Affiliate Summit East


 
Credit to both pictures here belong to Drew Bennett (@BenSpark), who shows everyday photos on his blog.

 
I was warned that day 2 is going to be even tougher than day 1, fortunately, this proved to be wrong. The day started by a very inspiring keynote presentation by Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan) and Julien Smith (@Julien)

 
The Meet Market, if anything, was less hectic than before even though there were (supposedly) more people and many new vendors. I spoke to representatives from Linkshare, Azoogleads, Commission Junction, Linkconnector, Clickbooth, Clickbank, Copeac, Shareasale, MediaWhiz and some other networks I’m not a member of (and probably some I am a member of and simply forgot). By now I was used to networking (not that I’m ever bad at it), but was handling it like a used car salesman. I literally patted myself on the back.

 
One of the nice thing about the summit is that they offered a mentor/mentee program. Since I’m new to this industry, and historically whenever I made mistakes, they were a result of lack of information (and because of not planning ahead or bad judgment), I figured this could be both helpful and fun. Jen Goode (@Jgoode), the organizer, assigned me to Jay Berkowitz (@JayBerkowitz), one of the speakers, and owner of Ten Golden Rules, an internet marketing consulting firm.

 

jay-berkowitz


 
Jay turned out not only to be a superb mentor, but also a really, really nice guy. He also gave a very interesting talk where he discussed 10 emerging trends that will likely to dominate next year, 2010. After his talk was over, Jay and I had a very interesting discussion in which he interviewed me for his podcast series; in the podcast we discussed the advice he gave me, how I implemented it (“Perfectly” according to him), and how extremely helpful it could be for other people as well. I intend to dedicate a separate post to our discussions and the advice he gave me, as well as provide a link once it’s up.

 

pizza party

Later I went on to MarketLeverage’s pizza party with John Chow (@JohnChow). This event was organized by Dina (@MLDina) and was a lot of fun.

 
It’s quite funny, the highlight of the summit – for me – were the two MarketLeverage events. However, I’m not even a MarketLeverage affiliate! How Ironic 😉

 
Even though there were plenty of parties afterwards, I really felt the need to go home, rest a bit, and see my son. What’s the point of living 15 minutes away from a conference if you don’t get to see your family? (By the time I got home on Sunday both my wife and son were already asleep). I mean, who can resist this cute little face? 😉

Cutest creature ever

 
My summary of day 1

My summary of day 2

My summary of day 3