I’ve had a few days to recover from Affiliate Summit West 2012 and have been thinking about what I learned this time around. I know for me, that my experience keeps getting better each time I go. I learn a little bit more each time about what I want to get out of the experience. Here are ten things that I learned at Affiliate Summit West 2012:

1. Strengthening Relationships – I don’t live close to many of my “internet friends” as I like to call them and traveling to conferences is usually my only chance of seeing them. While there are many ways to keep in touch (twitter, Facebook, Skype, etc) there is nothing quite like having a face to face conversation.
2. Meeting New People – While it is nice to see old friends, it is also good to make new ones. This time around I was happy to meet some people that I only knew through Twitter including a very funny and flattering one with someone (I don’t want to name names, but thank you for making my day).
3. Little Conversations Matter – While I think it is important to go to the Affiliate Summit Sessions, I also find great value in having even quick conversations with people. You never know what you might pick up.
4. Help Others Out – The first morning I was sitting down to breakfast with my roommate Kim Rowley when Eric Souza came by. We had a really nice conversation about his wife’s website and what he could do with it. We were able to share some ideas that I hope he was able to use and I got the chance to do some brainstorming. I also call these a “you know more than you think you do session” and I come away very inspired. Plus the website is in a related niche to one of my own and we may be able to work together in the future.
5. Vision vs. Sight – Everybody has sight but not everyone has a vision. I learned this from Eric Thomas in his keynote speech. Every day since then I have visualized where I want to be and what success means for me.
   

   Eric the Hip Hop Preacher Thomas

6. Keep a To-Done Book – I really enjoyed the Mastermind Groups Exposed session and one of the takeaways for me was the idea of keeping a list of all the things you accomplished in the day. I have many days where I don’t think I accomplished much but in reality many things were done. It will be nice to see that and have a record over time.
7. Schedule Some Things – Most of the time I attend a conference I don’t make too many plans in advance and try to go with the flow. Well this time around I didn’t get to have much time with one of my friends or our traditional martinis and I’m really disappointed it didn’t work out. Next time I will have more of a plan for this to happen.
8. The Blogger’s Lounge is Fun – Affiliate Summit East 2011 was the first time I covered the conference as a blogger, but my time was limited and I wasn’t able to spend as much time in the Blogger’s Lounge as I wanted to. This time I was there for the full conference and was able to visit multiple times each day. It was a great place to upload a blog post, do some writing, have a bit of downtime, play a game (Jenga anyone?) and connect with the others that were also covering the conference. Thank you to Heather Smith for taking care of all of us.
9. Have Some Fun – While it is a work conference it is also important to have fun. Whether it was hitting the über cool Shareasale party (can you say you have gotten to dance underneath the Eiffel Tower?) or taking in some sightseeing, make some time for fun. It helps to recharge your batteries and connect with people in a different way.
   

   Eiffel Tower

10. Follow Up – When someone tells you to email them, contact them on Skype or give them a phone call after the conference then do it. I know I really mean it when I tell someone to do that and other people probably do too.

Also of note: I need to remember to bring a real camera and take more pictures of myself and friends, I look good in a cowboy hat, and bringing a prepaid flat rate postage box would be a good idea to bring home extra stuff.

Thank you to Missy Ward and Shawn Collins for running a really great conference and being so accessible. I really value your friendship and the opportunity to attend.

I would love to know what you learned at Affiliate Summit in the comments below.

Day 3 of Affiliate Summit West began nice and early with the Early Morning Whiteboarding session with Eric Nagel. It was a bit subdued after a late night of karaoke and a bit of a delay in getting coffee, but it was very informative. It was well worth getting up early for.

Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel

After that it was time for a breakfast. I really enjoy the meals at Affiliate Summit (not so much for the quality of the food) but the chance to get to know some new people and reconnect with old friends. Plus you don’t have to miss out on the conference by trekking off to a restaurant somewhere else.

Then I headed over to the Pinnacle Awards and Keynote. Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were quite the dapper duo for presenting the awards to the winners. Shawn even had a top hat on for the event. There were many tears from the winners and I was very proud to say that I know many of the winners.

Eric ET the Hip Hop Preacher Thomas gave the keynote. He is an excellent motivational speaker and I really connected with his message of vision vs. sight and positioning vs. pouting. Plus he is from Detroit and went to Michigan State University, which just ratcheted up his cool factor.

