Shawn Collins' Blog

Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

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Back to Las Vegas For The First Time Since 2020

January 20, 2023 by Shawn Collins

I am heading back to Las Vegas. It’s the first time since late January 2020 that I have visited and my first time without being a part of Affiliate Summit.

From 2005 through 2020, I was in Las Vegas every year, sometimes multiple times.

Affiliate Summit West 2005

But this time it is different. I am going to have some friends, learn some things, make some memories and deals, and do absolutely no conference stuff.

I am excited to not have all of that pressure on me this time and to be able to take more time to enjoy the city. In a decade and a half, I barely wandered more than a couple of blocks off of the Strip.

When I left Las Vegas in January 2020, it felt like a huge chapter was closing after so many beautiful friends came together to give a couple of amazing sendoffs to Missy Ward and myself.

My last Affiliate Summit party

We were supposed to go to New York City for one last event in the summer of 2020, before my time with Affiliate Summit was up, but as we all know, there were no business conferences that summer.

It’s a weird sense of excitement and mourning as I make my way to Las Vegas. I am dying to see all of the people, but it’s also a time of reflection on an era that is over.

For all of those years, we were this big tribe together. We were part of something, all of us building it in different ways. It was a long, magical time that I miss.

It will be weird this time, but seeing so many people who are important to me will be wonderful. And then there are some people I won’t bother to seek out, but I have a song dedication for them…

See a bunch of y’all soon.

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Filed Under: Random Stuff Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Summit West, Las Vegas

What’s Gaining on You?

September 3, 2021 by Shawn Collins

I had a couple of songs that became my sort of soundtrack during my entrepreneurial journey, and they sum up how I was feeling during those years and what was driving me internally.
The songs were “Unsatisfied” (1984) by the Replacements and “Can’t Relax” (2011) by the Dead Milkmen.

Shawn's first affiliate management job

These two songs resonated with me during a time when no business metric, no achievement, award, accolade, or paycheck was enough.

There is a scene in the original “Death Wish” (1974) movie starring Charles Bronson as a one-man vigilante squad named Paul Kersey that I always liked.

This all ties together. I promise.

At one point, one of Paul Kersey’s colleagues commented, “Somebody once said, I forget who… that he never looked back because something might be gaining on him. What’s gaining on you, Paul?”

So ultimately, what was gaining on me was chasing approval from my father, who passed away a year before Affiliate Summit was founded.

He worked for the federal government and as I worked for various start-ups in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he would give me crap for being a workaholic. It didn’t make sense to him that I felt a compulsion to work evenings and weekends, and that I was anxious for Monday to come to get back at it.

The irony was that I wanted him to see me succeed, but working so much didn’t look like success to him. When he was alive, I was starting to build a name for myself writing a marketing column, speaking at conferences, and getting consistent raises and better jobs.

In the spring of 2001, I was really proud to have my first book (“Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants”) published by Que, a division of Macmillan at the time. It was 352 pages of affiliate marketing information that sold well in the blossoming industry.

I gave him a copy and he never cracked it open. It sat on his coffee table. It hurt me that he didn’t have an interest in what was a huge achievement to me. A year later, he was gone.

He was in a medically induced coma for weeks. In his last days, a nurse asked me what he did for work and I was petty and angry that he never read my book, and I said he wrote boring stat reports for the government.

I regretted that for a long time and hoped he didn’t hear me. I was impressed by the work he did and the reverence he received for it.

When we cremated him, my brother and I included some things that had meaning to us to be with him from then on:

  • Sheet music for the piano for “See You Later, Alligator”
  • Autographed baseball from David Wells
  • Yankees World Series 1998 baseball cap
  • 2002 Yankees media guide (he wanted it for Father’s Day and he was gone before I could give it to him)
  • A copy of my book

He was going to be stuck with my book for eternity. We sprinkled his ashes in places that were special to him: Yankee Stadium, the beaches of Wildwood, NJ, and the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.

My chance to impress him and show him I could be a success had ended. I felt like I was a failure in my dad’s eyes.

It didn’t help many years later when his sister told me he was very worried about me after I graduated college because I was sort of rudderless for a while. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and spent some time as a front desk guy at a hotel and as an assistant manager at a Blockbuster in my hometown.

It was no coincidence that Affiliate Summit began in 2003 – less than a year after he left us. I went about working on that, as well as my full-time job in NYC, and a bunch of consulting, projects, and websites on the side.

