Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

Hannah has been bugging me for a while to post these for almost a year, so here goes..

Clearing up the pile of papers on my desk I managed to find an old notepad and one of the things it contained was the 2008 Barbados awards!   These were written by a few of us on the flight back to the UK and the highlights of which cane be found below:

• Lord Lucan Award – Shaun (who disappeared for pretty much the whole week after a heavy second night out)
• Best use of Color – Sarah (for the sunburn)
• Best Piece of Art – MikeeT
• Best Celebrity Lookalike – Keith Bond for the Buddy Holly glasses
• Worse Driving Award – Lee McCoy
• Under the thumb award – Steve
• Diamond Geezer Award – Aldo
• Best Villain – The Worminator
• Dreams bed Award – Sinead
• Best Irish Accent – Siri
• Clean Nose Award – Joe
• Tourist of the Year – Keith
• Harbour Lights No 1 Fan Award – James
• Most Buoyant Award – Hannah
• Random Stranger Award – Chris
• Most reformed Award – Chris Frost (for not getting kidnapped again)
• Most disappointing performance – Tom Quinn (for NOT making it to the Ship every day)
• Pretty Boy Award – Lee McCoy

Make sure you head over to the refreshed AffiliateFuture blog to find out more about some of this years competitions to win a place on the trip in June!

I had the opportunity to visit Vegas for the first time a few weeks ago for the Affiliate Summit, where I was also lucky enough to speak (presentation will be online soon); previously I’ve only been on panels and whilst there was a small amount of stage fright it seemed to go well.

Vegas as a city was fantastic – the nightlife was amazing and the grandeur of the casinos was a world apart; even though I’d seen it on the TV before I was still mesmerised by the fact that New York, New York had a rollercoaster going around it!
Overall the conference was good – I was there for just two days but managed to get a number of meetings organised and continued to extend our relationships with affiliates over the other side of the pond – there were also a couple of UK representatives out there who it’s always good to catch up with. The only regret that I have is that I didn’t manage to attend as many of the conferences sessions that I would have liked (I think other than my own I got to two of them) but there is always next time for that.

One thing I did notice (and plenty may disagree with me) is that Vegas is the worse place ever to hold a conference! There are so many temptations that meant that visitors seemed to disappear quite early in the day – after visiting the Boston Expo I have to say that I felt this was better located and with the A4UExpo being completely out of the way from, err, everything, it tends to ensure that people stick around all day (and night).

The end of the conference also saw the first Affiliate Triathlon – a charity event where affiliates got the chance to test themselves against others in the industry, including, it seemed, me.

Someone had paid $100 to enter me without warning me in advance, meaning my name was read out after I’d already had a couple of beers and had another in my hand. Drink driving didn’t go my way and I ran over someone whilst competing in the bike race, whilst some managed to get 30 or so balls into the basket in the second test I only managed two and finally out of 5 go’s at hitting a golf ball to test its speed, only one registered and this was lower than everyone elses, even the girls. I finished last. Vengeance will be mine when I find out who registered me for this competition, that’s a real, 100% warning!

The next Affiliate Summit is planned for New York and if you want to learn more about the US market then there really is no better place. Thanks to Missy and Shawn for organising the event and for giving me the opportunity to speak.

As you may have noticed there has been a distinct lack of blog posts over the past few months because, quite frankly, I’ve had very little time – working late into the night and over the weekend seems to be commonplace at the moment but it’s all worth it in the end!

Life at AffiliateFuture is going very well – I’ve recently had a new guy (Sam) who has joined the team and is having a great impact; whilst there have been a few complaints about the interfaces there are some upgrades over the next two weeks which should see an end to these once and for all, which will be nice. Vegas for the Affiliate Summit was great and whilst I’ve yet to complete my write up there are a few blog posts that will be coming from that soon!

Family life is good but Connor has a tendency to cause my sleep deprivation; he only wakes once or twice a night, which is great but I’m definitely going to remember the long nights when Lindsey starts talking about number 4- something that is definitely not on the agenda for me! Our second youngest (Jacob) also started 5 days a week at the local state nursery before he goes up into Reception (full time school) in September.

Dietblog.tv is going to start again soon, once I have the info that I require from Rob B (if you’re reading this and wonder what that means Rob, it’s in reference to your tweet!).

Lastly I wanted to congratulate Matt Bailey for not only getting the IAB Chair but also for getting a blog up and running at last.

More posts to follow – don’t unsubscribe from the feed just yet!