excited I am to be able to say those words. This has been a day I have looked forward to for years and it is better than I ever thought it could be. Thank you to my parents and friends who have been praying for me for years, thank you to Kate for putting up with me and accepting me with all my faults, and thank you to God for giving me such a wonderful blessing in Kate. 

Quick update: The announced the engagement at my church Sunday morning.  I know dozens of people who have been praying for me over the years and lots that have been praying for Kate and I specifically. Here is a video of the announcement: Joe and Kate’s Engagement Announcement. It was so awesome to see so many people happy for both of us. I was a real blessing to be there and feel that loved from so many people. I have been at that church for dozens and dozens of engagement announcements and always imagined what mine would be like. It was by far the loudest cheer I have ever heard for one of them and I was blown away. And we gave out Ring Pops to everyone to celebrate. Such an awesome weekend!

As far as a wedding date we are still trying to figure that out. We have some scheduling issues at our church and some logistical issues getting all of Kate’s family here but we should be able to set a firm date in the next couple weeks. Our ideal plan would be some time in April but we will see what happens.

Thank you all again for your love and support. Kate and I couldn’t do this without you.

After sleeping for 12 hours and catching up on emails, tweets, etc. I think I am ready to write my recap of Affiliate Summit West 2010. I was a huge slacker taking pictures so you will have to check out other recaps for those. Overall it was a great trip and a HUGE thanks goes out to Missy Ward and Shawn Collins and the rest of their team for putting it all together.

Also for me 90-95% of these conferences is about the people. Personally I don’t usually get a ton out of the sessions or the exhibit hall or stuff like that. The reason I go is to hang out with old friends, make new friends, and connect with people. I do attend a few sessions here and there and take a walk or two through the exhibit hall but they could take that stuff away and I would still go to these conferences.

So lets get started.

Friday, Jan 15th

I hop on a plane and start the “I hope a fat guy doesn’t sit next to me” dance. Sure enough who sits next to me??? Fat guy. So I spend the 2+ hour flight sitting on 3/4ths of my seat while the guy takes up the other 1/4th. Oh well, at least it isn’t that long of a flight.

I get to my hotel room (I stayed at the Palazzo this time) and there is a basket with a bottle of champagne and some other stuff with a birthday card. Very nice. The Palazzo earned my repeat business. Very nice rooms and very good service. After I get settled I head down to play some blackjack before heading over to the Rio to see what’s happening and end up winning $100.  Pretty good start to the trip.

I get to the Rio and hit up the iBar and find a bunch of friends others so I sit with them for a bit. Then a few of us head over to check out Aria and City Center to see what it is all about. Overall the place is pretty amazing. We walk around, check out some of the restaurants and bars, and then head back to the Rio.

At this point I am starving so Todd Farmer and I head to the All American Grill for some 20 cent wings. Not bad at all.

Back to the iBar to wait for other people to show up and and we hang for a bit but I decide to call it a night around 11 or so. Got an early morning tomorrow. I get back to my hotel, climb in bed and then notice that Goodfellas is on TV. How can I sleep when that is on? So that sucks me in for a couple more hours.

Saturday, January 16th

Time for some golf!!! I wake up at 6:30 and head over to the Rio to meet up with my normal foursome to go play some golf. We take a limo over to the Cascatas golf course and get ready for 36 holes of fun. Overall this course is awesome. I loved the layout of the holes, some good risk/reward shots, nice terrain changes, and it is in great shape overall. The greens however are just downright evil. Any two putt is awesome on these greens. They are fast and there is really no good place to putt from. We finish up right at dark and head back to the Rio.

I had a dinner meeting so I run back to my hotel to drop off my clubs and get freshened up a bit and then back to the Rio to meet some friends for dinner at the All American Grill. More wings and a salad. Great time with a bunch of my close friends in this industry. I am constantly amazed how many awesome friends I have in the affiliate marketing world. Every time I get together with them we have a great time.

I make an apperance at the AWB meetup really quick and then head up to get ready for the poker tournament. There were 77 players and over $15,000 raised for breast cancer charities. I had a great time but in the end I just wasn’t getting many cards so I was running low on chips. I ended up finishing 19th which isn’t too bad. Had a great time overall.

Time to head over to McFadden’s to catch the end of Carolyn Tang’s bachlorette party. So I hang out there for about an hour and then a group of us head over to the Imperial Palace to play some blackjack with the Dealertainers. These are celebrity impersonator dealers who rotate through dealing and performing. There are about 7 of us in the group.  Our dealers were pregnant Mariah Carey, Rhianna, one of the Blues Brothers, and someone else I seem to be forgetting. Mariah and Rhianna were good to us but Elwood Blues killed us at the end. Good times though. I think we were there for over 2 hours. It is now 4 AM and time for bed.

Sunday, January 17th

Time for the conference to actually start. I get there around 10:30 and get checked in and meet up with my mentee Bart. We talk for a while and I kind of give him a lay of the land and then head down for some of the sessions. I drug my dad along on this trip just so he could be introduced to my crowd of internet marketing people.  He does internet marketing also but his crowd and my crowd generally don’t cross over too much.  But we head to a couple of the sessions. We meet up with a couple of the guys from Keyword Spy and talk some business over lunch. My dad goes to talk to them more and I head down to walk through the meet market and go to the video session.

