We arrived safely in Pennsylvania via Las Vegas after spending several days at the Affiliate Summit. First, I’d like to thank Robyn, Aaron, Brock, Kate, Maura, Megan, Kim, and Tara for being an incredible team - Pepperjam was well represented and if you attended the Affiliate Summit to met at least one of us. Second, I’d like to give a shout out to some of our closest friends who we had the opportunity to spend some high-quality time with: Shoemoney, Dillsmack, Andrea, Marcus, Schmuly, CrazyEgg guys, Nicole, David Lewis, Asif, and the Best of the Web guys. Also, we had a blast spending time with and meeting many for the first time Andrew Wee, Kris, Zanox team, CareerBuilder guys, Paresh (Ice.com), Scott Hazard, Alex’s Coupons, and many others.
Day 1 - Sunday
Longest day of the trip since most of our team was stuck in transit because of bad weather on the east coast - in fact, the trip was supposed to take roughly 4 hours and ended up taking over 18 hours with a combo of delays, cancelled flights and missed connecting flights. The good news for me - I arrived early Sunday morning with no problem because I only had to fly from San Fran since I was there on Friday and Saturday night for the Inc. 500 Conference and Awards Ceremony (stay tuned for pics from that event).
The gang got in around 10:30pm and not surprisingly were exhausted - the night ended early, but I had the opportunity throughout the day to spend some time with friends like Shoemoney, David Dellanave, Neil Patel, Marcus Tandler, Brock Siegel and others.
Day 2 - Monday
Best day of the conference. We spent most of the day at our exhibit booth, which was without question one of the top three attended booths of the conference. Many of our industry friends stopped by, while we were able to network with industry people and prospective clients. One of the cool highlights of the day was watching Nicole - Shoemoney’s hired model - hand out exclusive Shoemoney (black) t-shirts…the shirts all went in about two hours or so with the help of some of the Pepperjam girls who assisted Nicole. Also, it was cool that our booth was across from the WebmasterRadio.fm booth (they were reporting LIVE from the show floor) and Revenue Magazine since they were handing out blue cupcakes.
After lunch I attended the “Super Affiliate” Question and Answer panel that featured Shoemoney - in general, the discussion wasn’t that good because there wasn’t a moderator. However, Shoemoney stepped up and played that role and did a solid job - also, his comments were on a much higher-level than the other two panelists, which was a disappointment since the others were supposed to be Super Affiliates - I can think of at least 20 other Super Affiliates that could have been paired with Shoemoney to make the panel awesome. In fact, while the session was Video Taped rumor has it that the video was pulled because one of the panelists was extremely unprofessional and lacked respect for some of the attendees.
On Monday night we went to a pre-party at the Palms sponsored by Jamster - the beginning of the party, which was actually a pitch for us and others to support the Jamster Affiliate program on CJ and / or Zanox, was a terrible bore. However, the fact that it was held in the MTV Real World Suite was pretty cool and also turned into a pretty cool networking opportunity once the presentation was complete. In particular, the team at Zanox was really impressive.
After the pre-party we went to the Tryst Nightclub At Wynn Las Vegas - the event was sponsored by Digital River’s One Network (great affiliate network). I estimate that there were about 1,000 people at this party - it was amazing - rumor has it that the event cost over $150,000.
The event started out with an awards ceremony that didn’t work out all that well since most people were interested in partying and therefore it was almost impossible to hear the MC - Todd Crawford. Award winners included Todd Crawford who got the Legend Award (great choice here), Affiliate of the Year - Scott Hazard from CouponPouch.com, and Jim Kukral from ReveNews.com who won Blogger of the Year. Some advice for next year’s award ceremony planning committee - hold the event before serving drinks or hold it in conjunction with some other event that takes place during the Summit.
The party at the Wynn was one of the best (might have been the best!) parties and networking events I’ve ever gone to at a conference - very, very classy event.
After the Wynn the Pepperjam Team and a small posse of about 20 friends met-up with Shoemoney, Dillsmack, Marcus, Andrea and others at the Ghost Bar (one of the most famous clubs / bars in Vegas, located at the Palms). The partying went straight until the bouncers asked us to leave since the bar was closing (somewhere around 4:00am). HINT: If you drink red bull and vodka until 4:00a.m. it will be difficult to fall asleep - also, you’ll still feel the effects of the red bull long into the next evening.
Day 3 - Tuesday
If you read the above you’ve probably guessed that I was still feeling the effects of the night before, especially the red bull. I met up with the rest of the Pepperjam Team at the exhibit booth, which was once again 5-deep with friends and prospective clients. I had to speak at 3:30 - 4:30pm later that day so for the most part I took it easy prior to my speech. Throughout the day I met a lot of really cool and interesting people, but for the most part I stood back and watched my incredible staff do their thing - these guys (and gals) are the best in the business - if you didn’t have the opportunity to meet either Robyn, Maura, Kate, Kim, Tara, Brock or Aaron you missed out. Pictures coming soon!
My speech was titled “the Confluence of Search and Affiliate Marketing.” However, what I really talked about was affiliate marketing search arbitrage from the perspective of an affiliate - I shared some tips and strategies for how to use search arbitrage to make significant income across various affiliate and ad networks. In general, I felt the event was well attended and after my “formal” presentation there was an excellent Q & A where the audience was very involved and asked excellent questions. In fact, one of the attendees said that he felt my presentation was the best of the entire Affiliate Summit - while I doubt that, I felt that I was very candid and offered some tips that have the potential of making a few people in the room very wealthy.
Day 4 - Wednesday
We flew home safely from Vegas to Wilkes-Barre, PA via Philly.
The conference was a really awesome time - definitely the best Affiliate Summit to date. While I believe the industry is diversifying very quickly I strongly believe that Pepperjam remains one of the hottest and most buzz worthy companies in all of online marketing. If you attended the event and walked by our booth, listened to the enthusiasm of any our our staff, or simply heard someone at the event talking about how Pepperjam seems to be everywhere, you would have left knowing that Pepperjam is a force in this industry - a force that I am proud to be part of - a company that is worthy of the rewards (2006, Inc. 500) and recognitions we are receiving…In no small part, it is due to the fact that the Pepperjam team is made up of the best minds in e-commerce and internet marketing (them, not me.)
A special thanks goes to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for hosting the event and to Team Pepperjam for making it one of the best professional experiences of my life.
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Meet The Pepperjam Team #29 - Meet The Pepperjam All-Stars
