Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

Just wanted to say a massive thanks to everyone who was involved in the Affiliate GTG on Thursday Night; one of the best affiliate events I have attended yet.

It was a fantastic night and there are a few individual thanks to make:

Kevin & Jess:   As the two main organisers who managed to pull it all together both before and on the night!

Josh from Great UK Surveys:  I was tired and ready for going, then you got us THAT cocktail that turned me into a maniac for the rest of the night!

Tom, Kitty (Maximiles) & James (Flightmapping): For attending the pre-networking drinks at the ship!

Hannah, Mike and Mark:  For keeping team Xtreme alive! Hopefully some parts of the gay nightclub will be forgotten sooner than others… the helicopter, arfgh.

Graham: For sharing the Taxi home – hope your coat turns up or at the very least that your wife doesn’t kill you!

Look forward to the next one!

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.

It’s 9.30pm and the aim is to get to bed as soon as I’ve finished this blog post as I am absolutely shattered – I think ‘Expo Lag’ is worse than jetlag and I’m only 20 minutes away in a cab from the conference centre!

So – first things first, a few messages of thanks..

Thanks to Claire, Matt, Chris, Pete and everyone else from Existem for what was, in my mind, the best conference that I’ve ever attended – it’s a glorious thing that our industry has this event and the news of the European version to be hosted in April is very exciting indeed (though even with so much work getting done at these events, the trips away are going to get me divorced!).

Thanks secondly to everyone who turned up to the two panels that I was part of –I was just filling in for our sick MD on the first one (State of the Affiliate Nation) and hope that I did a good job of it, especially with such a huge turnout.   As for my second panel on voucher codes, Duncan made a comment earlier to say that he’d never seen it so busy that people were sitting on the floor and it’s just a shame we ran out of time so quickly and could not take any more questions.

Lastly a big thank you to everyone that sponsored the event, especially the evening parties, giving us all a chance to network – I’ve pretty much lost my voice now but it was absolutely worth it!

So onto the Roundup..

• I don’t want to discourage any other merchants from being innovative, but I think Sunshine.co.uk may already have a just cause to think that they will have another couple of A4UAwards in the bag next year!
   
• I wrote a whole post about the sessions I wanted to attend but only managed to two sessions outside of the ones I was participating in; I guess it’s always going to be the case, especially when I was described by a colleague as a “power-networker who doesn’t stop talking”.   Hopefully I’ll make a few more next year!
• I may have moaned about the lack of preparation time I had to think about the panel where I was filling in for Tom, but I secretly cherished being on another panel, especially one of that calibre;  not sure how it will come out on camera though!
• It was amazing to meet so many people that I’ve not had the chance to before, especially the likes of Doug and Kirsty whose blogs I read every day! 
• Affiliate Marketing is definitely changing – there were some big “traditional” publishers in attendance that last year may have dismissed Affiliate Marketing as a way of increasing revenue but are now actively engaging it.
• If blogging from an iPhone in the pub can get me linked to from e-consultancy and Search Engine Land then I have to do it more often!
• The cruise was good but needed more music earlier to get people in the mood, rather than sitting at the tables all night – a big thanks to DFDS and I’m looking forward to the free cruise already!
• The last night was the best of them all – I have one word to say to Tom Quinn from iPoints though – well, two words mate, Team Extreme!
• I said I’d blog it and I will – the only downer was the Sky VIP bar – I’m really against segregation and I was a little frustrated about it, even if I did manage to blag a way in!
• Can whoever has the photo of my kissing Aldo please burn it so that it doesn’t tarnish his street cred! 

That’s it for now – A successful year that I really enjoyed that was even better than my expectations, now I just need a new liver and a bit of sleep to get ready for the next one.  I’ll add links in to people’s names later etc later when I can function correctly!