Affiliate Summit West 2005

As my star continued to rise, I continued to work hard. It was my identity and my pride, but it was never enough. At some point, I remembered the song “Unsatisfied” by the Replacements. I had it on vinyl from my high school days from their album, “Let It Be.”

I found myself playing it over and over on an old record player I’d gathered from my dad’s house. It was just how I felt and it wasn’t something I felt comfortable sharing with anybody…

Look me in the eye, then tell me that I’m satisfied
Was you satisfied?
Look me in the eye, then tell me that I’m satisfied
Hey, are you satisfied?

I wasn’t satisfied. Not by a longshot. By 2008, when I’d stopped working my corporate job and closed out my consulting work, I was focusing solely on Affiliate Summit.

I worked more than when I had multiple jobs. I knew I could never make such a fluid thing perfect, but that didn’t stop me from always trying to perfect it.

In 2010, I moved to Austin and found a life/work balance that I hadn’t bothered to pursue before. It felt better. I was more settled, but not relaxed. I’d see people just chill all of the time and I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t do that, because there was always more to do.

The Dead Milkmen came out with an album called “The King in Yellow” in 2011, and deep into the tracks (15 out of 17) was a song called “Can’t Relax.” It was silly and it was my truth.

Four letter words can have two meanings,
Love, Bleep, and Bleep to name a few,
Sometimes it’s something that you’re feeling,
Other times, it’s something that you do.

Sometimes life is like a puzzle,
With all the pieces on the floor,
And they don’t seem to fit together,
But then the pieces become a door.

I can’t relax, so don’t tell me to relax,
I can’t sit still, so don’t tell me to sit still,
I can’t relax if you tell me to relax,
I can’t relax.

It all comes down to electrons,
Conveying meaning with a spark,
The yin and yang, the ones and zeros,
The push the pull, the light and dark.

In the World of Rod McKuen,
Heat is sound and love is food,
Take life slowly and with feeling,
To gain a winning attitude.

In 2017, we sold Affiliate Summit, and with that, I felt satisfied. I discovered how to relax.

Celebrating the end of our Affiliate Summit days

Nothing was gaining on me anymore. I am sure if my dad was still alive that my first book would still be unread by him, as well as the books that came after. And the reality is that they are pretty boring subject matter for anybody not living and breathing it.

But he would have been proud to tell my story to anybody who listened.

Sorry about the book thing, dad.

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Filed Under: Random Stuff Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Charles Bronson, Dead Milkmen, Death Wish, Paul Kersey, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, The Replacements

I Miss Affiliate Summit West at This Time of Year

January 6, 2021 by Shawn Collins

Affiliate Summit started in NYC in 2003, but the longest-standing location over the years was Las Vegas. We held Affiliate Summit West 2006 over January 8-10, 2006 at Bally’s Las Vegas.

That was the first year of fifteen straight for affiliate marketers to converge on Vegas shortly after the new year.

We jumped around a lot of hotels in Las Vegas over those fifteen years – Bally’s to the Rio to the Wynn to Caesar’s Palace and then a long residence at Paris.

While the scenery changed from time to time, one thing was consistent and that was the great people who would come from all over the world.

We smiled, we learned, we drank, we laughed, we sang, and we built deeper relationships with each other that have lasted all of these years.

Along the way, we also lost some friends way too early, but we have such rich memories that will last forever.

We started these events with a couple of hundreds of attendees and as we reached the end those numbers were seven-thousand-something. As more and more unfamiliar faces joined in with us, we all made new friends, too. People from about 80 countries getting together for shop talk and fun.

It was very fitting that we wound up Affiliate Summit West 2020 at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill – a beautiful going away party drinking bubbles with all of these true, important friends. That night with the people there is something I will always cherish.

My last Affiliate Summit party

We had some great times, didn’t we?

This year marks an end to those experiences and memories with our people… well, at last for our annual get-togethers in Las Vegas in January/February.

We’ll just have to make other plans in the future to catch up and laugh and cry and have a blast.

I think Jim Morrison said it best about our shared end of an era…

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.”

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Filed Under: Affiliate Summit Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Summit West, Las Vegas

The Long Goodbye from Home

July 21, 2020 by Shawn Collins

On January 30, 2020, I boarded Southwest flight 1713 from Las Vegas to Austin. I woke up with an empty feeling. I always got this feeling as an Affiliate Summit ended, and I knew it would be a while before I saw all of these people that I’ve come to know and love. I missed them already.

