The 2nd annual Affiliate Summit Tip-Off Party will take place on Monday, January 10 2011 and we’ve got a whole lot more in store for this year’s event.
Just like last year, the bash will be held at the massive 10,000 sqaure foot Hardwood Suite at The Palms Hotel and Casino. Yep. That’s the suite with the basketball court in it! If you haven’t seen it yet, trust me, it’s ridiculous! The photos do no do it justice.
Last year’s inaugural event saw almost 1,000 people walk in the door and this year, we’re looking forward to twice as many! I have a VIP section reserved for me and my special guests (you already know who you are). Instead of having to line up at the bar like everyone else, we’ll have our own server catering to our every needs.
Didn’t make it to the VIP list? No problem. We don’t discriminate – EVERYONE is invited and the bar is OPEN all night long! If you are a publisher, blogger, advertiser, network or anyone in between, RSVP today and come network and celebrate the industry with us. Just make sure you get there early because there will be a line up!
How would you like to have lunch with seven of the best online marketers in the world? How would you like to help stop breast cancer? How would you like to do both? Well, you can if you’re the winner of the Charity Luncheon with Online Marketing Experts Auction. All you have to do is be the highest bidder.
The winner of the Charity Luncheon Auction will will be treated to lunch at 12:30pm on Monday, January 10th during Affiliate Summit West 2010 at Red 8 at the Wynn Las Vegas. During this time, the winner will have unlimited access to the Internet marketing experts to pick their brains on their specified marketing expertise.
Who better than this Online Marketing Dream Team to tell you what you need to do in order to grow your business?
John Chow
That’s me! Not only will the winner have my full attention during lunch but as an additional incentive, he or she will also be my VIP guest for the Affiliate Summit Tip Off Party at the Hardwood Suite of the Palms hotel. What can be better than a power lunch with the online marketing dream team followed by a blow out mega party at the Palms hotel?
Shawn Collins
Shawn Collins has been an affiliate marketer since 1997 with a number of active affiliate projects, and a decade of affiliate management under his belt. He is a Co-founder of Affiliate Summit, the leading global conference and tradeshow for the affiliate marketing industry and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine. He authored the book Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, and was an editor and contributor to Internet Marketing from the Real Experts. Also, he publishes the annual AffStat affiliate marketing benchmark reports. Shawn blogs daily on affiliate marketing at Affiliate Tip and co-hosts the weekly Affiliate Thing podcast on GeekCast.fm. Additionally, Shawn has been quoted in numerous publications, including Entrepreneur Magazine, Internet Retailer, Inc. Magazine, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Rae “Sugarrae” Hoffman Dolan
Ten+ years ago Rae started a small website about her son and his medical condition that became one of the first international support groups and largest website in general on the topic. It earned national media coverage and helped further medical research in the field. Investigating ways to support that site, she found affiliate marketing and became one of the most well known voices in the affiliate landscape and organic search engine optimization. Today, her current area of research is site auditing and advanced organic link development techniques relating to all of the major engines. Ms. Hoffman-Dolan, better known online as Sugarrae, is the CEO of website publisher MFE Interactive. She also owns numerous successful personal websites on a wide range of topics.
Brian Littleton
As the founder and CEO of ShareASale, Brian has connected thousands of merchants and affiliates alike, ensuring mutual profitability while preserving the sprit and core values of the affiliate marketing industry. Since 2000, his leadership and vision have helped shape the industry into what it is today. ShareASale celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and currently supports over 3,300 small- to medium-sized merchants, working strategically with its clients, both on the advertising and publishing end, to maximize their individual potential.
Chris Pearson
Creator of the Thesis Theme for WordPress, Chris is a relentless learner with an interest in a wide array of topics, both online and off. As far as nerdy internet stuff goes, he’s a ninja in SEO, HTML, PHP, affiliate sales, design, and paying attention to details that others tend to miss.
Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker
Jeremy is the President of ShoeMoney Media Group and Founder of ShoeMoney.com. He has proven his skills online in the search engine marketing world and his knowledge and expertise make him one of the top go-to guys for PPC, arbitrage, SEM, branding and affiliate marketing. In 2007 Jeremy launched the AuctionAds advertising network and added more than 25,000 affiliates in a mere 4 months of operation who generated millions a month in revenue. Whether its his blog or any of his companies, ShoeMoney has proven that he has the dedication, drive, and at times the audacity to get the job done.
