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.

The finalists for the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards have been announced and it looks like a very good crop of contenders this year. Some of these people I know very well, some I have only briefly met, and some I have heard of but that is about it. I sent in my nominations a couple months ago and it looks like 3 out of my 6 nominations made the cut.

So just for fun I thought I would handicap the finalist and give you some odds on who should win. I will be breaking down the competiton, letting you know what I know about the different contenders and I will also give you my picks and let you know who I think should take the awards. Also just so you know I have no say whatsoever in who wins. The people who choose that are much more qualified than me.  And remember, these picks are for entertainment purposes only. Please, no wagering:

Affiliate Of The Year

Nicholas Koscianski - I don’t know too much about Nickycakes. I have read his blog a few times but as far as I know I have never met him. Just from looking at his blog it looks like he does a lot of CPA stuff but other than that he is kind of a wild card in this contest. I do really like his Newbie Guide on his blog and think it is a pretty good place to start. The guide gives a good introduction into CPA and PPC marketing and will give someone just getting into the industry a good place to start.

Odds on winning? I think Nicholas is a longshot for this one. 20-1

Eric Nagel - I might have met Eric briefly before but the first time I really met him or talked to him for any length of time was at ASE09 in New York. Eric seems to strive for excellence in everything he does from his business cards to his Christmas light displays and I would assume that would transfer over to his business as well. This is Eric’s first time being a Pinnacle finalist and either the lack of post-season experience will get to him or he will rise up and show his true brilliance.

Odds on winning? Eric has a good shot here. I think the rookie has a good shot of going all the way. 3-1

Kim Rowley - Like Eric I first really met Kim at ASE09 but got to spend more time with her at the SAS ThinkTank09. She had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting next to me while I devoured 2 pounds of chicken wings and a plate of fried pickles. Kim runs many different shopping sites and also does consulting work as well. This is Kim’s second straight finals appearance for Affiliate of the Year. Will she be like the Buffalo Bills and go 4 straight without winning? Will she eventually break Jangro’s mark of 3 nominations before winning on the 4th try? Will she go 0-2 and join other people like Jamie Birch and Stephanie Harris with nothing to show for their multiple nominations? 

Odds on winning? Kim is very deserving of this award and I think would be a very good value bet at 4.5-1

So who is gonna win?  Sorry Nick. This isn’t your year. I like Eric’s chances (he was my nomination) but I think Kim will end up taking this one in a close race.

Affiliate Manager of the Year

Jamie Birch - Jamie is approaching Jangro territory with this being his third nomination and he needs a win here to avoid the dreaded 0-3. I have had the pleasure of having lunch with Jamie, visiting him in his office, and getting to know him more over the past year or so. His office is only about 45 minutes away from here so he does have the homefield advantage going in my mind at least. Jamie’s client list is very impressive and he does a great job working with his merchants and affiliate to make them both mutally successful.

Odds on winning? Jamie has the experience edge here having been to the dance before so that can only help. 3-1

Stephanie Harris - This will be Stephanie’s second straight nomination for Affiliate Manager of the Year and while I have never worked with her or really met her other than just saying hello she must be deserving if she can get to the finals two years in a row.  But since I don’t really know her it is hard for me to comment much on her chances. It is kind of like a Heisman candidate that while they might be deserving they just weren’t visable enough to the voters.

Odds on winning? I wish I could give a more educated guess on this one: 8-1

Matt McWilliams - I first met Matt at the Shareasale ThinkTank09 this year. I had exchanged some message with him before but had never met him in person. All I can say is I was VERY impressed. He is very good at what he does and knows how to help out his affiliates. I detailed him more a couple months ago in this post and he hasn’t let up since then. If I ever need anything he is very quick to get it to me. This Pinnacle Awards rookie has made a very strong showing so far.

Odds on winning? Matt has a very good chance here. I don’t think the rookie wall will bother him too much. 4-1

So who is gonna win? It is hard to ignore what Matt has done this year. Jamie has a bigger overall body of work though. I am gonna go with Matt on this one.

Exceptional Merchant

Amazon.com - Not too much to say here. They are like the Yankees in that they have a great chance to win every year and this is their 4th straight finals.