My last Affiliate Summit party

The night before, there was a beautiful sendoff at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill with so many friends who became family in the time since Missy Ward and I started Affiliate Summit in 2003. My heart was full from that night, but there was a feeling of sadness as I thought about how some of these people wouldn’t be in NYC for Affiliate Summit East 2020.

It hit me that I may well never see some of these people again. But I found solace in knowing I would still see a bunch of others.

Well, that plan got COVID-19’d, didn’t it?

That expected closure after this 17-year journey wasn’t meant to be, and I still have a lot of unspent hugs to give out at some future time and location.

In the meantime, I smile about all of the shared struggles and successes and experiences across 50 Affiliate Summit events on three continents. The late nights and early mornings. I never did come down with “conference crud” like so many of you, unless it was just a really bad hangover all of this time.

Building Affiliate Summit with Missy and all of you was the best thing I’ve ever done. All of you! We certainly didn’t get here alone. We never could have. From the very start, there were great people helping us stuff bags, carry boxes, and spread the word.

So many people spoke and wrote words, shared ideas, stood with us, and supported us through all of these times. When competitors came after us; the Great Recession hit; people were needed to speak out against legislation that would harm the industry… you were there. You always were. A great big, dysfunctional, beautiful family.

I wish I were going to see that family this July in New York City. There are so many little things that add up to a rich experience there each time.

I’ll miss stocking up on my Diet Dr. Peppers at Duane Reade, serendipitously meeting people in the Marriott Marquis smoking area, having drinks in the Broadway Lounge and the Playwright Celtic Pub around the corner, hanging out with people for the first time in a while, the hotel decked out with Affiliate Summit signs and banners and check-in booths, walking through the Meet Market before it opens and getting butterflies, confusing which side to go to for an up or down escalator, heading to the Copacabana for Affiliate Ball, late-night street meat, looking out the window from my room to Times Square, seeing all of the people excitedly doing business together, catching a Yankees game, and then the goodbyes.

So, I guess this is my goodbye. Actually, no. Let’s make this my “until I see you again.”

This anonymous quote really resonates with me right now… “At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it.”

I miss y’all.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Summit East 2020, Affiliate Summit West 2020, ASW20, COVID-19, Missy Ward

Early Affiliate Marketing Statistics with AffStat

May 11, 2020 by Shawn Collins

Back in the early 2000s, there was not a lot of data on affiliate marketing, and I wanted to know more about what was going on. So I decided to make my own report of statistics on the industry and registered AffStat.com on October 29, 2002.

Presenting at Affiliate Force 2003

The first report came out in the spring of 2003 and I gave a presentation on it at the Affiliate Force conference, which took place April 24-28, 2003 aboard the Carnival Imagination cruise ship.

At the time I was the ClubMom.com Affiliate Manager, as well as the President of the US chapter of the Internet Affiliate Marketing Association.

It was during this cruise conference that Missy Ward and I presented together in a session for the first time.

It was also the time the two of us became disenfranchised with Affiliate Force and the work we were doing to build it up. So we made plans to launch our own conference, which could have easily faded away as nonsense we spouted off about at one of the cruise bars.

But we got on the phone a couple of weeks later and AffiliateSummit.com was registered on May 19, 2003.

Less than six months later we had our first event, and there was never another Affiliate Force.

Over the years AffStat was folded into Affiliate Summit.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Stats Tagged With: Affiliate Force, Affiliate Summit, AffStat

Affiliate Summit – The Family We Chose

February 3, 2020 by Shawn Collins

We just celebrated the 50th Affiliate Summit event over 17 years and I am still trying to process all of this.

Affiliate Summit Friends

Back when we started all of this in 2003, I don’t think Missy and I could have imagined what it would become. We just wanted a place for the industry to get together to learn and network. Also, we thought most of the conferences out there were lame, so we wanted to create something that didn’t suck.

Missy and I were conference friends for a couple of years before Affiliate Summit, but still, we didn’t know each other that well, and we didn’t have any money or knowledge of running events.

But we believed in it and we were sure we could create something useful, fun, and different.

Along the way, we met more and more amazing people in the space. Over time I recognized that these people weren’t just colleagues, they were friends… and family.

Our family, that we discovered at Affiliate Summit, would often remark that attending was like going to a family reunion, but one where we got to pick the family.