After the keynote I spent some time in both the Exhibit Hall and the Bloggers Lounge. Affiliate Summit is a wonderfully productive conference to go to, but it creates its own special type of tired. So I made the decision to go to no more a sessions that day. The nice thing about getting a Platinum pass is knowing that I will be able to watch all the sessions I missed online in about a month.

After the conference ended, then I had one more night in Las Vegas. I spent it by going to dinner with Tricia Meyer, Ashleigh Ball, and Cindy Ballard. We headed over the Venetian and did a little sightseeing, especially when I found that Ashleigh had never been to Vegas before. I wanted her to see something really beautiful and I that is one of my favorite hotel/casinos there.

We then headed over to Toby Keith’s to wrap up the conference with some live music and dancing. It was so much fun and a great way to wrap everything up. I’m very glad that I didn’t have an early morning flight the next morning.

You can read about my Affiliate Summit West 2012 Day 1 Recap and Affiliate Summit West Day 2 Recap.

Now is the time to register for Affiliate Summit Central 2012 and Affiliate Summit East 2012.

Day 2 of Affiliate Summit West didn’t begin as early as I would have liked. I really wanted to attend the Early Morning Whiteboarding session with Eric Nagel, didn’t quite make it. It was a just a bit too early after the late night the evening before. I did begin the day with a decent breakfast provided by the conference and then headed over to the Opening Keynote.

It was given by Jon Spoelstra. I thought that he had some really great ideas of how to succeed in business, including his idea of “new as a way of life” but most of his examples were dated. Still I did enjoy hearing him speak.

Then it was off to the session I was most looking forward to: Mastermind Groups Exposed – Success in Affiliate Marketing. Full disclosure the speakers on this panel are people that I consider friends, but I really wanted to learn more about this topic. I think being in a Mastermind Group can be a wonderful and successful thing to be in when done right, so I was hoping to get some advice about this. I definitely came away with great ideas and I look forward to implementing them when I find the perfect group of 3 for myself.

After lunch it was time for Killer Email and Social List Building with Hunter Boyle from Aweber. I didn’t know what to expect from this session but I was really happy that I went. He had some very actionable steps backed up by data of what works. I’ve already started implementing some of them already and look forward to seeing what happens.

The final session of the day was Digital Curation – What it Means to Affiliates with Scott Jangro. I am familiar with his new project Shareist and Pinterest, both curation tools, but had no idea about any of others. So it was good to learn more about this topic, as I am sure it is going to be of great interest moving forward.

In between sessions I hit the massive Exhibit Hall with their many booths (and free pens!) and spoke to some people. Mostly I took it all in and filed away where I wanted to focus on the next day when hopefully it would be less crowded. After that I took in some quiet time in the before dinner. I also got the hang of the multiple floors, with their mezzanine levels by this time.

For dinner I went to Magaritaville (totally cheesy, but decent food and margaritas) with my roommate Kim Rowley, the great people of GTO Management: Karen Garcia, Joel Garcia, siblings and the really funny Daniel Feinberg (I wonder if there is a video from Karaoke…).

After dinner it was back to Caesar’s Palace for Affiliate Karaoke. That was an absolute blast, after some initial hiccups with the equipment. I know there are some videos floating around from that, but I will leave you to find them on your own. I was a spectator and not a participant for this one.

You can read my Affiliate Summit West 2012 Day 1 Recap here.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 was held once again in Las Vegas. This year it was hosted at Caesar’s Palace in their convention center. I had a room in the Palace Tower which was closely located to the convention center. I missed Affiliate Summit West last year when it was at the Wynn, but did attend in 2010 when it was held at the Rio.

One of my biggest complaints about that hotel was how far the way from my room to the convention center was. Plus the Rio is not on the strip, so it was a cab or shuttle ride away from everything. Caesar’s Palace is centrally located on the strip. I arrived on Saturday (the conference started on Sunday morning) to make the most of my time and get settled in before the start.

The first day began with sessions in the morning. My first session was 25 Ways to Improve Your Website with Vinny O’ Hare. It was a great session with actionable steps that you can take. This session was geared towards beginners, but even I picked up a thing or two.

I then hit the Meet Market. This is a smaller version of the Exhibit Hall with merchants and networks set up at tables in a large room. I have mixed feeling about the Meet Market. It tends to get very crowded early in the day, which can make it difficult to talk to people. Some vendors also tend to leave before the closing time so if you wait you may not get a chance to to talk to them at all. Plus it is getting more and more filled with questionable networks and they are squeezing out smaller merchants. It would be nice to see more of a blend but I am sure it is all based on the timing of registration. I know that the Meet Market tends to sell out pretty early.