Odds on winning? Just based on their size their odds are pretty good. 2-1

Bowlingshirt.com - It is like David fighting two Goliath’s here. They are like the small market team that puts it all together and makes a run at the title. Wade, Karen, and Joel at GTO Management have done a great job with the Bowlingshirt.com affiliate program.  And they also bribed me by giving me an awesome bowling shirt and taking me bowling in NY. Bribery does wonderful things!

Odds on winning? They are a long shot here. 25-1

eBay Partner Network - If Amazon is like the Yankees then eBay is like the Red Sox. Just based on their payroll and size they are a consistant contender

Odds on winning?  Just a step behind Amazon. 3-1

So who is gonna win? You gotta take a chance if you wanna win any money. And I got a bowling shirt and bowling out of the deal. Bowlingshirt.com  pulls the upset here.

Affiliate Marketing Advocate

I am gonna be honest here. I don’t keep up on industry issues as much as I really should. Whether it is the affiliate tax issues, parasites, unethical merchants, or whatever I always seem to have the unfortunate mindset of “let someone else deal with it” or “I don’t really know enough about the issues to do anything”. So because of that I am very thankful for all three of the nominees in this category. Angel Djambazov, Karen Garcia, and Rebecca Madigan have all spent many hours working on industry issues so lame people like me don’t have to. And I am very thankful to all three of them and many others as well.

Angel is a 2 time winner but this is Karen and Rebecca’s first time in the finals. Will Angel go 3 for 3 or will one of the rookies take it? I don’t want to give odds on a category as important as this one but I will go ahead and pick a winner:  Gonna go with Karen Garcia on this one.

Best Blogger

Murray Newlands - Sorry Murray. I really know nothing about you. I have seen your picture out there, I am aware of you, I see tweets and the like but I have never really take the time to find out much more. Hopefully you don’t take it personally.

Odds on winning? I am gonna have to take these odds off the board due to my lack of information. N/A

Jeremy Schoemaker - This will be Jeremy’s second Best Blogger nomination. There are a lot of Shoemoney haters out there and a lot of people who really respect him and like what he does. Personally I like his blog and I think he shares a lot of solid information there. I have only met Jeremy briefly a couple times, mostly in passing but I have never had a bad experience dealing with him.

Odds on winning? Will politics get in the way or will the voters be objective? 4-1

Geno Prussakov - From what I can see Geno seems to be the most consistent affiliate blogger out there and his posts almost always contain great information. Geno seems to post something good every day and he never runs out of good stuff. This will be Geno’s first finals apperance but he is a seasoned veteran who shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Odds on winning? Lots of quality to support him for this award. 3-1

So who is gonna win? Sorry Murray. I wish I knew more. Sorry Jeremy. The politics and drama might hurt you here. Kind of like what happened to Micky Rourke at the Oscars last year. Gonna give this award to Geno.

Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend Award

Brad Waller - Unfortnately I will have to claim a bit of ignorance on this one again. I have heard of Brad before but have never really met him or dealt with him before. I do know he works with the PMA and from what I can see he likes cars. Other than that I don’t know a whole heck of a lot but if he is a finalist of the Legend award he must be deserving.

Odds on winning? Very tough to properly handicapp this one. 8-1

Heather Paulson - Yet another person I have never met that I probably should have by now. Heather is the president of the Paulson Management Group and they currently manage a large number of different affiliate programs. I have seen her name around for years and if she was nominated for this award she must know her stuff when it comes to affiliate management.

Odds on winning? Gonna be tough for a rookie to take this award. 5-1

Scott Jangro - 5 nominations for Scott? That alone shows you why he deserves to be on this list. He has a chance to join Brian Littleton and Angel Djambazov as the only multiple winners of the Pinnacle Award. Scott finally broke through last year with the Best Blogger award and this is his second straight year being a finalist for the Legend award. I have know Scott for years, been golfing with him many times, and there are few (if any) people in this industry I respect as much as Jangro. He knows his stuff when it comes to affiliate marketing but even more important than that he is a great guy and one of the nicest people you will meet.

Odds on winning? Easily the favorite: 1-2

So who is gonna win? Scott Jangro will take home a much deserved Legend award here.

