In typical OffWhiteHat fashion, I traveled to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit, partied the entire time, and did very little of anything that could be construed as business if I am ever audited for the expenses.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to show up until about 2am Sunday night (Monday morning), so I missed all of the awesome festivities that night. I did however do some gamblin’.

On Monday, I met lots of interesting folks in the exhibit hall and saw some familiar faces. Among some of the coolest peeps that I can remember were the awesome possums from W4 and Audi from Convert2Media who kept the Blue Moon flowing. Here is the one and only photo I took in the exhibit hall, which I feel captures the essence of what was going on at the C2M booth:

Blue Moon!

The Affiliate Ball

Monday night was the night of the Affiliate Ball at the Crown Theater in the Rio. It would be my very first Affiliate Ball. For whatever reason, in past years I have found myself at other events while Affiliate Balls were going on. As the Affiliate Ball conflicted with the party at the Spearmint Rhino hosted by Ads4Dough this time, I was torn. Ultimately, my desire to relive my youth prevailed, and we headed to the Affiliate Ball eager to see the headlining act…none other than Nelly himself.

Darren, the man behind the event, was kind enough to give VIP bands to myself and mah woman. These bands gave you access to the VIP area that had free booze and a little more breathing room.

There were a couple openers, including Wickedfire’s own RobHustle. He did a bang up job. We took a photo together after at some point. I hope he posts it, and I hope my hair looks good.

I didn’t even notice when Nelly had taken the stage. At some point I looked up from my drink and was like, whoa, Nelly is on stage. He performed just about every song you can remember of his and then some. This was surprising as many were speculating that he would only do like one or two songs. The crowd, however, did not seem particularly impressed. While there were some very psyched people at the base of the stage, I got a vibe from the rest of the place that they were just not that excited. I guess internet nerds are too cool for Nelly. Whatever. I thought it was awesome.

Here are some pictures taken in there. Quality isn’t the best, as I still insist on pretending that my Blackberry is a real camera:

Me and mah woman

Josh Ziering aka Enigmabomb & me

Nelly on stage

From there, the lady and I gambled a bit at the Rio. As soon as we got two fresh drinks, we headed to the car, where she was in charge of making sure they didn’t spill while I drove us back to the Mirage.  At the Mirage, more gambling and much more drinking occurred. Also, sandwiches.

Unfortunately I didn’t even make it back to the conference the next day. It’s no fun when you have a 4 hour drive ahead of you. Maybe one of these years I’ll fly.

So, yeah, that’s about it. Affiliate Summit was fun as ever. I only wish I would have got there earlier.

Oh, almost forgot, one more pic:

Told you it would come out in the dark, bro

Howz about a little update?

Just yesterday I returned home from a pretty dang fun New Year’s (and then some) trip to London and surrounding areas. It was quite wild, if I do say so myself. I was in the company of a dear friend of mine who actually has a nifty travel blog. His adventures are generally much more exciting than mine, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you should check it out.

Here are some choice photos from my journey (taken with my high-tech Blackberry Bold 9900):

Me in Picadilly Circus

Happy New Year

The hustle and bustle of Cardiff, Wales on a weeknight

Goin' home (business class cause I'm a srs businessman)

Now I only have a couple days to rest before I must drive out to Las Vegas to do further irreversible damage to my body. This will be my fourth consecutive Affiliate Summit West. Crazy how time flies! Seeing as how I didn’t book my hotel until last night, I’ll be at the Mirage. Room number available upon request (send nudes first, plz).

See you there!

I spent this past weekend at Blog World LA, a conference very much like how it sounds, at the LA Convention Center. In contrast to most of my conference visits, I actually went to three different sessions at this one. Crazy, I know.

I went to a Friday session that basically turned out to be an introduction to WordPress. Unfortunately, I got there late, so I had to sit in the very front. By the time the horror of the reality of the session sunk in, it was already too late. I was already firmly planted front and center. I waited as long as I possibly could before I rudely evacuated. The time in between was spent on Skype.

Saturday I attended two sessions about video. Although I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it on this blog, I co-run a YouTube partner account that has seen some pretty significant success in the past couple years. We just recently started getting heavily back into producing content for YouTube, so I hoped to get some good info out of these sessions. Or at the very least, leave the room super motivated to create more videos.