I then grabbed a quick snack during the snack break (loved this idea, but would have loved a vegetarian slider option) and then snuck into the very packed Link Building session. It was a comparison of white hat/grey hat/black hat link building. The summary of the presenter Robert Adler was a link is a link. You be the judge.

The final session of the day for me was the SEO Clinic. This is always a great one. You can submit your own site for an on the spot review by some of the best SEO experts out there. Even if you do not submit your website it is a great way to learn ways to improve your own.

After that it was onto dinner and then the Shareasale Under the Stars Party. This year it was held at the Chateau nightclub at the Paris Hotel and Casino. It was hands down the best one that I have been to. The location was fabulous and the DJ was really great. Once the dancing started, the dance floor was crowded the whole night. If you came in and never made it up the elevator to the roof, then you missed out. The outdoor space was right under the Eiffel Tower and appropriately enough the starry night. Thanks to Shareasale for hosting a great event!

Then it was off to bed to rest for the next day.

You can register for Affiliate Summit Central and Affiliate Summit East right now.

I just got back yesterday from Affiliate Summit West and I am exhausted but in a good way. I am refreshed and full of new ideas. I had the great opportunity to cover the conference as a blogger and did some live blogging from the sessions and keynotes.

There were sessions for everyone from affiliates, merchants, affiliate managers, and more. My focus were on sessions of interest to affiliates. Below I have added links to all of the sessions that I attended.

• Pinnacle Awards and Keynote with Eric ET the Hip Preacher Thomas
• Digital Curations – What it Means to Affiliates
• Killer Email and Social List Building
• Mastermind Groups Exposed – Success in Affiliate Marketing
• Opening Keynote with Jon Spoelstra
• SEO Clinic
• Link Building – the Reality in Practice
• 25 Ways to Improve Your Website

Look for my recap posts soon. Registration for both Affiliate Summit East 2012 and Affiliate Summit Central are open.

Pinnacle Awards

Keynote and Pinnacle Awards

Got started right away with the Pinnacle Awards. The winners are:

Affiliate of the Year – Coupon Cabin

Affiliate Manager of the Year – Kim Salvino

Exceptional Merchant of the Year – Tiny Prints

Affiliate Advocate of the Year – Tim Storm

Best Blogger of the Year – Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketing Legend of the Year – Kim Rowley

Eric (ET the Hip Hop Preacher) Thomas – author the Secret to Success

@ericthomasbtc

Eric the Hip Hop Preacher Thomas

read any books by Malcolm Gladwell the Outliers – talks about coming from different environments

We all have the opportunity to get where we want

Wants to talk about the idea of success. It is not about how you start but how you finish.

He is not a kid who grew up with a silver spoon. You can start from the bottom and you can literally get to the top. He is just a dissertation away from completing his PhD. Took him 12 years to get his 4 year degree. It may not happen in the time you want it to happen, but if you quit it will not happen.

He doesn’t know what success means for you. It can mean a lot of things. Success is based on individuality. It starts with a vision.

He is from Detroit, he can tell you who from his block went to college, but more are in prison or dead.

Family is important for him. His father was not in his life. His greatest accomplishment is that he has been married 21 years, being there for his children. He was so proud of his daughter making the B basketball team. Cute anecdote about taking his daughter shoe shopping.

His faith is always important.

His pastor told him what he saw for him. It was a change for him. His pastor believed in him before he could believe in himself.

Every day he wakes up with a mental picture of where he wants to be, what he wants. Even though his circumstance was homelessness, his vision was owning a home.

You are going to get where you want to get to.

A seed is going to become a tree. It is the beginning stages, but you are not going to stay there.

His wife wanted him to get a real job to take care of his family. His mother too. She got the seed confused with the tree. He didn’t see the seed, he saw the tree.

What do you need to know that you don’t know?

He knew growing up in Detroit that there was not the information he needed, he needed to go elsewhere.

He did get discouraged. But someone told him that he needed the right information.

Dr. Bing Carlson was the first book that he was given, it was true to his life.

He wears a Detroit Tiger’s hat on the cover of his book so that other kids growing up in Detroit can see that someone that was in the same position could succeed.

Use what you got to get what you need.

He had to branch out at college to get help. He went to the smartest kid in class who was from Kansas City. He went to Michigan State.