Well, hopefully I didn’t hurt too many feelings here. For those of you I didn’t pick to win? Just use this as motivation to step your game up next year and take home some of the coveted hardware. If you made the finals you should feel very honored since there are so many people who are deserving of these awards. If you were lucky enough to make this list I will even pick up the tab for dinner or drinks at Affiliate Summit West in January. Just hit me up while we are there.

Do my picks line up with yours? You have anything to say to sway my choices? Leave a comment below and let me know.

To start out let me get this out of the way: My company is one of the partners in Traffic Geyser. There are three of us partners so yeah, this post might be a bit biased. I will try to keep it objective and not make it totally sound like a sales pitch and hopefully it will be helpful and give you some ideas of how you can use video and Traffic Geyser as part of your marketing system.

So what is Traffic Geyser? In it’s simplest form Traffic Geyser is a tool to distribute your video and other content. Traffic Geyser will take your video and submit it to a bunch of different video sites (I think around 35 right now and that is always changing), social bookmarking sites, other social media sites, it will strip out the audio and submit to podcast sites, and if you want you can have your video transcribed and turned into articles and submitted to article sites.

But that is only the start. There are a lot of other features such as custom landing page builders, Wordpress plugins, automated posting of blog content, and tons more. If you don’t have a video camera or microphone you can even just use our slideshow creator and then call in to an 800 number and record your audio over the phone. There are also dozens of training videos covering everything from keyword research to choosing a camera to properly lighting your video shoot. All in all it is a very complete marketing system.

Just to give you an example of what Traffic Geyser can do I want to show you a test I did last night. As you may or may not know I do a lot of affiliate stuff with sports related items. Jerseys, hats, shirts, etc.  This past weekend Alabama won the SEC Championship so I built a quick video yesterday showcasing some of the new Alabama SEC Championship T-shirts. I took some of the images from the merchant I work with, added in some music, recorded some audio and edited it all with Sony Vegas. I am not good at all at editing videos but it only took about 20-30 minutes to put the whole thing together.

Since this was basically just a test to show an example here I didn’t do a ton of keyword research but I wanted the video to focus on the keyword “Alabama Crimson Tide SEC Championship Shirts” and send the traffic to my site AlabamaFanGear.com.  I know that is a pretty longtail keyword but there were still almost 88,000 competing sites in Google. And also since that is a fairly new keyword that people would be searching for I couldn’t really get any potential traffic numbers.  Anyway, I built the video with that keyword in mind.

At 6:00 PM Pacific time I submitted the video using Traffic Geyser and then went out for the night. I wish I could have checked sooner but when I got home around 11:00 or so I checked and the video had two top 10 listings on Google. I am guessing they were there within an hour of submitting but either way that is pretty fast. Here is a screenshot:

I started looking at some other keywords also and found that it was listed for the following keywords also:

Alabama Crimson Tide Championship Shirts (64,000 competing pages)
Crimson Tide Championship Shirts (86,000 competing pages)
SEC Championship Shirts (148,000 competing pages)
Alabama Championship Shirts (1,020,000 competing pages)

I am sure there are more keywords it is listing for using different variations of those searches but those are a few. What I have generally seen is if you can find a keyword with less than about 300,000 competing pages there is a very good chance you can quickly get some top 10 listings in Google for your video. It doesn’t always happen but also we regularly see videos list for more competitive terms as well. It is really hard to say what “typical” is but this is just what I have seen and what we have seen from many of our users.

Now I am terrible at properly tracking everything so it is hard for me to say how much traffic and sales come from these videos but I did build a similar video when Jay Cutler signed with the Chicago Bears and within the same day I was seeing sales for Cutler Bears jerseys. Not totally sure if they were a result of the videos but I didn’t really have anything else pointing traffic to that page so I am assuming the sales were because of the traffic from the video.

So how, as an affiliate or affiliate manager or SEO or internet marketer can you use video and Traffic Geyser to help your business? Here are a couple quick ideas:

1.  Target hot markets: Since these videos generally list fairly quickly it is a good way to capitalize on hot niche markets. Example: Let’s say you are watching the Today Show and they are talking about a new book. There is a good chance there will be a spike in searches for that book so if you can crank out a quick video about the book and have it lead traffic to a simple landing page on your site with an Amazon link to that book you might be able to pick up a few quick sales.