Auction Ends Dec 14, 2010 13:04:36 PST. Remember, all proceeds from this auction will benefit the Affiliate Marketers Give Back, 2011 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I look forward to meeting the winner!
Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in only one month away and the party invites are starting to roll in. The latest is from my good friend DK. DK and the girls over at Purpose Inc. are hosting a poker tourney on Sunday, January 9 at The Mirage Hotel. If you’re heading to ASW, you’ll definitely want to get in on this. Free drinks, poker and girls are always a good combination in my books!
The timing of DK’s party is perfect because my party at the 10,000 square feet Hardwood Suite at the Palms happens on Monday, January 10. We’re expecting over 1,500 people to show up. All I know is I don’t want to see the bar bill!
Anyway, head on over to Purpose Inc. Poker now and enter your email address to receive your personal invitation. We’ll see you in Vegas!
I recently spent three precious days at Affiliate Dot Com Live in Las Vegas and learned some powerful secrets from a handful of the most successful internet marketers in the world.
The conference was my first internet marketing event ever and I arrived completely unaware of what was in store. I attended all the seminars and did not once leave the confines of the hotel—not even for a breath of fresh cool desert air.
My diligence paid off. By the time I left home for Hawaii—hung over in a cab to the airport—my attitude about my own success had shifted from pretty much unsure to absolutely certain.
Do you think it’s because I learned all the latest techniques and tricks from people making over $100k a month online? Absolutely not, even though every one of the speakers were multi-millionaires.
Believe it or not, the most important lessons learned from Mike Filsaime’s Affiliate Dot Com Live had nothing to do with the internet or marketing. It had to do with shifting my mindset and reprogramming my beliefs to think like a successful entrepreneur.
In going over my notes from the conference, I kept noticing these same 5 themes coming up:
Success is a Mental Game
It’s not really about optimizing your sales page or building your list or the thoudands of other things internet marketers do.
It’s about believing in yourself that it’s possible while binding and gagging that self-doubt within. To change your life, you must first change your mind.
Successful people are scared…but they do it anyway.
Give People What They Want
If you want to make money online, you have to give people what they want. This first means you have to know what people want. Then you do what it takes to give it to them.
In other words, focus on delivering extraordinary value to others. Money is not made by effort but rather by value.
People will pay for something they perceive as valuable. And the more value you create, the more money you’ll make.
Focus on a Single Thing and Execute
One of the biggest challenges of beginning online marketers is knowing where to direct their focus and energy.
Too many of us fall into “Shiny Object Syndrome” (SOS), which is the problem of being constantly lured into the next big money making opportunity. Sound familiar?
Rich Schrefren in particular emphasized that we don’t need to get good at everything to succeed. It’s only when we focus on one thing (preferably something we’re good at) does it become very easy to act.
All Skills are Learnable
I found this secret very interesting because it’s not what you’d normally suspect. Most people think they need revolutionize the next trend in internet marketing to get noticed and start making money.
You’re actually better off stealing someone else’s genius, at least when you’re starting out. It’s as simple as seeing what works and then copying it!
Another way of saying this is you don’t have to be the smartest person to succeed — you just have to be the one willing to jump in and take action.
There is No Magic Bullet
Surprise, surprise—there’s no magic bullet that’s going to make you an overnight millionaire! There’s no instant success formula, no master domination strategy, no jackpot and no lottery ticket.
As internet marketers, we’re constantly hit with tantalizing offers that make us believe it’s really going to work. It looks something like this: where you are now + magic = where you want to be.
The hard truth is that in order to succeed—to realize the life and profits of your dreams—you must possess patience, business knowledge and a wholehearted commitment to succeed.
The last day of Affiliate Dot Com Live! from Las Vegas continued with a presentation by another Clickbank guru with a one letter last name. Like Andrew X, Saj P makes money online by selling products on Clickbank. What’s the deal with Clickbank gurus using a single letter for their last name? Anyway, Mr. P is a 27 year old who was born in India and now lives in London.