He gave him advice to dress differently, sit in front, give the teacher eye contact, smile. He asked him to read all three of the teacher’s books. Ask questions of the teacher in class. He got a 3.5 class and the teacher told him that he was the most improved.

He had to humble himself and go to the person with the information. He mastered the art of body language!

Failure is not an option!

You have to continue to do this until you are successful. You need the show-up room.

Failure – when your best is just not good enough.

I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 things that do not work. Thomas Edison

Vision vs. Sight

-everyone has sight but very few have vision

he has a vision for 2012, it is written down and he sees it every day. He spends 5 minutes every day to have a dream session. He has to see himself doing it. This one is important. Need to devote 5-10 minutes every day seeing yourself as successful.

If you spend 30 minutes having a pity party, then you need to spend an hour having a dream session to offset it.

Work vs. Wishing

Took him 10 years to write his book, he stopped writing the story years ago. But he spent all this time wishing that it would get done. Instead of working on it.

Positioning v. pouting

-when you position yourself properly than opportunities happen. There are certain things that do not happen from your living room.

Change vs. Chatting

-he made the changes that he had to make at Michigan State, it was a different culture. Different writing style. There was a whole lot of talking at weekly meetings but there were no changes in results.

Earn vs. Want

-what ever we are willing to earn we can get it

www.etthehiphoppreacher.com

Facebook: Et the Hip Hop Preacher

Twitter: @ericthomasbtc

Scott Jangro

Digital Curation: What it Means to Affiliates

Scott Jangro

President MechMedia, Inc.

@jangro

Has been a publisher for years. He has built a lot of websites.

You get a great idea, buy a domain, install wordpress, and then you stop. Why?

Creating content is hard, it is not for everybody. Even if you are a writer coming up with stuff on a regular basis is tough.

The other is you put up your best stuff and nobody is listening. You can only do that for so long.

If you keep it up long enough you can gain an audience, but hard to get there.

Why are you starting this website? Because you want to write about an awesome topic is not enough. Your website or blog should serve a purpose. It should have a topic that is sizeable enough to build an audience.

It should solve a problem or fulfill a need.

You can not rely on chance.

Curation solves a few of those problems. It makes coming up with content a little easier and solves the problem of why you are doing it.

What is digital curation?

Curation traditionally means someone who collects information or things that go into a collection in a museum or zoo.

Digital curation is the same thing but online. You have a topic and you are going to go out the find the best stuff out on the internet.

It is human nature to share.

Steven Rosenbaum – Magnify.net is a video curation platform. Also wrote Curation Nation.

Example is someone built a collection of Susan Boyle videos.

Robert Scoble – Works for Rackspace – Scobleizer is his blog. He is into real time stuff.

Robin Good – MasterNewMedia.org – he is from Italy and is passionate about online curating.

All these sites and services started cropping up.

-Qrait, Pinterest, Posterous Spaces, Storify, Quora, Kurat, Curata, delicious (evolved to this), Scoop.it, pearltrees, Bo.lt, magnify.net

As much as curation is about pulling things together, it is also about organizing information.

If you want to try it out then Scoop.it is probably the best one to try right now.

He also plugs his own Shareist.com

Why is Curation Critical?

If we just leave it to google then we are missing out on a lot of stuff.

Information Discovery Spectrum

Random to Specific

Aggregation is not Curation

-something to keep in mind – it is tempting to automate, find an RSS site and not filter it manually – diminishing the value of what you do though. Resist the temptation.

Choose a Topic

-pick one that solves a problem, that you are fulfilling a need to an audience out there.

Create a Profile of Your Ideal Fan

-picture who they are, think very specifically about who they are. How old are they, what kind of car do they drive, how much money do they make? Give them a name. Everything that you do for that site, you should act like you are talking to them. It is more personal.

Discover Great Content and Organize It

-it is not necessarily going to be one topic, you can organize them separately. You do not want to be too vague.

Publish and Distribute

-the biggest mistake the affiliate make is that they act on the single focus of getting people coming in, click the link and set the cookie. You are missing out on the opportunity for them to become a customer of yours, become your fan. The next time they are looking for something they are going to go to Google again. Getting them to become your customer should be your first goal.

-there are many tools out there to curate, but make sure you publish to something that you own as a hub. You want to use the service to drive traffic to something that you own. Do distribute to your social networks and emails.

Engage With Your Audience

-this should be part of your overall strategy

-write content in a way that gets them to engage with you, ask them for feedback. Send out emails and ask them to reply to you. That trains your audience to respond to you.