2.  Product reviews: Take a product and do a review of it. You could just do a quick, basic review and tell them to go to your website for a more thorough review and drive traffic that way.

3.  Videos work great for local SEO stuff:  If you wanted to turn this video stuff into a small side business you could go around to local businesses and tell them you will build them some videos and get potential top 10 listings on Google. We have many users who are doing this and making thousands of dollars per month. Once again you will want to target keywords with 300,000 or so competitors when possible. You could also use this to generate leads and then just sell the leads.

4.  Merchants can produce videos for their affiliates to use:  There are VERY few merchants who have videos available for their affiliates to use for marketing purposes. There are some merchants that let their affiliates embed some video creatives but imagine if a merchant made a bunch of product review videos and let their affiliates use them to drive traffic. It is a very untapped market.

Those are just a couple ideas off the top of my head. I am sure you can come up with more ways you can use some simple videos and Traffic Geyser to increase your traffic and sales.

OK, now it is time for the sale pitch:  At noon on Tuesday, Dec. 15th (which will probably be within a few minutes of when I post this) we are doing a big relaunch promotion of Traffic Geyser called the Traffic Geyser Firepower System (I don’t think of the domains. That isn’t my department). This system will will include a year of our Platinum Elite service (which is normally $250 per month), a TON of new training videos, and access to our brand new iPhone App Builder so you can build your own iPhone apps with the push of a button. I haven’t even had a chance to play around with this yet but it could be pretty useful for a lot of people. There are also a lot of other extras we are including with this package. All this for the unbelievable price of $1997!!! There is also a 90 day money back guarantee so if you try it and don’t like it you can get your money back.

Enough of the sales pitch. Seriously though, this is a very good system if you do any sort of videos. And if you don’t do anythign with videos you should. There is huge potential out there and there are very few affiliates who are properly using video. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have about Traffic Geyser or videos in general. I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but I will do what I can to help you.

If you want to sign up and give Traffic Geyser a try you can check it out here. There are some good case study videos and stuff you should look at before you buy also that will give you an idea of what some other people are doing with Traffic Geyser. And if you do end up buying it and are going to Affiliate Summit West in Vegas in January let me know and I will take you out to dinner. Just leave a comment and let me know. How can you beat that offer?

If you do have any questions about Traffic Geyser please leave a comment and I will answer them. I generally despise sales letters and most internet marketing products but this really is a good system. So leave a comment and let me know

It is always easy to write a blog post complaining about something, pointing out a problem, spouting off on nebulous ideas, and stuff like that but since tomorrow is Thanksgiving I decided to sit back and think of some of the reasons I am thankful to be in the industry I am in so I decided to to a cheesy “This is why I am thankful for…” type post. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for being thankful and appreciating every blessing we receive. But for the most part it always can come across a bit disingenuous. Hopefully this post won’t come across that way and I hope you believe me when I say I am truly thankful for these 7 things (plus many, many more).

7.  Only have to justify a project to myself - I talk to friends in the corporate world and they almost always have to check with their bosses when they want to do something or if they have an idea they need approval from a bunch of different people, need to get the funding, and jump through a bunch of other loopholes before they can get going. If I get an idea for a project and I do my research and think it will work I only need to convince myself.  And sometimes I can have a site up, running, and making money in just a few hours. If I had to wait weeks for approval I would lose interest.

6.  There is no “right” way - Obviously there are some overall moral and ethical principles that apply but there isn’t necessarily a “right” way to be an affiliate. I just look at my list of friends in this industry and I can see dozens of different people that all do it “right” but none of their business models or processes look the same. People always are asking me “how can I make money online?” and it is a very tough question to answer since there are so many ways to do it the “right” way.  And that sort of creativity and all those options make this an exciting industry for me.

5.  Free Schedule - I really don’t like being on other people’s schedules. I like doing things when I want to do them and one of the biggest reasons I am thankful to be in this industry is I have as open of a schedule as I want. If I want to sleep until noon I have that option. If I want to work at 2 in the morning I can do that. If I need to take a long lunch I have that freedom. If a friend needs me to give them a hand moving or something like that I can just take off and do it. Generally speaking I have no real deadlines and nothing that ever really “needs” to be done (although there is always an endless supply of stuff I can do). Gotta love the freedom.