YouTube Partner Success Panel

This was the first session I attended. Hosted by Paul Colligan, the panel consisted of Mike Rotman, Ed Dale, and Don McAllister. All of the above have been very successful using YouTube as a promotion vehicle for their respective businesses. Unfortunately for me, they all focus on using YouTube as a tool to promote their business, and not actually using YouTube to produce a passive income (via partnership/revenue share). Although I definitely understand the value in what they are doing, I was still disappointed. I was hoping for more specific YouTube talk rather than general online business promotion. If you understood the nature of my partner account, you would understand why building an outside business off of it would be rather difficult (and sort of silly).

How to Promote Your Video

I thoroughly enjoyed this session. This one was run by Michael Terpin, founder and CEO of Social Radius. Michael and his company have been responsible for the viralization of many prominent videos such as Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral and Scarface School Play (one of my personal favorites).

One thing Terpin stressed was the importance of sound quality in a video. Amazing sound quality won’t make a video go viral, but shitty sound quality will most definitely prevent it from doing so. It’s something a lot of people new to online video overlook. The guy filming the session recommended this type of mic for capturing the best audio (not that exact model, necessarily).

—

Blog World is a very different animal from the conferences I’m used to, such as Affiliate Summit. Instead of small to mid size ad networks shoving free booze and strippers in your face, you get companies like Blogger and Stickam giving you glossy little info cards. I know that sounds boring, but it’s not so bad. And there are about 745% more female attendees than any affiliate summit. A lot of fashion bloggers and that sort of thing.

One impressive company in particular was the Ebay Partner Network. Great people, all around. The new head of the North America program, Julia Barrett, is pretty dang awesome. She’s also hilarious. I never thought I’d be openly advocating EPN on this site, but really, any doubts I had about the program or the people running it have been dissolved. I’ll probably build another handful of eBay sites before Christmas. I suggest you do the same. If you’re having trouble getting accepted by EPN (and you have quality web sites), contact me for help.

Generally, Affiliate Summit West is the only large-scale conference I bother attending in any given year. However, this month I just needed to get my nerd conference fix. Sure, there is Affiliate Summit East, but that’s in NYC, and I just got back from NYC last month. Also, I needed an excuse to go to Vegas (just a few days after my last Vegas trip). The solution? Black Hat!

True, the conference has pretty much absolutely nothing to do with internet marketing. But…it’s got a lot to do with internet! It would be prudent of all of us to stay up to date with the latest news in cyber security, seeing as how we are all flourishing in this space, right? So, I made the 3hr and 50min drive out to Vegas (got up to 122mph near stateline) and checked it out.

Things that I Liked

Caesar’s Palace
Not the greatest spot on the strip, sure, but it’s up there.The convention area is top-notch. A friend of mine who also attended opened up a tab at the little round bar by the casino one night and we all went nuts. Thanks, buddy. Sometimes you have to make your own open bars.

The Exhibit Hall
My only real basis for comparison is Affiliate Summit. Well, in contrast, the Black Hat exhibit hall is much smaller, maybe a quarter or even a fifth of the size. Unlike Affiliate Summit, there was no beer to be found. Why is this listed under things I like? Well, the people from the various security companies were actually incredibly friendly. Also, the conference issued these little stamp booklets to black hatters which you could use to go to participating booths and get them stamped (in exchange for them scanning your badge). Completed booklets would be eligible for prize drawings. Seemed like a really smart incentive to get people visiting and interacting with more booths. It also seemed kind of fun, since you had to hunt down the booths you needed.

Blackberry Security
You guys were awesome. Even though you couldn’t help me charge my phone, you were still the best booth in the room. I will cherish my flashlight keychain forever.

Lisa @ Lunch
Lunch was provided in one of the conference rooms, banquet style. It was okay. Nothing to write home about. However, a young woman named Lisa that was serving us was phenomenal. She was extremely friendly and helpful. We requested coffee, and even though it was provided already in the hallway (unbeknownst to us), she managed to dig up a pot and some cups for us in the back. The coffee was actually incredible. Someone should give Lisa a promotion. Lisa might actually be my favorite thing about Black Hat.

Things that I Did Not Like

The Dude that Checked me in
…was a dick. Actually he didn’t even check me in, he said I had to come back after 4pm, but he was a dick about it.