I felt the same, but I never had my heart swell up with love as I did at Affiliate Summit West 2020 when so many people came together to recognize Missy and me. Two different events with so many awesome people and drinks and cake and awards and pictures and cards and videos and hugs. I was so overwhelmed that I was speechless.

Wayne Porter Award for Service to the Affiliate Industry

Affiliate Summit is such a family that it’s where my brother came and introduced me to his wife Victoria for the first time and they’ve been to lots of Easts and Wests.

Mike and Victoria notes

It was amazing and I’m still on a high from it.

AS picture collage

Deb Carney, Warren Corpus, Angel Djambazov, Liz Fogg, Bhavik Modi, and everyone else who made those days so special – I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It was amazing and perfect.

And so great to end it all with drinks at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill – something that started small in the days we were doing Affiliate Summit at Bally’s (2006 maybe?) and grew to a grand goodbye party for all of us.

Poet Rod McKuen once wrote…

We come into the world alone. We go away the same. We’re meant to spend the interlude between in closeness or so we tell ourselves. But it’s a long way from the morning to the evening.

That reminds me of all of us – so many of us were living in places where other people didn’t get us. Then we’d get together and all speak the same language. We made sense to each other and we liked being with one another. We didn’t just share the latest tips and tricks. We shared our lives.

This was supposed to be a business thing, but yet I would always be so excited to see everybody and I had this sad feeling in my heart when it would end each time.

That closeness we all shared was just a couple of times a year, but when it happened it sure was awesome. Thanks to all y’all for all of these years, and cheers to the times ahead.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources, Affiliate Summit Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Angel Djambazov, Bhavik Modi, Deb Carney, Liz Fogg, Missy Ward, Shawn Collins, Warren Corpus

The First Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas was a Little Bumpy

December 2, 2019 by Shawn Collins

The first Affiliate Summit West took place on June 13-14, 2005 at the long-gone Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. But we didn’t call it Affiliate Summit West back then because it was our only event that year.

Affiliate Summit West 2005

Before arriving in Las Vegas for this show I’d never been there before, and we were still pretty new to organizing conferences. That plus not a whole lot of money in the bank meant we were handling everything ourselves – the outsourcing of things didn’t happen until later.

So the day before the conference check-in was opening we enlisted the help of a bunch of friends to stuff the bags for the 550 or so attendees. We were in a suite at the Riviera all day with drinks and an assembly line going.

One of my favorite pictures from that conference was Missy laying on the hundreds of bags after we’d finished up.

Missy and the attendee bags at ASW05

After the last bag was stuffed, I went on an odyssey in Las Vegas that included taking a nap on the Strip and various versions of how I ended up back in my room at some late hour. You can hear the gory details in my video recap of the conference.

The check-in process was way more primitive back then, but we had smaller crowds and it worked.

ASW05 check-in

Affiliate Summit West 2005 was the first time we had an exhibit hall, but that may be too generous of a term for what was going on there – we had 15 booths in a room. You can see the “exhibit hall” and other entertaining Affiliate Summit relics in the Affiliate Summit West 2005 program, which was lovingly created in Microsoft Word.

ASW05 exhibit hall

While we were at the Riviera there was also a group of rugby fans, and one of the things many people remember from that conference was that a boozer from the rugby crowd threw up in the pool and it had to be closed.

Towards the end of Affiliate Summit West 2005, there was a big scare after a panel on blogging. One of the panelists, Wayne Porter, collapsed and had to be hospitalized shortly after the panel.

Blogging panel at ASW05

Thankfully, Wayne recovered from that fall and was later anointed as the first Affiliate Summit Legend.

It’s hard to believe Affiliate Summit West 2020 will be the 16th year in a row that Affiliate Summit is in Las Vegas. Looking forward to seeing lots of the old-timers who were there at the start, as well as the youngbloods.

Check out the pictures from Affiliate Summit West 2005.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Summit Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, ASW05

James Martell is a Legend in Affiliate Marketing

August 14, 2019 by Shawn Collins

It was an honor to say some words about James Martell as we honored him as an Industry Legend at Affiliate Summit East 2019. Accepting the award were Arlene Martell, Justin Martell, and Kimberly Juchnowski.

James Martell and Shawn Collins

I had a hard time getting the words out that I’d written about James. Here they are for anybody who couldn’t be there…

There are lots of awesome accomplishments and distinctions we can talk about when it comes to James Martell.

He taught tens of thousands of business owners how to effectively market their businesses online through his books, courses, live trainings, webinars, podcasts, and speaking engagements.

