By Warren Corpus
For the second year in a row, I’ve had the pleasure to work with Missy and Shawn on their internet marketing lovechild, Affiliate Summit.
This year’s Summit was the biggest to date, with over 500 attendees, an exhibition hall, and breakout sessions during both days.
Just like a child, with growth comes responsibilities — in this case, more conference bags to stuff, more registration staff, more meeting space, more people to herd around, and more liability.
With all that said, Missy, Shawn, Corey, and the staff put together a great conference that will be remembered for ages… or until the Vegas hangover wears off.
Here’s what a few speakers, attendees, and exhibitors had to say:
“The best part of Affiliate Summit was Declan Dunn’s talk on ethical affiliate marketing. It is good to see that some people still see marketing as a business and an art instead of just spamming 4 trillion people, to make a buck. His talk was well worth the price of the conference. It was also nice to meet other internet marketers, some of us end up working from home so it is always good to be with like minded people. You can make more money and have more fun marketing with integrity.” — Marcus Campbell of PCMoneyMaking.com, attendee
“Affiliate Summit was the first event to bring the entire affiliate community together, and for me it was refreshing to see the top brand companies mingle with the CPA Networks…the folks in the trenches generating amazing amounts of revenue. We saw all 3 affiliate worlds — merchants, affiliates, and ALL networks — merge and meet. The real difference is that in the affiliate business, we are all competitors and all partners. Rarely do you see businesses understand that partnering creates more revenue than the old school way of competition. That’s what you find at Affiliate Summit and what made it a powerful event for me.” — Declan Dunn of Dunn Direct Group, keynote speaker, Day 1
“The Affiliate Summit has grown over the last two years and continues to grow, as seen by this sold out event in Las Vegas. As a vendor and sponsor of this event, I liked that there is not an event that showcases our industry the best. The Affiliate space has been growing and interest in the space expanding, so having an event dedicated to important relevant topics and showcasing the industry leading vendors is a big plus and boost for the industry.” — Jason Wolfe of Direct Response Technologies, exhibitor and sponsor
“The Affiliate Summit was a fantastic opportunity to network. As an affiliate program manager, I was able to come back with many valuable contacts from both sides of the publisher/advertiser fence. Right now I have 30 new offers scheduled to go into my network and have seen a significant spike in publisher traffic all from the show… This is definitely a conference that I would recommend to anyone in the affiliate marketing sector!” — Erin Garcia of VayanPays, attendee
“Affiliate Summit can be summed up in one word: relationships. Personally I have built many great relationships with some of the industry’s heavyweights as well as those up and comers who have an insatiable drive to one day reach the upper echelons of the affiliate marketing space. Each year I walk away from the Affiliate Summit a little bit wiser, a little bit hung over, with a few new business ideas and a ton of new relationships with people I not only consider business partners but close friends. My hat goes off to Missy, Shawn, and all the vendors and attendees who collectively make Affiliate Summit a huge success each year. I think the only other people who enjoyed themselves as much as the affiliates was the Soccer team from Ireland. Maybe next year we should invite them to join us.” — Michael Krongel of Intermark Media/COPEAC, exhibitor
“I learned more in the CAN-SPAM sessions than from any AD:TECH… those 2 sessions alone were worth the price of the conference….” — Shai Peritz of UniqueLeads, attendee
“The Affiliate Summit proved to be a priceless opportunity. The platform gave us a vehicle to create new endeavors with both existing clients and the clients that Affiliate Summit enabled us to establish. The conference was designed articulately so that we no matter if you were a sponsor, advertiser or affiliate, every minute was packed with something valuable to gain. Missy and Shawn deserve much appreciation from our industry. Events like these are what propels our businesses into a world of no limits.” — Rhianna Ross of XY7.com, exhibitor and sponsor
“The overall tone that came out of this year’s Summit was that this was undoubtedly the ‘Year of the Affiliate”. With money pouring into the sector in the form of acquisitions of affiliate marketing companies, large players entering the space and hundreds of ad networks crowding the industry, it becomes more and more important to realize, acknowledge and respect those individuals and companies whose business model revolves around earning affiliate revenue. They are the force that makes the rest of it work. Without productive affiliates driving traffic thru networks, thru tracking companies, to merchants’ buy pages – there would be NO affiliate marketing. All Hail the Affiliates!” — Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, exhibitor
With an event as large as Affiliate Summit 2005, there are bound to be little bumps in the road — late registrations, an event or two running behind, a hung-over panelist — but overall, the event was a huge success. Who knows — with a larger venue, maybe we’ll break a thousand next year!
See Warren’s photos at http://biturl.com/affsummit/
Warren Corpus (warren@vayan.com) is the Director of Business Development for Vayan Marketing Group.