Dell/Qualys Party at The Bank @ Bellagio (aka The Absolut Cloud Party)
Their invite system was pretty cool. You had to visit each respective booth (Dell and Qualys) and get a stamp on your little party card, then when you had both stamps, they would give you a wristband. However, the party itself was not so cool. A couple of friends and myself did our darndest to accurately calculate the male to female ratio. Our best guess, and I am being totally honest and not trying to exaggerate in the slightest bit, was about 20:1. That is including club employees. To make matters worse, the bar was only sort of “open.” I first ordered a Tanqueray 10 martini, and was quickly informed that 1) Tanqueray 10 was not on the menu, and 2) Martinis were not on the menu. So, I drank Tanqueray + tonics all night. Still, not the worst drink the world.

I’m not trying to complain about the quality of the free booze. Well, I guess I am. Perhaps I am just spoiled by the excess of Affiliate Summit parties. Maybe that is not a fair basis of comparison…but that’s all I’ve really got! Plus, this thing was in Vegas. How can you expect me to not be confused?

The Badges
They were pretty dumb looking. That is an area that could really use some improvement.

—-

I didn’t stick around for DefCon. From what I hear, it was way better than Black Hat, but I really have no idea.

All in all, it was worth the visit. I can’t say I learned a whole lot about cyber security, but I did win like $850 bucks on craps at the Bellagio. I’d call it a successful trip. I’m sure that those who were spending all day at the trainings/briefings must have been getting something out of it as well.

Those of you who have managed to bear through my sporadic and sometimes useful posts for a while may remember that around this time last year I went down to San Diego for the Ads4Dough meetup. Well, time flows like a river, and history repeats (a million internets to you if you can identify that reference without Googling it).

This Saturday, March 19th, I’ll be making the relatively short drive from LA to San Diego for the 2011 A4D meetup. Last year I only showed up for the day and headed back home. This time around I booked a room at the Hard Rock so that I may further maximize the experience (and avoid drank drivin).

I am excited to hang out with all you nerds. Especially Darrin and Matt. Matt is making my drive from LA look quite trivial since he is traveling across the pond from jolly old England.

Speakers this year will include:

• • Mike Powell
• • Zack Linford
• • James Craig (Facebook dating prodigy)
• • Rob Berkowitz
• • Kris Kibak (media buy master)
• • Smaxor himself

As far as I know, it’s not too late to RSVP if you’re interested. Click here to do so.

Well, I’ve been home since Tuesday, but drinking/partying for nearly 5 days straight pretty much destroyed my immune system and I immediately got incredibly sick once I got home. I’m finally feeling a bit better now.

As far as I’m concerned, this was the best Affiliate Summit yet. I spent more time both in the conference area and at conference related parties than I think I ever have before.

Here are some pictures to prove that I showed up:

Gratuitous exhibit hall pic.


With the Patron girls at the Saveology booth.


At the Shareasale 10 year anniversary party at Tryst nightclub. Great party.


Amanda Orson (aka phillian) and myself at the Zen Mansion party put on by Wickedfire and Elite Clicks Media.


With Lauren (aka Turbolapp) and Josh “EnigmaPhotoBomb” Ziering, also at the Zen Mansion.

Srsly don’t even try to hate on my scarf.

Sorry, no pictures of the A4D “Dough for Hoes” party at the Spearmin Rhino. But I heard it was a great party.

Non-pictured highlights:

• •Morgan (aka HeavyT) threatening strangers at Parasol bar with bodily harm
• •Rob(aka Bofu2U)’s antics after enough jager bombs to kill a mortal man
• •Random CES guy tipping me $200 for a favorable roll at the craps table
• •Losing Rob somewhere in exhibit hall, getting text from him soon after that read: I iz in a limo moths fucka layin down and shit
• •Emergency Blankets

If you didn’t make it out this year, shame on you. It was a hoot and a half. I actually attended a few of the sessions this year, and even TOOK NOTES, so maybe I’ll make another post about useful stuff once I have made a full recovery.

See you next time.

Probably not for long, so you’d better get on it.

I kept hearing people say the Wynn was “sold out” for the Affiliate Summit West conference. My lazy ass has been taking its sweet time to register, and hearing those reports killed my motivation to do so. Then, about a week ago, I did a quick search on the Wynn’s website only to find that there are plenty of rooms available. I suppose the people that were saying it was “sold out” were referring to the group rate secured by Affiliate Summit ($189/night).