He was a true Internet pioneer, thought leader, and influencer who knew how to bring success online.

James had more than twenty years of online business experience, and was successful in online marketing, blogging, podcasting, coaching, outsourcing, and video creation. He authored several business books, and developed twelve popular marketing courses.

He also authored of one of the first and best-selling eBooks on affiliate marketing, and was a host of the longest running affiliate marketing podcast, starting in 2003, with listeners in more than one hundred countries. That is crazy to me – I got into podcasting in 2006 and thought I was breaking new ground – the reality is that James was there and so many other places first.

I think this testimonial I gave to James for his site many years ago does a good job to say what I thought of him…

“James is a one of a kind – an Internet marketing rock star. When he has spoken at Affiliate Summit, his sessions always receive a 10 out of 10. In a space with many imitators and pretenders, James is the real deal.”

But James was more than an awesome business guy – he was a husband, father, grandfather, and so much more.

James had a giant personality and an even bigger heart.

His presence, guidance, and stewardship to so many in affiliate marketing and the in the real world will forever be missed.

James was a big Elvis fan, and I was going to try and pick out an Elvis song and sing a little bit in his honor. I came across a song by the King called Memories, and that choked me up:

“Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wine
Quiet thoughts come floating down
And settle softly to the ground
Like golden autumn leaves around my feet
I touched them and they burst apart with sweet memories
Sweet memories”

Goodbye, James – you’re a legend.

Thank you to Liz Fogg for recording the award ceremony for James.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Summit Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Summit East 2019, ASE19, James Martell, Legend, Pinnacle Award

Know When It is Time to Leave

August 5, 2019 by Shawn Collins

I was really excited on the morning of September 11, 2001. It was a gorgeous, sunny day in New York City as I headed into my job at ClubMom.com.

My dog Mickey when I lived across the river from the World Trade Center

My CMO with an impressive MBA from an Ivy-League school forced me to pause the affiliate program for the summer, even though it was cash positive with every lead and doing great. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Anyhow, September 11, 2001, was the day I was tasked with resurrecting the affiliate program. It was on Be Free (a popular affiliate network at the time) and I had an email scheduled in BFAST (their technology that had to be installed locally!) to hit all the affiliates that afternoon announcing the return of the affiliate program.

As I was finishing up my everything bagel and strawberry Yoo-hoo I got an email from one of the IT guys. It was sent to the whole company and it was a breaking news alert from CNN about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. The idea of that was impossible in my mind and I thought he must have been trying to make some bad joke.

But no, it was real. Somebody wheeled out a TV on a cart to a conference room and turned it on. It was reminiscent of 15 years earlier when a TV cart was brought into my class in high school for coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.

One big difference, though. The Space Shuttle was way far away from me when it exploded. The World Trade Center was a couple of miles away. I was in shock. We all were. I alternated between watching and chatting with friends and family on AIM. Then I saw a plane hit the South Tower on TV.

The bosses were telling us to stay calm and stay put. Then the South Tower collapsed before my eyes on TV. I needed to get out of there.

I chatted with some people and then gathered my things to try and make my way home. In addition to being totally freaked out, my now 17-year-old daughter Lexie was due to be born on September 27, 2001, and I wanted to live to see her birth.

That might sound overly dramatic now, but nobody knew what the hell was going on then, except that this was apparently terrorism. And our office was a couple of blocks from the Empire State Building. I figured that could be the next target and I didn’t want to be there to find out.

So, I headed over to my supervisor’s office to tell her I was heading out. She said, “No, you can’t leave.” It was at that moment that my fight or flight instinct kicked in. My first thought was to fight, and I was going to do that by saying, “Fuck you.” But I chose flight and just left.

As I headed down Fifth Avenue towards 34th Street, where I was going to hang a right towards Penn Station, I heard thundering noise across my whole body. People in the street were screaming and running.

I looked up and right there in front of me, the North Tower was collapsing. I froze. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was too much to handle. I watched the whole thing crumble and I was in shock. Shortly after, I snapped out of it and started running towards Penn Station to escape from New York by way of an NJ Transit train.

It was all a blur. Some people were walking There was screaming and crying in every direction, and I was running as fast as I could in jeans. Finally, I got to Penn Station and sprinted down to the tracks to jump on the next Jersey bound train. I got a seat and about 30 seconds later the doors closed, and the train began to move. The train erupted in cheers that lasted about ten seconds. Then it stopped.