4.  Unlimited Potential - Well, it isn’t technically “unlimited” but the celing is extremely high. For the most part I am only limited by how hard I want to work. Unfortunatly I usually don’t like working too hard and the bottom line can suffer but it is nice knowing that the money is always out there and the harder I work the more I make. I am not limited by a 40 hr work week or quotas or budgets. The more I want the more I can get and that makes me very thankful.

3.  I get to work with my family - As you many or many not know I am partners in my company with my dad and brother. We all have different projects we work on and different stuff we do but most of the time I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else. Of course we have disagreements and there are some tough times. Many people will tell you to never work with family and in many cases that would be good advice but not in my case.

2.  Flexibility - One of the things I like most about this industry and that makes me very thankful is the flexibility. There are so many niches out there I can work with, so many different merchants, and so many different methods of promoting those merchants. This job never really gets boring. If I want to spend a day writing blog posts I can do that. If I want to build a datafeed site I can do that. If I want to spend a few hours doing some PPC stuff I can do that. And stuff like that really helps my short attention span.

1.  The People - If I had to pick my favorite thing about this industry and the one that makes me the most thankful it is the people. For the most part I only see my friends in this industry 2 or 3 times a year. But when I do see them it is like we have been neighbors for years. We can sit and talk, go out and have a great time, talk business, talk life, go golfing, or whatever. Of course there are some dorks in this business like anywhere else but without taking time to sit and list everyone I can probably think of 50 or so people in this industry I would consider friends. How many other industries can you say that about? If you aren’t a jerk or an idiot this is one of the most friendly and helpful groups of people I have ever been around. Whether it is other affiliates, affiliate managers, people from the networks, or other industry people they are all awesome people to be around.

I am not gonna list all of them here because if they are reading this they probably know who they are. But to all my friends out there in the affiliate industry:  THANK YOU!!!

So what makes you thankful about this business? Why do you like it so much? Leave a comment and let me know.

Over the years I have worked with dozens, maybe even hundreds of affiliate managers and they range from awesome to terrible. Some of them get it and some of them are totally missing the mark with their efforts.

So what makes a good affiliate manager?  Here are a few things I think an affiliate manager should do if they want to make their affiliate program successful and help their affiliates succeed:

1.  Be available. I need to be able to contact my AM and get a quick response. If I send them an email (at least during semi-normal work hours) I want a quick response.  Usually when I have a question or need something it is while I am in the process of building a site and if I don’t get a quick response I either lose interest in building the site or I find a different merchant. Even better than that I need to be able to contact them on IM. The good affiliate managers I work with are usually on IM most of the day and I can get an instant response.

2.  Be quick. Once again, I like having a somewhat instant response.  If I need a new datafeed, some new graphics, have a question about something, or whatever I want a quick response. I don’t want to have to wait a day or two to get what I need. It takes a lot for me to actually start building a new site and I don’t want to have to wait once I get started.

3.  Actually help the affilates.  I want affiliate managers who will give me feedback on my sites, give me new ideas how to promote their stuff, and help me increase sales.  A lot of affiliate managers are much more passive on issues like this than others and the ones who aren’t proactive don’t really do much for me.

4.  Affiliate Managers need to have flexibility. Many affiliate managers work for companies who don’t give them the flexibility to do their job well and if an AM is in this situation they need to fight for their affiliates and talk to management and help them see what will help the affilaites. If a company gives the AM the flexibility to be creative in helping their affiliates everyone wins. This could be in the form of affiliate promotions, custom graphics, custom landing pages, increased payouts for affiliates who perform, etc.

5.  Affiliate Managers need to have the answers. Too many affiliate managers just don’t have the answers to some somewhat simple questions about their affiliate programs or what is allowed and what isn’t. They can give a stock, canned answer but I want a real answer that makes sense. A good affiliate manager will know the answers to my questions or at the very least find out the answer and get back to me quickly.

6.  Affiliate Managers need to make sure the program is running properly. This includes stuff like being vigilant to keep parasites out, making sure affiliates who are violating their TOS are booted quickly, make sure links are tracking properly, payments are getting sent, etc. 

