Affiliate Summit West was the first affiliate conference I have aver attended, and I was impressed! Kim and I made the trip to Vegas together and canvassed the entire Summit from top to bottom for the better part of two days.
The Rio where the conference was held was full, so we got a room at Treasure Island and rented a 2007 Mustang convertible. You should have seen he people walking around Vegas in winter coats. It was 50 degrees outside and we had on short sleeves with the top down. People thought we were nuts! Little did they know we are from Nebraska where it was -10 and snowing that day 
One of the highlights was the Affiliate Bash party at the Tao Nightclub. There was a mini-performance by Blue Man Group who was launching their own affiliate program. Check out this video I found on John Chow’s website of their performance:
One of the big reasons I never did many conferences in the past was because I was always concerned about my return on investment. The “Expo Only” tickets for Affiliate Summit were $200 each, and with airfare and hotel the total for the two of us making the trip was about $1,650.
But i my opinion, the opportunity to network with more than 3,000 of the industry’;s top players was well worth it. While we were there I was able to hook up with some exciting new affiliate companies, sign sponsors for Top Affiliate Challenge like Pepperjam Ads, talk one on one with John Chow about being a guru on the show, and meet Brian McCarthy from Revver.com out some exciting things going on with the Revver player.
If I had to peg one of the oddest tables at the Summit, it would have to be AshleyMadison.com had the most interesting concept. They were giving away tshirts that said “life is short have an affair.” It turns out they specialize in matching married people together who want to have an affair. I can’t say that I will be using the website anytime in the future, but I guess that just goes to prove there is a market on the internet for jut about everything!
CPA Empire had a booth that looked like it required an engineering staff to assemble. Seriously though, I give huge props to their marketing department for making their people stand out from the crowd. Their entire staff was dressed in blue jogging suits. They were seriously the most comfortable exhibitors there, and stood out like a flower in a pile of stuffed suits.
Pepperjam’s table and booth were happening places too. Joel Comm gave away 5 $100 bills on Sunday to promote his new TextCastLive service. It’s an interesting concept - they are branding themselves as Awebber for cell phones. the idea is that people opt in to receive messages on their cell phones. It just might work if they can overcome the intense dislike for junk text messages on cell phones and properly control their clients’ use of the service.
I met people who flew in from as far away as South Africa and Turkey for the Summit, got a bunch of pictures and made more connections that you can shake a stick at.
I have a lot more to come on all of the great people I met at the Summit. More to come later!
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