We sat there for a while and they wouldn’t let us off. Finally, they announced that there may be explosives in the tunnel, and we should safely evacuate the train. I’d like to say I sat there and did the women and children first thing. But a few years earlier I saw those guys die in the Titanic movie. I broke out ahead of everybody and ran all the way to the Hudson River to get away from buildings and people and everything.

I tried frantically to make a phone call and say I was on the way home, but there was no getting a phone signal. I walked into a line of people about ten blocks long waiting to get on a Circle Line Cruise boat to cross over to New Jersey.

When I finally got on the boat there was an eerie calm. We started moving south towards lower Manhattan before cutting over and pulling into a dock in Weehawken, NJ. I didn’t know what to do and wandered off the boat until I saw an NJ Transit bus. I asked the driver where it was going, and he said they were taking everybody to Giants Stadium. I just wanted to get away, so I got on board.

After they brought us to Giants Stadium there wasn’t a plan for moving on from there. Bus after bus unloaded people and we all walked around confused and flustered and hot and thirsty. They were not allowing traffic in – only out. So, I got an idea – I took a piece of paper out of my bag and wrote the name of the town where I lived: MILLBURN.

I stood along the road hoping to hitchhike. And I was ecstatic that a car pulled over within ten minutes. It was a station wagon that already had like ten people in there and they let me jam in with them. The driver was some guy who worked for the Giants. We rode mostly in silence while hosts on the AM station WABC tried to make sense of things for themselves and us. There was all sorts of confusion and misinformation.

The highways were empty, so we made good time. I was the third or fourth to be dropped off and they let me out at my local train station where I’d parked that morning for the commute. There were literally no cars gone, yet. The lot was packed. I am pretty sure I was the first one to make it back. I wondered how many of my fellow commuters weren’t making it back that day or any day. I learned later that eight guys from my town were killed.

Over the course of the day, I was thinking a lot about how I was told I couldn’t leave. I had to leave, and I really didn’t like that feeling of being told I couldn’t. It weighed on me and I just couldn’t shake it. I spent the rest of that fall in a daze, except for the birth of my daughter, Lexie, on October 2, 2001.

My daughter Lexie born weeks after September 11

I was so wrecked by the whole thing that I was asking the obstetrician, during the birth of my daughter, about the risks of Anthrax exposure, as there was some monster mailing it to places in NYC after 9/11.

I started to get a grip on things in 2002 and figured out my first step in leaving the company. I started my own OPM company on the side to see if that could take off and replace my day job. The affiliate program management gigs started taking off, and then a random conversation with Missy Ward turned into us starting Affiliate Summit. We registered the .com on May 19, 2003.

That was the final thing I needed to leave my job for good. We held the first Affiliate Summit on November 3, 2003, in New York City. It was 783 days after 9/11. Shortly after I quit my job.

Know when it’s time for you to leave and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: 2001, Affiliate Summit, Anthrax, ClubMom, fight or flight, Lexie Collins, Missy Ward, New York City, NYC, September 11, Space Shuttle Challenger, World Trade Center

Remembering Jim Bouton and His Keynote at Affiliate Summit

July 22, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Jim Bouton, former New York Yankees pitcher, author of Ball Four, creator of Big League Chew, sportscaster, activist, and a bunch of other things, passed away on July 10, 2019, at 80 years old.

Shawn Collins, Jim Bouton, and Missy Ward

I discovered his book, Ball Four, in the 1990s, and I just loved the book. So much that one of my first affiliate sites was BallFourBook.com, which I started in 2000 to promote the book with Amazon links. Jim’s site still has me listed as one of the fansites.

In the late 1990’s I interviewed Jim for a zine I was publishing at the time called Velocity NYC. The interview also ran on NJ.com, the online version of the Newark Star-Ledger, where I was the weekend sports editor for years for the online edition.

Bouton updated Ball Four every decade, and in the 2000 update, he mentioned my affiliate site in his book. I was out of my mind excited.

BallFourBook.com

So anyway, I was in touch with him over the years and as Affiliate Summit was taking off I thought he’d make an awesome keynote speaker. We had him come in and keynote Affiliate Summit East 2006 in Orlando.

I loved his keynote, but even better we chatted for a couple of hours before the keynote and he had me in stitches with his old baseball stories. It was amazing to hear first-person accounts of times with Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and other legends from the 60s.

It was one of my favorite days, and I will always cherish it.

RIP Jim.

“A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” – Jim Bouton

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