What audience can you build?

He is known as the tv repair guy. He bought a samsung dlp television and 4 years later it broke. He took it apart and fixed it. His affiliate mind decided to blog about the repair, step by step. The post took over the blog. It dwarfed all traffic on his blog. Thousands of comments. He was making a lot of money with an affiliate link to this part. Now the traffic is dying out because the tv doesn’t really exist. He didn’t do anything to capture those users as a fan. He should have put a newsletter together. He should have put an image of the customer together.

Is curation a viable SEO strategy?

-if you are adding value and solving a problem, and people like it, then Google will pick it up and you will rank – the goal is to always create something unique. Everything that you curate, you should add your own perspective to it. Plus the way you organize it is unique.

Where is the line between curation and new content?

He thinks there is a spectrum. It is a publishing model. We all get content from elsewhere.

Example of Digital Curators who do an excellent job?

-he thinks this is a personal thing, so hard to answer. His favorite is his business partner.

Is curation the same thing as blogging?

-you can curate on a blog. It is the type of publishing that you are doing. When you are writing about stuff that you come up with that is creation. Talking about things that you find elsewhere is curation.

Hunter Boyle

Killer Email and Social List Building Techniques

Hunter Boyle

Sr. Business Development Manager of Aweber

@hunterboyle

@aweber

He has been with Aweber since last summer. Email service provider is the core of their business.

He has been involved in email marketing since 1999

Grew several email lists, including sales and marketing update and the marketing experiments journal.

Manage partnerships and affiliate marketing

List Building

Key:

An effective list building strategy is more than just a bunch of tactics – it’s tightly integrated with ROI

You want to make sure that content is driving everything that you do.

Case: Social Media Examiner

Launched October 2009

Founder was not a Social Media expert

teamed up with prominent subject experts – people who had audiences, he reached out to them

used quality content to build audience

didn’t use email for sales until 10K subscribers – email is about relationship building to the founder

Top 5 tactics

-pop up form (lightbox) gets 70% of opt ins

-bonus incentive lifts response -

-confirmed double opt in boosts quality (your list may be smaller, but the quality tends to be higher, the engagement level of the subscribers) – he was able to use this to sell ads as well with proof that his subscribers were engaged.

-social proof reduces anxiety – he has words of praise under the opt-in box with third party testimonials -take some time to send out a preview copy of your ebook or bonus to get a quote from someone well known

-Social Media makes sharing easy

Results:

-opt in list grew by 234% year over year from Nov ’10 to November ’11

-currently at 117,000 and growing (actually 125,000 after slides prepared)

-site averages 450K visitors per month

-now sells newsletter ad space for up to $3,600

Research:

Which tactics have worked best for you?

-registration during purchase

-online events (webinar)

-website registration page

were the highest

-paid search

-offline events (in store)

-co-registration programs

-blog registration page

-facebook registration page

-social media sharing buttons

-email to a friend

were others ideas

Key:

Support your tactics with research and testing; integrate them with ROI goals to build strategy

Recommended Sites:

MarketingExperiments, MarketingSherpa, WhichTestWon.com

Landing Pages

-two types

before landing pages – where site visitors first opt into your list (blog, squeeze page)

after landing pages – what they see after they sign up (confirmation, special offers)

Case: Social Triggers

Top 3 Tactics

-multiple forms, close to content – he has a form under the header as a bar, plus one in the sidebar at top. He has one at the end of the blog post. There is another in the footer.

-varied copy and calls to action

-social proof builds credibility – he has a quote from Chris Brogan

Results:

-blog updates (RSS) list tripled in five months to 10,000+

-content and links to subject experts, social proof – there is no harm in testing by adding more than one sign up box – Derek Halpern said the one in the header and at the end of each post were most successful

-opt-in form proximity and variety had big impact on growth

Form style light test vs. slide box (that came from right)

Jewelry site – both activated on 4^th visit to the site, just once

The light box had 59% more subscribers – more focus on the light box

1)Deliver on sign up expectations and offers – people need to see what is next while they are waiting for the confirmation. They don’t generally leave your site. Example: Opt-in page from Mixergy (has logos and social proof). Confirmation page says what you are going to get from the site, it is not just a thank you page. Take some time to customize the page to get people to engage with your site.

Example: WineEnthusiast – confirmation page has a followup form that asks for more information, they can increase the targeting. The confirmation email has the same bullets as the confirmation page. It is relevant and easy to understand. It tells you what you can expect from the email list.

