Affiliate Summit East 2008 : My Final Day

This is a great day for me to be remembered in my life!

My first experience of the Affiliate Summit has reached the final day. Lot of things have happened in the past three days. I live in Chennai – INDIA – and have traveled approximately 8200 miles to attend this event!

I just rethink on what I have in store to take home…

• 20+ Precious new friends in the affiliate marketing arena
• 10+ Contacts with experts with whom I could refer & get more info
• Experience of face-to-face meetings with my Affiliate Managers at the networks
• Information and contacts with networks to make new business
• Abundance of knowledge gained from educational sessions
• Priceless ideas that have popped out in my mind like idea bulbs
• Knowledge of the latest trends in the affiliate marketing industry

What more can I ask for from my first Affiliate Summit!

I need to thank Shawn Collins, Missy Ward, Amy Rodrigues, Teressa Caldwell, Kim Rodgers, Ian Fernando, Emily Bouton, Greg Gillman, Jason Gill and all my new found friends for making my experience a great one at the Affiliate Summit.

More on the sessions of the final day…

Web 2.0 for Affiliates – By Ernie St. Gelais, Co-founder of LinkConnector

In this presentation, Ernie clearly classified the difference between – Web 1.0 & Web2.0 – and also provided clear examples to understand the difference. A simple explanation would be that – a static site is Web 1.0 & an interactive site is Web 2.0. He explained the utilization effects of Yahoo Pipes and sure, it is a great tool to organize your feeds and you can do a lot more.

Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, FacebookApps & WidgetBox are all considered as the hot tools/services in the Web 2.0 environment that can be utilized to generate traffic. And the rule of thumb in the game of Web 2.0 is to think of ideas to generate traffic by providing what the web community likes and then, try to monetize the traffic you have on hand.

My next session – Lead Generation for eMarketers – a panel discussion

This session brought out the new ways that are being tested by advertisers to generate leads and the compliance required in email marketing in today’s scenario.

• Click to Call – It’s the next level in online lead generation process. By this method, advertisers are able to get quality leads because they have a system to rinse off all the accidental clickers & get to speak only to the qualified leads that cross their IVR system. The advantage is that the lead is being taken one step closer to conversion. There is an advantage to affiliate marketers too…. the advertiser pays upto $60 a lead!
• Mobile Ads – SMS Ads is a great way to reach a target audience since it is a service used by everyone in a day to day life. Creating mobile content that may be useful is a key factor and you can monetize them with SMS Ads that can be a Click to Call too!
• Email Marketing – According to the statistics provided by John, 59% of all advertising inventory is next to your ‘INBOX’. This shows that email marketing converts well – but compliance is a big issue in email marketing that you should address immediately to be on the right side of the game.

In an overall perspective, I had a lot of new information on this final day of affiliate summit east 2008. My next homework would be to list out all the tips, ideas and informations I have learn’t from this event and take a day to test all of them before it gets out of my memory.

I urge everyone who have attended the event, to sum up all that you have learn’t and try them in practice – because the key to success rests in applying what you have learn’t into your own business!