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!

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.

Well, I am home and safe and sound from Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, NV. There are still trace amounts of booze in my system but I am sober for the most part.

To be honest, I probably spent about an hour at the actual Summit. If they really wanted me to be more involved, maybe they shouldn’t hold the thing in the most distracting city in the world. I spent the vast majority of my time drinking and swearing like a sailor as well as donating large amounts of cash to various casinos.

Sunday and Monday night were the highlights, due to the fantastic open bar events. Traveling with my partners in crime, Lucas and Franco, we headed out Sunday night in search of this mysterious “Red Rock Mansion”. Here we are attempting to hail a cab. Lucas is the seemingly already drunk one drinking that disgusting Miller High Life, and I am behind him.

Thanks to our awesome cab driver, Ritchie (from Long Beach!), we managed to find the Red Rock Mansion. Actually also thanks to Crack who got the address for me. The venue was in a residential neighborhood and pretty low profile from the street.

So, when we finally got there, we were greeted with complimentary cigars. What a nice touch! Here is myself and Franco living the life with our cigars and some sort of grey goose concoction.

I got to meet lots of people that I know from Wickedifre/Cakes Chat, which is awesome. More than I can really remember actually. Something about free booze makes me drink at an absurd pace. I kinda feel like we left this party prematurely, but my gambling itch just needed to be scratched. Since we had got Ritchie the cabby’s phone number (since we knew we wouldn’t find a better cab driver), we called him and had him come chauffer us over to Fremont St (old school Vegas!).

After Fremont St robbed me blind, we drunkenly stumbled into some foreign non-Ritchie cab driven by a woman, and headed back to the hotel.

Monday I popped into the convention to see what was going down, and also to snag a bunch of beers from Max Bounty. I should probably sign up with them now…I’m sure I’ll get around to that. Tangy was hanging out at the Shoemoney exhibit thingy. He appeared to somehow be equally as drunk as he was the night before. Impressive! No pictures though. After all, I had just rolled out of bed and had yet to do my hair.

I heard a lot of people talking about how they were burned by Copeac and didn’t get an invite to their fancy exclusive party at the Sky Villa Suite at the Palms. I had no hard feelings towards them, however, mainly because I was invited. Heh! However, I really wanted to show Lucas and Franco a good time. Lucas is a great designer, but doesn’t have much to do with affiliate marketing. Franco hardly speaks English (he is visiting from Argentina). How was I supposed to get them in?

Well, pretty easy. We just strolled in around 9:30 and hung out. Thank you everyone for your kind hearts and hospitality. Here is some documentation of all the fun we had:

I probably should have taken more pictures. If anything, it would probably jolt my memory and help me remember all the stuff that happened that I’ve completely forgotten about. There are still some folks that I didn’t get to meet in person, but hopefully next time I won’t be so preoccupied with abusing my liver and more proactive in the meet and greet department.

Until next time…

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.