2. Test Social Media and email sharing. The thank you page has three ways to share via outlook email, linkedin, and gmail. Aweber has a link to the download, links to popular articles, and more helpful email marketing resources.
3. Never leave your subscribers at a dead end! Don’t make it look like they have gotten an error message or with no actions to take after signing up.

Research:

Are you testing the most effective variables?

-72% of people are testing subject line but only 35% effective

-Landing page and target audience have most effective rates at 41% and 42% respectively

-Call to action is tested 50% of the time and 34% effective

Testing Ideas for Landing Pages

-what’s your best coversion rates for forms? Your goals?

-can you elicit more info than name and email?

-are your forms

Autoresponders

-great way to cultivate longer relationships

-series can be as short or long as needed (5 or more is the sweet spot)

-engagement analytics will guide you

Copyblogger

Engage, Offer, Connect – sign up in May, first pitch is not until August. They wait a number of months before pitching. At end of August they ask for feedback.

Is your content strong enough for a series?

What are your competitors doing?

Advanced: Consider separate paths and segmenting auto-responder recipients.

Social Media

-augments (not replaces) email, RSS lists.

-likes/tweets are the first step, not the last

Tip: test social media on before and after opt-in landing pages

Razoo.com

-can sign up directly to a list with email, or via Facebook or with Google – test giving people options to sign up to your list

Social Media Examiner on their confirmation page has a badge to post on your webpage, and a like our page on Facebook.

Tip: Customize Your Facebook Pages

Incentivize, Promote Sharing, Engage

Tip: Use Landing Pages, Social + Email for Contests

Timex Malaysia is running a contest to guess the finish time for their CEO’s marathon – they are getting sign ups and likes on Facebook

Use social tie ins for Likes and Emails

test different types of incentives

create auto-responder series for social media

Email: hunterb@aweber.com

For more examples visit: www.Aweber.com/blog

Become an Aweber affiliate and get a 30% monthly recurring commissions.

Mastermind Groups

• Eric Nagel, President, Eric Nagel & Associates, Inc. – @ericnagel (Moderator)
• Todd Farmer, CEO, PerformStreet Media – @toddfarmer
• Tricia Meyer, Owner, Sunshine Rewards – @sunshinetricia

Eric has been an affiliate for a number of years now, in a number of verticals and niches. He wants everyone to come to his whiteboarding session tomorrow morning.

Todd Farmer is now an affiliate. He is currently helping his kid with videogamekid.com

Tricia Meyer has been an affiliate for 7 years and does everything from pop culture, coupons, to cash back.

Eric says he owes his success this past year to his mastermind group.

Mastermind Defined.
-Think and Grow rich
-”for the creation and carrying out of your plan”

mastermind myths
-not a huge email list, their group is just 3 people. Doesn’t recommend more than 4
-not a mlm pitch, you shouldn’t have to pay to join
-not a stuffy group of intellectuals discussing problems of the world
-no cost just time

What it really is
-tight group of like minded professional who trust and respect one another, and who genuinely aspire to help, motivate and benefit each other.
-uses an example of having people you can trust in the industry that you can share with
-he says it is useless if you are with a group of people who do not take your advice
-Todd says it is very helpful that Eric is brutally honest.

Who Can Mastermind?
-Groups of Merchants, Affiliates, and Affiliate Managers.
-Hybrids – representing each perspective
-Specialty Groups: sports affiliates, coupon affiliates, niche retailers
-for the most part they do not compete with each other, but they are very open with each other

Why Mastermind: Reasons (Todd)
-Socialize – water cooler – it is hard to work from home by yourself at times
-Accountability – who is making sure that you get stuff done, who makes sure that you have deadlines? It is good to have other people help keep you accountable. It is very easy to push back a deadline but a mastermind group helps to keep you productive.
-Focus – many of affiliate marketers suffer a bit from ADD, he has over 350 domains. A bit of “oh shiny” syndrome.
-Opportunity identification and vetting – There are more opportunities than there is time in the day. He doesn’t need help finding ideas. It is the little stuff right in front of his face that he doesn’t see. They help him to see those things. Just verbalizing the opportunity to the group helps you realize if it is a good idea or not a good idea.
-feedback – it is nice to have someone that you trust that does the same thing that you can bounce ideas off of.
-advice – same thing
-bounce ideas – no fear of theft, thoughtful insight and perspective – business people’s biggest concern is having their ideas stolen.
-review current projects – feedback, suggestions, ideas, edit
-stay focused – holding yourself accountable among peers
-consistently make progress
-help each other – technology (easily finding a wordpress plugin for example), business scalability, justification – share knowledge and expertise