Sai P started his presentation like most of the other presentations. He showed the lifestyle he was able to achieve because of the Internet. He showed his cars, his houses, his girlfriends, etc. Saj P claims he has trained over 100,000 people to make money with Clickbank, which is pretty amazing considering Clickbank has only 100,000 publishers.
Saj P says it’s really easy to make money online. There are only two steps.
Have your own product
Drive traffic
While you can make good money by promoting Clickbank products as an affiliate, Sai P says the real money is by offering your own products on Clickbank and have other Clickbank affiliates sell it for you. This is slide of his Clickbank business model.
While the above business model is a sound one, Saj P did a disservice to the attendees by telling them to start out with what I call hit and run affiliate marketing, which is to buy traffic and send it to the Clickbank offer page. I’ve already explained why hit and run marketing doesn’t work in my Clickbank post.
Mr. P used some really one sided math and extremely optimistic conversion percentages to make the hit and run affiliate marketing model look like a big money maker. Saj P recovered a bit by recommending that you send the traffic to a presell page instead of directly linking to the Clickbank product, but then he couldn’t find the live example on his laptop.
Mr P. tried to do a live demo on what a CPA offer was but forgot the password to his Clickbooth and Copeac account (I guess he hasn’t heard of 1Password). He ended up using Offer Vault for the demo.
Like the rest of the presenters at Affiliate Dot Com Live! (except for Shoemoney), Saj P used the last 45 minutes of his 90 minute time slot to pitch his own $997 product. I kinda feel sorry for the speakers on the last days. I doubt the attendees have any money left after the endless $997 to $2997 product pitches from the previous two days.
The first day of Affiliate Dot Com Live! from Las Vegas is over and I have a video recap. The video will give you an idea on the speakers and give you a taste of how they get their message across. Seeing my written blog post about the session is one thing but it doesn’t really capture it as well as a video recap.
All the day’s speakers were quite good and each covered a topic that they were experts at. The sessions were 90 minutes long. About 60 minutes was dedicated to teaching. The remaining 30 to 45 minute was used to pitch whatever product the speaker was promoting. I wasn’t really crazy about that because I felt it cheapen the presentation and for some speakers, it made the entire presentation look one big sale pitch.
The only person who didn’t try to sell the attendees anything was Shoemoney. By just giving his presentation without a pitch for any Shoemoney products, Shoe left the organizers scrambling to find something to fill the extra time with. You got to love Shoe! He may have not been the best speaker of the day but he for sure got the most respect.
The Internet is one giant lead generator and making money by generating leads was the topic by Brian Koz. You can generate a lot of money by generating leads for yourself or others and Brian used his session at Affiliate Dot Com Live! to give a ton of examples on how you can you make money with lead generation.
Many people think of lead generation as mailing list building but it really isn’t. You don’t even need a list to generate a lead. Brian went over the five ways you can make money online with lead generation. I’m pretty sure there are more than five ways but these were his five:
Generate leads to sell your own product
Generate leads for others (local business and service providers)
Generate leads to rent or sell
Generate leads for affiliate or CPA offers
Find business and joint venture / affiliate partners
Brief Samplings of Real Business Ideas You Can Do with Lead Generation
Sell leads to real estate agents.
Use your eBay affiliate link for people looking to buy used stuff.
Become a middleman for website designers or other web service providers.
Team up with antique dealers and find rare items or hungry antique buyers/sellers.
Find clients for local businesses.
Start a reputation management business for politicians.
Team up with a job recruiter to search for hard to find resumes.
Use CPA offers for those looking into vacation or time shares.
Become an affiliate for high price point items.
Find leds for other companies/sellers to partner with or sell to.
Become a middleman for writers or writing sites.
Become a dating matchmaker and match up people with potential dates.
Find leads of car buyers (even hard to find cars) and sell to car sellers or take a percentage.
Find leads of related business to JV with.
Take a commission for matching up pool installers with those looking to get a new pool.
The above list should get you start if you want to try your hand at making money with lead generation. As a blogger, your goal should be to generate leads for your list. All the other businesses are cool and all but the ROI will always be higher when you generate leads for yourself instead of generating leads for other people.
Andrew X is considered by many as the king of Clickbank. He has over 150 products in the Clickbank marketplace that makes him millions each year. At Affiliate Dot Com Live!, Andrew shared his secrets to making over a million bucks with Clickbank.