7.  Make sure the links you put out there work. If a merchant is on a network they need to be able to make sure their links work with all the tools provided by that network. Example: If a merchant is on Shareasale and I want to go use their custom link builder I don’t want to find out later there is something else I need to add to the code to make it track.

8.  Affiliate Managers need to be nice.  I don’t need to be their friend but the affiliate manager should at least be personable and easy to talk to. Don’t make me feel like I am inconveniencing you when I ask you for something. But many AMs I have worked with in the past I now consider my friends and not just business associates.

I am sure there are many more but those are a few I can think of off the top of my head.

So who meets these criteria?  There is one AM I have only recently started working with that fits all these criteria and many more. Of the affiliate managers I am currently working with he is at the top of the heap even though I have only recently started promoting his program. That person is Matt McWilliams of Legacy Learning Systems. I talked with him a few times over IM before the Shareasale ThinkTank and was impressed but when I actually met him in person and talked to him I realized even more that he has his stuff together and knows how to run an affiliate program.

He is always available to answer questions and does a great job of promoting his program and making it easy for affiliates to succeed. Recently he started his LEGACY week promo offering stuff like increased lifetime commissions, double commissions for some products, and some giveaways. The great thing about promos like this is they are useful for all affiliates, not just affiliates who generate a ton of sales.

Yesterday I decided to build a site http://www.masterballroomdancing.com promoting their ballroom dance course. I build my site and let him see it and he noticed I could use a new banner.  So within 10 minutes he had a new banner for me and I loaded it up on my site. I started sending some traffic to it and within an hour or so I saw my first sale. And wouldn’t you know it?  That sale came from someone clicking that new banner.

So thank you Matt for getting it. Any affiliate looking for a new program to promote should check out the Legacy Learning System program. Any affiliate managers looking for someone to emulate should look to Matt McWilliams.

But that also raises a questions.  What should you do when you have a bad affiliate manager?  Should you just drop their program and look for someone else? Should you talk to their management and let them know how the AM is hurting the program?

What are some other things you look for in an affiliate manager? Who are some other good affiliate managers you work with?  Leave a comment below and let me know.

Shareasale Think Tank 09: What an amazing weekend. Shareasale once again blew the roof off the joint with another great ThinkTank.

If you aren’t familiar with the Shareasale Thinktank I will give a brief overview. It is basically a conference where Shareasale brings in some of the merchants that work with them, some great OPMs, and some of the top affiliates in the industry to talk about what can be done to improve Sharesale, how the merchants can improve their affiliate programs, and overall affiliate marketing industry type stuff. You will rarely find such a great group of like minded affiliate marketers all gathered in the same place.

Now for the real review:

Thursday: I got to Orange County airport at about noon, got my rental car (BTW, I have never had a real pleasant experience dealing with car rental companies. There always seems to be a problem), and headed to the Pelican Hill Resort. Last year the ThinkTank was at the Grand Del Mar down near San Diego and I didn’t think the facilities could get better than that but the Pelican Hill came very close.

I checked in (and got offered a hot towel) and then headed up to my room. The resort is pretty spread out and we were all in bungalows. Mine was about a 10 minute walk from the main lobby up at the top of the hill. I got to my room and I think it is probably the nicest hotel/resort room I have ever stayed in. Super comfortable beds, huge bathroom, comfortable chairs, and a nice balcony with a view of the freakin ocean!!! Doesn’t get much better than that.

After I checked in I headed down to the Coliseum bar to grab a bite to eat. I met up with Scott Jangro, Jeremy Palmer, Tony Pantono and some of the Shareasale crew (Jessica, Emilie,David, and Jason). This restaurant overlooks the pool. This pool is a 136 foot diameter circular pool which is the biggest in the world and it has over 1,000,000 pieces of hand cut, hand laid tile. Pretty impressive.

The Pool at Pelican Hill

Then it was time for the Yankee-Angels game. The crew going to the game consisted of me, Brian Littleton, Scott Jangro, Missy Ward, Melissa Salas, Eva Klein, and Jeremy Palmer. The group was split between Angels and Yankees fans so we had some good banter going back and forth. We got to the game and were sitting in the front row in right center field right on top of the wall. Awesome game. Probably the best I have ever seen in person. And the Angels ended up winning.

