I am now home safe and sound from ASW in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, I missed the beginning of the show, but the time I did spend there was of course fantastic.

Were you there? Yes? No?? Well, I will now take you there. Here are some photos I took in the exhibit hall, for your enjoyment:

As you can see, the Exhibit Hall was alive with the hustle and bustle of the internet marketing community.

Here I am with Mr. Ralph Ruckman, co-owner of Convert2Media, a network you should already know about, if you know what’s what. Yes, those are complimentary beers in the background. Yes, I took advantage of this.

And here I am with Mr. Daniel Bisacco, my AM over at Copeac (one of my favorite AMs…don’t tell anybody). Please forgive the goofy look on my face. I was just that happy to see him.

All in all, although my time at ASW this year was brief, it was definitely a success. After dropping business cards in so many bowls in the exhibit hall, it is now only a matter of time before the phone calls to alert me about my prize winnings start rolling in. Actually, some dude I was playing roulette next to at the Rio won a Macbook Air at the conference. He must have cheated and dropped two cards.

Last year, I traveled to Vegas with my buddy Lucas and his cousin who was visiting from Argentina. This year it was just Lucas and myself. We managed to have a pretty good time in Las Vegas, despite the cold weather and generally quiet time of year. We drunkenly did so well on roulette and blackjack that in total we ended up only spending about $90 on the entire trip. Including this bad ass suite at the Luxor and the overpriced room service on the table:

Yes, I am cheers-ing him with a shrimp.

Remind me to write off that 90 bucks.

See you in New York.

If you have been following this here blog for a while, perhaps you already know what a great time I had last year at Affiliate Summit West ’09. I intend to do the same at the next one in January. In fact, I intend to have an even greater time, if you can believe that.

Wanna come? This year, because I’m so awesome, I have a full pass. Pretty sweet. But the fact of the matter is you don’t really need access to all of the educational sessions and all that jazz. Sure, you can learn a lot in those sessions, but an upgraded (aka more expensive) pass is required to get in. However, what makes Affiliate Summit truly great (and anyone who has been will tell you) is the networking opportunities that are nothing short of abundant. Especially if it is your first Aff Summit, all you really need is a silver pass. A silver pass gives you access to the exhibit hall (where network owners will swoon you). The exhibit hall is where the (daytime) action is. It is your duty to find out where the dang parties are each night (and I might just be able to help you with that)!

Let me go ahead and detail what a silver pass gives you access to:

• - Affiliate Meet Market & Exhibit Hall
• - Keynotes
• - Affiliate Summit Social Network

How much does this silver pass cost, you ask!? Well, if you had registered super early (before Oct 19th) it would have been $79. From now until the event, a 2010 ASW Silver Pass can be snagged for $149. And if you somehow forget to register altogether and show up like some sort of vagabond affiliate with no registration, you can get a silver pass on-site for $249.

Or….

If you’re one of the first 5 people to register using the following code: ASW10JACK (that’s my name, silly), you can get a Silver Pass for FREE! Register here at once.

Wahoo!

I look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas. I’ll be the one getting his stomach pumped by a showgirl and simultaneously TwitPic-ing it.

Since I planned to head to this year’s western Affiliate Summit with two of my cohorts who are considerably less interested in the summit and substantially more interested in the debauchery of Las Vegas as well as the deep weekday discounts, I was not able to arrive at the start of the conference yesterday. However, fear not, I will be leaving in a matter of hours for Sin City.

My suitcase is open on my bed, half packed, and my cat is resting comfortably on top of my clean clothes. Oh, to be a cat.

With all the free passes that were going around this year, I decided that the best method of obtaining a pass to ASW would be to snag one of the freebies. It is for this reason that I am relegated to my Silver pass. There are some restrictions that come along with having such an economy pass, but none that I feel will remotely affect my experience (at least not significantly). After all, networking doesn’t happen in panels. It happens in bars. Preferably the “strip” variety. Yes, I’m talking about bars on the strip.

I will surely report upon my return on Tuesday.