So I figured, whatevs, I’ll just pay a little more. But then I decided to just poke around the internet a bit for a promo code. Hot damn.

Long story short: Use promo code NOVWLT. Got a Deluxe King room (better than the group rate ASW regular rooms) for $139/night (plus $20/night resort fee). Register with the promo ASAP here.

Last I checked there were still deluxe king rooms available at that rate for Jan 9th-11th. Good luck. See you there!

In exactly two months it will be time to make the short trip out of Los Angeles, through the desert, and into the magical oasis of Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West, the only affiliate marketing conference you need concern yourself with (because it’s the only one I really go to).

I was going to put these codes at the end of this post, but then I figured I shouldn’t punish the people that actually read my posts and reward the ones that just scrolled down to get the codes, since they would get them way faster…and there are only three! So act fast. Each one of these codes is good for one GOLD registration. Please note that these passes are not transferable, and if you register and then no-show, you won’t be eligible for complimentary passes in the future. Also, if the event somehow sells out before these three promo codes are used, they will become invalid. Without further adieu…

Gold pass promo codes:

1. ASW11OWH1
2. ASW11OWH2
3. ASW11OWH3

Register here. If the code doesn’t work, that means some jerk beat you to the punch.

I hope I just saved you $549 with them codes. Wish I could have given out more passes. In case you were wondering, the gold pass includes: Admission to meet market, exhibit hall, keynotes, Sunday educational sessions (minus the Monetize Summit track); access to all recorded session videos; PowerPoint presentations; and Affiliate Summit Social Network. Does not include Monday and Tuesday sessions.

If you have followed my blog for a while, you’ll know I had a good old time in 2009 as well as 2010 at previous ASW shows.

This year is expected to be better than ever, for several reasons. One reason in particular that I’m quite excited about is the change of venue. Prior to this year, ASW has called The Rio its home. Nothing against The Rio or anything…but this year the conference is being held at The Wynn, which of course is one of the nicest resorts this side of the Prime Meridian.

Why the Hell Should I Go?
I hear this question a lot. I also answered it recently in a thread on Wickedfire. To sum it up, there are a ton of benefits associated with attending, but in my opinion, these are the most important:

• • Seeing the world and scope of internet marketing in real life
• • Making invaluable contacts
• • Free booze
• • I’ll be there, silly

Sure, you may pick up a couple things in the sessions that hadn’t occurred to you before, or get inspired with a new idea for your business, but don’t expect attending the conference to somehow push you into a new tax bracket overnight. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this show to anyone that takes their business seriously.

If you’d like to hang out with little old me at the conference, you can most likely find me at the Parasol Down bar…or screaming at some poor lady in the casino cage about needing another marker. See you there!

After Eleah from AKMG threatened me with bodily harm, I decided to check out Meetup202 in Marina Del Rey on Saturday.

Highlights:

• • Riley Pool
• • Q+A with Smaxor from A4D and Nana Gilbert-Baffoe from Tracking202
• • Eleah’s dog, Chilli Bean
• • Beer

If I hadn’t been so distracted by the beer and Chilli Bean, I would have thought to take some notes and then plagiarize the helpful info from the speakers here on my blog.

Riley gave a detailed report on how to go about contacting high traffic websites for media buys and what pitfalls to avoid. One point he made that I thought was worth repeating is that you should NEVER take a webmasters word for their traffic stats. Use compete.com and similar sites to get your own info and request analytics reports (if available). Webmasters that run Google Analytics can go as far as adding another Google account with limited permissions so that you can go in and check it out for yourself. Reports can also be exported and emailed as PDFs. If you’re going to drop a bunch of cash on a media buy on some random site (or non-random site, for that matter), I don’t think its unreasonable to make such a request. I digress…

Jason (aka Smaxor) and Nana took questions from the crowd. As I was 3 beers deeper at this point, it gets sort of fuzzy. One good point that Smaxor made, was that his company was built on a foundation of blackhat SEO. Even though they have moved on to much bigger and better (i.e. less shady and more profitable) things, he pointed out that a lot of big online companies that started out with little capital used blackhat SEO to get the ball rolling. I get a lot of IMs and emails from people asking me how to make a buck with limited resources…and I think this is something that might be motivating for those people. Blackhat SEO is a “cat and mouse game”, according to Smaxor, and one that of course isn’t a very sustainable long-term business model. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do a little automated search engine manipulating to scrape a few bucks together at first.

