thank you

Thank You Affiliate Summit!

by Joe Sousa on August 24, 2010

in Affiliate Stuff

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

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

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

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

and I am sure there are many more out there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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7 Reasons I am Thankful to be an Affiliate

by Joe Sousa on November 25, 2009

in Affiliate Stuff

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.

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