In a limo on the way to the Angels-Yankees game

One of the best parts about the game was Scott was decked out in his Red Sox gear and Jeremy was in his Yankees gear. And Scott got much more crap from the crowd than Jeremy even though he was rooting for the Angels. Then back in the limo and back to the resort.

We convened in the bar for a bit and then headed back to Jeremy’s bungalow to continue the party. Missy Ward broke out her iPod and it turns out we have nearly the exact same taste in music and I thoroughly dominated everyone in Name That Tune. Off to bed to get ready for a big day tomorrow.

Friday: After 4 hours sleep it is time to golf. The resort has two courses and Brian Littleton, Scott Jangro, Tim Storm and myself tackle the North course. I have some good holes (including a nice chip in) and some bad ones as well. Brian hired a film crew to come follow us around and record some of the “highlights” and of course the catch me on what would be my worst hole of the day. I think I ended up with a 10 including 2 lost balls on that hole. And every one of them was on film.

Brian hitting the green from 207 out

Brian and Scott walking off the tee. I think we all had decent drives on this hole

We get back and I grab a quick shower and it is time to head down to the welcome reception and dinner. I get to see a bunch of old friends, many of which I have known for many years and some I have only known for about a year. I always look forward to seeing this group and catching up.

Just a quick side note: I can’t think of an industry I would rather be in and the primary reason for that is the people. Nearly everyone of the people I meet in this industry are awesome. Of course there are a few bad eggs here and there but overall this is an awesome group of people. I can probably easily count 20-30 people in this group I would consider good friends and a bunch more that would probably get into that category if I were to hang out with them more.

So we feast on a great dinner including roast beef tenderloin, some roasted chicken (which was the best non-fried chicken I have ever eaten), lobster and scallops, fajitas, sushi, and much more. Also they showed the golf video that was filmed earlier that day. And yeah, they showed a bunch of my bad shots and none of the good ones but at least it wasn’t as bad as Asif or Mark who hit the ball between his legs. At around midnight I head back to the room to maybe get a few hours of decent sleep before the next busy day.

Saturday: This is the day where much of the work gets done at the conference. We start off with breakfast out on the patio which is overlooking the golf course and the ocean. Pretty sweet way to start the day.

We start the first sessions of the day which is mainly a time for the merchants to present their programs and talk a bit about their target markets, what they do, how to best market their stuff, and so on. Pretty short presentations though. There are 4 or 5 merchants on a panel and they are broken down into 4 categories: Marketing to men, marketing to women, Learning and training systems, and home and office. Not all the merchants fit perfectly into these categories but it was good enough.

I really liked these sessions because it gave a lot of the affiliates a chance to find out a bit about them before we began our afternoon meetings. I was nice to hear from all of them instead of just talking to a few of them.

Lunch was next and we had burgers, chicken, salmon, and some of the best mac and cheese I have ever eaten. Each table was assigned to a vendor, an OPM, an agency or something like that so we could find out a bit about them. We were supposed to rotate through tables but that didn’t really pan out. I sat with the facebook advertising group for a bit and then headed to my room to relax a bit before the afternoon sessions.

In the afternoon we all convened around the pool and had meetings with the merchants in private cabanas. I met with 3 merchants and the purpose of these meetings was to give some feedback to the merchants on their programs and also to find out how we could best work together. We had 2 or 3 affiliates meet at a time with the merchants for about 20 minutes.

These are the cabanas we met in by the pool. What a rough life we lead

I got together with Matt McWilliams from Legacy Learning Systems (along with Jen Goode), Madeline from CSN Stores (with Scott Jangro), and Jed from The Fruit Company (with Wade Tonkin, Stephanie Lichtenstein, and Jen Goode). All three of these merchants seem to really have their stuff together and I am pretty sure I will be doing something with each of them in the near future.

Saturday night we all split up for our individual dinner plans. Some groups went to nearby restaurants, some ate at the hotel, and I went on a boat ride. Mr. Mackin and his wife Ruth Ann invited Emelio Yepez, Michael Coley, Kellie Stephens, Eva Klein, Scott Jangro, and myself out on a nice, relaxing cruise in the Newport Beach harbor. We docked at a restaurant, got our food, and just cruised around the bay for a couple hours. It was a great time and great food. Thanks again Mackin.