Anyhoo, here are a few pictures:

Eleah’s beautiful dog, Chilli Bean and myself enjoying the refreshments.


Riley Pool (apparently immune to my sexual advances), Eleah Portillo, crazy-eyed Chilli Bean, and yours truly.


Some of the beers I put away.

All in all, I’d say it was a success.

So, basically, I went to the A4D meetup in San Diego on Saturday, left for Vegas the next day, spent four days and three nights in a drunken stupor, and now here I am trying to remember what happened on Saturday so I could squeeze a blog post out of it.

First of all, if you wanted to go, you should have went. The lineup alone should have indicated that it would be a very valuable experience. That said, I didn’t even stay for the whole thing, and I took the liberty of a 30 min lunch break right in the middle of the thing (look, if I was any sort of professional, I’d have a real job).

Luckily, I managed to take some notes. I’m not sure if I was taking notes because I thought I was going to forget the info I was receiving, or if I just felt compelled to because people around me were. Using these notes and my hazy memory (I was actually drinking during the meetup as well…this blog is really more or less a cry for help), I will now attempt to go over what I saw.

First Speaker: DK from Purposeinc

Seemed like a nice enough guy, but was visibly intimidated by the room. Maybe he wasn’t expecting so many aff marketing pros to show up. He referenced info he had “got from Shoe” a couple times, which was enough to make half the room take him less seriously. He also went into detail about testing creatives for Facebook ads, showing case studies with different creatives and what sort of CTR each one got. Trouble is, only like $7 was spent on each test. With people in the room spending five figures a day on FB alone (if not more), this seemed a little silly to me.

To make matters worse, towards the end of his presentation he casually mentions that he has NDAs in place with Facebook. This was in response to Jason inquiring about shadier methods of getting ads approved. Although he wasn’t willing to suggest any new tricks or system manipulations, he seemed open to the discussion. “Anything said at this conference will not leave this conference by me”, DK reassured us. But, still, c’mon.

Although I wasn’t impressed with his Facebook know-how (or conflicts of interest), I must say that DK knew his shit when it came to local campaigns. It was evident that local was his strong suit. Probably why he saved it for last.

Hagan – Talkin’ ‘Bout Leadgen

I liked this guy. At first it seemed like no one was paying attention but eventually they realized he knew what he was talking about and settled down. The gist of Hagan’s presentation was about how continuity offers are no longer sustainable, and how leadgen is the foreseeable future of AM.

He had a nice little breakdown of how to presell offers based on payout that I think might be helpful for a lot of folks, especially the nooblings. Here is that breakdown in a nutshell:

- Low Paying Offers (Email/Zip Submits, etc) – Direct Link
- Medium Payouts (Insurance, Edu, etc) – Short forms/bridge pages with a short pitch, big call to action.
- High Payouts (Mortgage, that kind of jazz) – Long pitch, very few calls to action.

He also offered a list of books that he thinks affiliate marketers should be familiar with:

1. Ca$hvertising
2. Simple and Direct
3. Blink
4. Extraordinary Popular Delusions

MikeTPowell on PPV

After I stumbled back in to the Legends conference room, having just enjoyed a tuna melt at MaryJane’s Cafe in the Hard Rock Hotel, Mike was already well into his presentation on running PPV campaigns. My notes started getting short and vague at this point. One point that Mike stressed repeatedly is that you absolutely must use a landing page when running PPV, regardless of the offer. If you think about the nature of PPV traffic, this makes a lot of sense.

The Lawyer

There was a surprise appearance by Rob Berkowitz, a senior associate attorney at Coast Law Group, a firm that A4D works closely with. Rob went into detail about how we are all 100% guilty for stealing images and ignoring trademark laws, and how we will all pay dearly for it one day. He seemed like a pretty nice guy, though. For a lawyer.

The Rest

I swore on a bible that Nickycakes was carrying in his back pocket that I wouldn’t disclose any of teh bigg secretz. Same goes for Smax and Dr Ngo.

Guess you better come to the next fucking meetup!

<3