Needs:
-people you can trust – FrieNDA – you can have a
-respect opinion
-stay focused
-consistency – if you set a date and time then you have to be on time. Do it for an hour if that is the commitment, chit chat afterward
-make progress
-be responsive – when your fellow members put out a question, respect that they want your advice and answer them as quickly as you can
-focus on your members’ needs – if you come into it selfish, it is not going to work. It has to be selfless. When you help them out, you will find success.

Benefits:
-different perspective
-creativity
-constructive criticism
-”look inward”, self reflection
-kick in the pants!
-show off – you can let them know about things first and they will share it out
-grow together – many proud “parent” moments in the group

Added Benefits:
-review of new projects
-copy editing
-first people to share, blog, announce, promote comment
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How to Mastermind -Tricia
-establish goals, mission – think about who fits into it with you
-set goals, priorities – think about short term goals and long term goals. Both for yourself and the group. It could be things that are small like color scheme and it could be big like a complete site overhaul.
-size of group – 3 or 4 is good. It is going to dictate how successful the group will be. There are less distractions than with a bigger group. Everybody needs to be there every time. It is not productive if people miss it.
-identity process – think about how you are going to structure your meetings
-schedule – find the best time for all of you. They work around their children’s school schedule and meet on Fridays from 2 to 3

Needs:
-trust – you want to be excited for each other and proud of each other
-like minded people – you don’t want to be exactly the same but you want to to have the same work ethic. They all want to find a balance between their family and their business.
-diversity – it is good to have different skill sets – it is how you grow
-technology

Tech:
-voice only – at the minimum you have to have conference calls, once a week with a reliable connection
-video conferencing – some pros and cons – people have to pay attention and you know this on video – so much communication is through the visual, you can get a little bit more out of it if you can’t meet in person. Cons can be distracting, can be more bandwidth if you don’t have a good connection. Some people are not comfortable on video.
-screen sharing – good way to exchange information quickly

Skype – they use Skype and it is free to use the voice. They already have headphones and computers. It is also available on your phone, but not as reliable. You can drop links to be able to look at things. There are recording tools that you can use with Skype.
Google Hangouts – they tried it out to tell us about it. They spent the first 20 minutes playing around with the fun visual effects. Then it froze Tricia’s computer. They found it difficult and distracting. They also could not figure out to make it private. It did not work for them. A mastermind group does not have to be public knowledge. It is free and does include video though. You can also drop links, do screen sharing, and document sharing as well as YouTube video sharing.
FreeConferenceCall.com – it records your calls for you and they do that for free. That can be helpful when doing a site review so that you have it recorded.

Tips:
-Leader – you don’t have to decide at the beginning, but there has to be someone that takes the lead. It can be something that you take turns on.
-Consistency – meeting time – technology – the biggest reason they have heard that it doesn’t work is lack of consistency. Everyone has to know what is expected of them.
-Limit Commitment – 1 year group, renew as desired. You need some time to see the benefits of your group. You have to give people an out if it doesn’t work out. Don’t have to make a big production of deciding if you are going to renew.
-Threats – anything non-productive – must identify those problems early – it could be a bad headset that doesn’t allow you to hear someone. Fix them early.
-identify problems early
-if you spend more time planning, you’re not on the same page

How we do it:
-tight, small group (just 3)
-end of week (friday 2pm) – it is a positive way to end the week for them.
-round table – normally – review goal accomplishments – discuss current issues – they make sure there is some balance so that everyone can talk
-one person focus – monthly – they spend a good 20 to 30 minutes on one person to really focus on what that one person is doing – it is very important to come back to it and find out if it worked, how they are doing.
-always end calls with Goals for the next week – Eric they already have the goals for the next week done and don’t have to sit down on Monday not knowing what to work on.

Following Up:
-reminders of previous week’s goals – she takes notes on the call to follow up on
-unscheduled check in – twitter, facebook, skype
-mid-week email check-in – Eric likes to write down everything he has done for the day for productivity

How to Guide:
-identify prospects
-define vision, goals, schedule, technology
-Month 1-3: – understanding, uncover needs, establish cadence, low hanging fruits
-Months 4-9: make major progress (seo audits)
-Months 10-12: wind up the year – what worked

What about if you are new?
-you have so much to bring to the table, you know more than what you think.