On a boat with Emelio, Michael, Eva, Kellie, Scott, Ruth Ann, and Mackin

When we got back to the hotel it was time to hit the bar. A lot of the crew was there and we hung out there until around 1:30 when I called it a night and went to bed.

Sunday: Up early again for another great breakfast. Waffles, omelets, fruit, bacon, and much more once again out on a patio overlooking the ocean. Can’t really express how beautiful the views here are.

Breakfast out on the balcony

Then it is time for the “What can we fix” session where Brian sits and listens to comments, questions, complaints, and suggestions about what Shareasale can do to improve and make more money for their merchants and affiliates. Many of the suggestions are pretty good and many of them will probably never apply to what I do but it is always nice to hear some great perspectives from other affiliates.

In the afternoon I head to the pool with Stephanie Lichtenstein and take in the great view and relax in the sun. We are soon joined by Wade Tonkin and after about a half hour of floating around in the water we relax in our lounge chairs and are joined by Roger Snow, Gretchen from FatWallet, Jared from Jenson USA, Todd Farmer, and Lisa Picarelle. Good to relax a bit and just sit and soak up some sun.

And of course there is a Yankee-Angels game tonight so I head to a sports bar with Todd Farmer, Stephanie Lichtenstein, Jeremy Palmer, Kim Rowley, Lisa Picarelle, Angel Djambazov, and Kellie Stephens. I order 1 pound of wings and a plate of fried pickles. I end up eating the whole plate of wings and then realize they brought me the two pound plate. Add a bunch of fried dill pickles and some fries onto that and I am STUFFED.

We meet back with some of the rest of the crew back at the hotel bar to catch the last couple innings of the game and after about an hour or so we head to piano in the lobby so Brian can wrap up a conference the right way.

He sits at the piano and I gotta tell you, he is pretty impressive. We spend the next 2-3 hours shouting out songs and he just starts playing them. Everything from Green Day to Billy Joel to AC/DC to Kenny Rogers. Other guests at the resort stop by every now and then and we are constantly hearing rounds of applause coming from the bar. Awesome time.

We decide the night is still young and Brian Littleton, Missy Ward, Angel Djambazov, Gretchen from FatWallet and I head to Eva Klein’s room for a bit more fun. We don’t want this to end!!! We hang out there for about an hour or so and enjoy some more music and then it is off to bed for the last night at the resort.

What an awesome time!!! First off the facilities were amazing. In many ways I think these facilities overall might have topped the Grand Del Mar from last year but for this type of conference I would probably choose the Del Mar again since it is a bit more intimate and not quite as spread out. But don’t think I am complaining about Pelican Hill!!! I would come here again in a heartbeat.

Actually I would go to wherever Brian decides hold Thinktank without hesitation. He could have this event at a Holiday Inn by the airport in Fargo North Dakota and I would still love it. The facilities are nice but the best part about this conference is the people and the great connections that can be made at events like this.

Is 2000 words enough? Not quite. Don’t worry I am almost finished!!!

First of all I want to give a sincere THANK YOU to Brian and the rest of the Shareasale crew. You won’t find a better group of people anywhere to work with. All of them are awesome people, good friends, and they really know their jobs and do them well. Do yourself a favor and if you aren’t working with Shareasale go sign up with them today.

And I also want to say thank you to all my friends in this industry. When I go to conferences like this and see all of you I realized how blessed I am to be in a business like this with people like this. There are way too many of you to list here and I would be afraid I would forget someone so just realize that I do appreciate you all. If there is ever anything I can do to help any of you out or if you ever have any questions about anything please let me know. I want to do what I can to help you.

Here are a couple more recaps from some of my other friends who attended:

Matt McWilliams - More ShareASale ThinkTank Recaps and Pictures #ThinkTank09
Missy Ward - Shareasale Thinktank 2009 Wrap-up
Shawn Collins - Shareasale Thinktank 2009 Recap

How did you like ThinkTank? Leave a comment below and let me know.