The video session was pretty good with Jeremy Palmer and Rosalind Gardner giving some good tips on how to get started with video marketing. This is a hugly under utilized area for affiliate marketers.

At 6:30 I go to the Mentor Meetup and unfortunately my mentee had some other meeting so he couldn’t go but I did get a chance to have a good talk with a couple who is new to the industry. I gave them some tips to get started and hopefully pointed them in a good direction. It is tough sometimes when there is so many ways to approach affiliate marketing and it can be hard to tell people where to get started.

Time for the Shareasale party. This year there was ice cream, pizza, and a bunch of other snacks. For entertainment they had karaoke, a dance floor, some gaming tables, a bouncy castle, some racing games, and some Wiis. It was a pretty chilled time and it was fun to connect with people. My dad swung by the party at about 10 or so and we hung outside with Todd Farmer, Rosalind Gardner, Lisa Picarelle, and a few other people for a while before heading to the next event.

Strike Out Breast Cancer Midnight Bowling Fundraiser: This was put on by GTOmanagement.com, Bowlingshirt.com, and TFAW.com. I think there were around 100 people or so signed up but not all of them showed. Overall I think there was over $3000 raised for breast cancer. I was on a team with my dad, Drew Bennet from benspark.com, and his wife Allison. We have a great time and end up bowling until about 2:00. Time for bed so I head back to the Palazzo. 

Monday, January 18th

Time to wake up for the keynote by Dr. Robert Cialdini. I find it amusing that on his slides it says “Copyright 2003-2005  Newinformation.com”. If it is copyright that long ago is it really new information? Anyway, he spoke about principles of influence and how you can influence people to take an action in tough economic times. Overall it was very good and I have some ideas I want to eventually implement.

As I am walking down the hall to my next session Brian Littleton from Shareasale.com stops me and askes me to do an interview for them. Without hesitation I agree. In the interview I talk about why I like Shareasale so much and mostly it comes down to the people that are there. It is one of the most awesome groups of people in the industry and if you don’t work with them you are crazy.

Then I make it in time for Scott Jangro’s datafeed session. Overall it is good and the consensus seems to be that about 30% of datafeeds out there are good and 70% need work of some sort. I use datafeeds for many of my sites and find that to be true. Rarely do I get a feed I don’t have to tweak or reformat in some way to work with what I want to do.

I meet up with Bart, my mentee, and I walk through the exhibit hall and introduce him to a bunch of different people I would recommend working with. Once again I hope I am pointing Bart in the right direction.

By this point I am really dragging so I head back to my hotel for a quick nap before the next event. I get about an hour nap in and end up more tired than when I started. I head down to NYNY to the ESPN Zone to meet up with the GTO crew and Fanduel.com. We have some appetizers and talk about the Fanduel program for a while.  I sit at a table with John Carcutt, Jason Rubacky, and Stephanie Lichtenstein. We have a good time and then I head up to play some of the games at the ESPN Zone. I rock the basketball and football games and then head back to the Rio for the Trivia Tweetup.

I am on Team 4 and while we might have had a rough start we make a game of it and come pretty close to winning but we kept getting some tough questions at the wrong time. I then head to the next GTO event which is up at McFadden’s for the MakeBeer.net program. They have one of those games with a punching bag where you see how hard you can hit so we hang around that for a while. Brian rocks the dragon kick, Scott is the head butt master, and we use Steph as a battering ram. Brett Elias and I take turns trading the lead as the hardest puncher but on my last punch I end up with a perfect shot and get an 895 to take the crown. Time to move on.

We hop in a limo and head over to XS at the Encore to a party put on by Paresh of OPMPros.com. Awesome group of people here.  We meet up with a couple other people at the club and I end up there until about 4:30 when I decide to call it a night. I have been to quite a few of the Vegas clubs and this is one of my favorites. It is huge, there is a nice outdoor area, and the service is quicker than some of the others.

Tuesday, January 19th

Last day of the Summit. I wake up and head over to see the Pinnacle Awards. I put up a post a couple weeks ago giving some ficticious odds on the awards and sadly enough I only got two of my picks right. Nickycakes suprised a lot of people winning the Affiliate of the Year award and defying my 20-1 odds to come out victorious. If he can beat Eric Nagel and Kim Rowley for this award he must know his stuff. Ebay won for merchant of the year, Shoemoney won for Blogger of the year, and Angel Djambazov won for Advocate. Matt McWilliams took home the award for Affiliate Manager of the Year for his work with Legacy Learning Systems and sent Jamie Birch to 0-3 on his nominations. Scott Jangro won a much deserved Affiliate Marketing Legend award and solidified himself as one of the best people in this industry.

I hang around the conference for a bit, drop in on a couple sessions highlighted by Connie Berg calling out Chuck Hamrick for working with the devil at the coupon session. I wander around a bit, talk to some people and start saying goodbye to all my friends. I was really looking to get home but always hate to leave my friends also.

So I head to the airport and fly home. Trip over.

I think this is my 6th or 7th Affiliate Summit I have been to. It is hard for me to rank one as being better than another since they are always good and different. This one had some great aspects to it but so have all the others. I know most of the people reading this will already be making plans for Affiliate Summit East 2010 but if you aren’t planning on going you really should.

What are some of your favorite memories of this Summit? Who were some of the people you got to meet? Leave a comment and let me know.