How can you find people?
-exchange emails with people here, exchange messages and get to know people first

Jon Spoelstra

Opening Keynote

Sarah Beeskow
Sr. Manager of Merchant Development for Shareasale.com’s Client Services Department

5087 people in attendance

Jon Spoelstra – Keynote Speaker

He has a message on his phone that he will call back anyone that calls his number and leaves his name and number. He always does until he thought a phone call from someone calling from Ms. America was a prank.

He enjoyed the experience, shares an anecdote.
He wrote Marketing Outrageously. He found out that he did his best stuff in a bad economy. Tried to figure out why. He knows the economy is bad now and doesn’t look to get better anytime soon.
He shows a list of years that he has done well, and they are all official Recession years.

Wants us to write down 3 things.
1) New as a way of life. He was part of the New Jersey Nets and they don’t have many fans, even in New Jersey. They had to sell tickets and sponsorships. He decided to call on people in Japan. There are many Japanese companies based in New York and New Jersey. They did well getting sponsorships. He got to know the presidents of major corporations. He is out to dinner with the President of Sony. He asked him if his engineers are under a lot of pressure to come up with new ideas. He replied that new as a way of life. If we don’t do new we die in the marketplace. On the plane flight back that is all that he thought of for marketing. He realized it is something that has to be ongoing not just at a think tank. He talks about a tri-fold brochure. Every team in sports has one as their ticket brochure. He asked the founder of Blue Blockers why they used a catalog and not a trifold. He replied that they don’t work. So they decided to do a ticket catalog. It was 8 pages and sent to a list they developed themselves. People who had bought single game tickets. They sent out 70,000. For every dollar it cost them they got $10 back. They decided to do it again the following year, they sent out 6 times and got the same response. He isn’t recommending that we get into the catalog business, just to rethink how we do things. He bought all his clothes online and not anything from a catalog. Yet companies still send many of them out. With Mandalay Baseball Properties they ran newspaper ads to get people to come to their websites. Usually many ads at a minor league baseball stadium. They did a wall of advertising with an LED sign. A well run team can make 450,000 dollars on ads. With the LED wall they make $2.5 million. They wanted to make it bigger and better. Steve Jobs in coming up with the iPod, he moved quickly to pay for exclusive rights to Toshiba technology that would allow them to store 1,000 songs on a drive the size of a quarter. They now make more money selling music then the do on computers.
2) What’s it gonna take? In pro sports there are only a handful of teams that even think about winning. They are focused on just getting a little bit better. He wanted to know what it would take to compete for a championship in two years. The answer was money so he wanted to know how much. The answer was $5 million. He figured that was easy to get. But they needed to have two superstars and they only had one. So he went to the VP of tickets to ask what’s it going to take to have the best ticketing selling department. The answer was money, so they sat down to figure out how much. Companies that he consult with never have the answer. They need to know. 12 years ago he started the Dayton Dragons. At the time no minor league team had sold out every ticket for the whole season. He wanted to know what it was going to take to do that. They set that as their goal. They did it that season. They have now done it for 11 straight years. 7500 people per game.
3) Push the outrageous envelope. Ad guy that wrote George Be Careful. Did some VW ads. He asked Jon what they were doing to improve the Nets image. He said the answer is jock straps. Give one to every man, woman and child that comes to the game. It will get people talking about the New Jersey Nets. He said it without a smile on his face, it was intimidating to Jon. So he went back to his office and wrote it down on a piece of paper. Put it in an envelope. Wrote on the outside of the envelope too. Started pushing it across his desk to come up with naysayers would say. He is also thinking of the things he has to do before he tells anyone about the idea. So he went to a supplier to see what it would take to get 500,000 jock straps. Two weeks later he gets a price of $3. They did hats for $.91. That was $3.5 million. They would rather spend that on a player that can’t play. So he thought about doing it for just 4 games. His supplier told him that there wasn’t enough time, too many stitches. He never did the jockstraps. He brings it up because it is good to vet the idea before you go to someone else so you know what the naysayer is going to whack you with. He shows the Aflac duck. He wants us to imagine the board of Aflac, as traditional company when they proposed the duck campaign. Their sales have gone up. He proposes that it was an outrageous idea for that company.

They regarded newspaper ads as direct response, with ads they wanted a 3 to 1 ratio. If it pulls that then run it until the readers tell you to stop. When they quit buying.