Andrew got into Clickbank because he got tired of selling real products on eBay. He hated doing shipping, handling, RMA and all the other hassels of running a normal business. Nearly all Clickbank products are virtual with electronic delivery. This offers the Internet marketer looking to create auto pilot income an ideal business model.
Andrew’s offered two methods for making money with Clickbank. The first is the affiliate model and is very similar to my method for making money as a Clickbank affiliate. The second method, and the one Andrew use exclusively now, is to sell your own product on Clickbank. Selling your own product on Clickbank can be boiled down to the following five steps:
Complete niche research
Create the product
Build your own product sales funnel
Affiliate drive traffic to the website
Make money… Lots of it
In addition to selling his own products, Andrew also uses Clickbank to market membership sites that pay him a recurring income. As we all know, creating passive income is the key to living the Dot Com Lifestyle.
Clickbank is one of my biggest money maker. You can make money from it by promoting other people’s product but you can really make big money by creating your own Clickbank product. Andrew has over 150 different Clickbank products in over 20 different niches. And none of those niches are in the “Make Money Online” space. This is proof that you don’t have to talk about making money online in order to make money online.
Here’s a photo of the blogging setup I am using to live blog the Affiliate Dot Com Live! I am sitting right at the front row with a direct line of sight to the stage. This allows me to get up close and personal with the featured speakers,
This is the first time I’m using the new Macbook Air on the road and I have to tell you it is AWESOME! The battery last long enough to cover the entire day’s event. It’s so light I hardly feel the weight of it on my shoulder when it’s in my ATGO gear bag.
While the Air has a great multi-touch trackpad, I still prefer to use a mouse. For travelling, I use the Logitech VX Nano. It’s fully programable and come with a super small USB receiver that you can keep plugged into the laptop without worry about breaking it.
The sharp eye reader will see that there is a Canon HFS100 camcorder next to the Mac Air. Yes, I am video taping the sessions. However, I will not be able to post them due to copyright. However, I am allowed to post a video showing the highlights from the day’s event. Look for the first highlight video later tonight.
After a truly dreadful lunch, I’m back in the Affiliate Dot Com Live! conference for a session with Bob “The Teacher” Jenkins. Bob simplifies the complex world of internet marketing into easy to understand lessons for business owners around the world. Now a full time business coach, speaker, and internet marketing consultant, Bob is the author of the book, Take Action! Revise Later: A Simple Guide to Success in Business.
Bob started as a soul sucking high school teacher before discovering the Internet. One thing Bob learned from teaching was he loved teaching but didn’t like the fact that it was sucking his soul away. The Internet allowed Bob to leverage his teaching talents into a consistent $10,000 per month income.
The Secret To Getting Things Done
Bob is very good at helping people get things done. He says the biggest obstacle to your success is inaction. Nothing happens without action. Bob offered the following tips to help you get things done.
Investing in mentors’ brains and rolodexes
Set up or be part of a mastermind group
Take Action, Revise Later (TARL)
Have accountability partners
According to Bob, nothing can help you get things done more than by forming a mastermind group. It was Bob’s mastermind group that allowed him to go from zero to over $100,000 in eight months. Powerful thing can happen when like minded people get together.
8 Benefits of a Mastermind
Faster list building
More traffic to your products and services
Get things done with accountability
Generate new ideas to refresh your business
Learn from others’ success and challenges
Eliminate costly learning curve
Share resources to save time and money
Affiliate partnership and connections through each other sphere of influence.
The two most important things Internet marketers should work on is building their list and getting traffic. Bob shared his list building matrix, which I admit, is pretty ingenius. The maxtrix allows everyone in the mastermind group to get equal benefit and avoid the pitfalls of the typical collaboration cartel.
Bob ended his presentation with what he calls the Promotions Parade for mastermind groups. These are ten things that members of the mastermind group can do together to help each other increase the size of their list and build a lot of traffic.
Bob pretty much reaffirmed my belief that success is a team sport. I did not get to where I am today all by myself. I had a team of people helped me along the way. Bob calls the team his mastermind group. I just call them the team but at the end of the day, they are the same thing.
