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The First Affiliate Summit Was 20 Years Ago Today

November 3, 2023 by Shawn Collins

My life changed in a big way twenty years ago today. It was the first Affiliate Summit that I organized with Missy Ward and it took place at Baruch College in New York City on November 3, 2003.

Shawn Collins, Andy Rodriguez and Missy Ward

Pulling the whole thing together happened pretty fast. We chatted on the phone about trying to start a conference and registered AffiliateSummit.com on May 19, 2003.

The original goal was to put on a conference on a cruise in 2004, but we decided to do a small event before that to get the name out there and build a list.

I heard about an opportunity at Baruch College, which was a few blocks from where I worked at the time, and I went over to speak with them. We were able to get a room for 200 with chairs, tables, A/V, etc. for free in exchange for giving some passes to their marketing students.

That was perfect since we didn’t have money. If it wasn’t for that free spot from Baruch, the rise of Affiliate Summit may never have happened.

Affiliate Summit 2003 bag

In the months we had to set up out first conference, we called in favors from friends to staff the event, and did everything very primitive. All sales went through my PayPal account and confirmation emails for people who registered were manually pasted from a Word doc and sent from our emails.

Industry friends volunteered to be speakers and we got a bunch of friends with companies to “sponsor” it (we didn’t charge them, so we would have a bunch of “sponsors” out of the gate).

We scheduled it on the first day of the ad:tech conference in New York, which was a huge event at the time, so we could capitalize on people coming into town, and we set a low price point ($75 for all day and lunch).

Our only expenses were lunch and printing for the day, and with ticket sales we broke even but became rich in industry reputation for Affiliate Summit.

Affiliate Summit 2003 was a sell-out a handful of days before. We had a dozen or so people show up hoping to attend, and we quietly loved that we couldn’t fit them, because it created a buzz and demand when we started promoting our next event.

Networking lunch at Affiliate Summit 2003

So many things worked out just right and propelled us into a dream that lasted nearly two decades.

Check out photos from Affiliate Summit 2003.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News, Affiliate Summit Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Summit 2003, Missy Ward, Shawn Collins

Affiliate Summit Sort of Started as a Spite Store

May 5, 2023 by Shawn Collins

In April 2003, I attended an affiliate marketing event on a cruise ship out of Miami. This was the third year it took place on a ship after an inaugural version on land.

Shawn Collins at the first Affiliate Summit

Over those years, I met Missy Ward at these events and became conference friends. While sitting at a bar on the ship in 2003, we realized we were both unhappy with the event’s direction.

We had provided much help to make it happen, and I was the top affiliate referring attendees. The last straw for me was when the organizer got up in front of the crowd and thanked me for telling him he wouldn’t have to pay me the many thousands of dollars I had earned through referrals because the numbers were tight for him to make the cruise happen.

I never had that discussion with him, and I was counting on the money as the sole provider for my expanding family (Kerri, baby #3, was due later that year).

I was furious, and he said he could do nothing about it because he didn’t have the money to pay me.

So anyway, Missy and I were chatting about it, and in the fog of many drinks, we decided we’d create a competing event that was bigger and better.

The one hitch was that we had neither the experience to start a conference nor any money to put into it, but we wanted to make it happen.

In May 2003, we chatted on the phone (one of fewer than a dozen we would have over the next couple of decades) and decided to make it happen.

On May 19, 2003, AffiliateSummit.com was registered. We didn’t have funds to incorporate, get a professionally designed site, etc. So, we did it all ourselves because we were ambitious and passed off.

Thinking back, it’s like the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in 2020, where Larry David has a run-in with a guy who operates a coffee shop, and he decides to open a competing coffee shop next door.

The original plan was to do a cruise conference in 2004 to compete head-on, but I suggested we do a smaller, cheaper event in 2003 to get the name out there and build some momentum.

Affiliate Summit 2004 Promo

Our site was ugly, and we didn’t have a payment processor (we used my PayPal account), couldn’t afford to incorporate, and had no money to rent a space. But we were stubborn, and it was going to happen.

As it turned out, a friend mentioned that the marketing department at Baruch College, a few blocks from my office then, allowed people to run events in their space for free in exchange for allowing some of their marketing students to attend for free.

I reached out and struck a deal with them that included free A/V and everything – we just had to pay to bring in lunch for the attendees.

We decided to set a low price ($75 for the whole day, including lunch) and then called in favors to get friends to staff it, and our industry friends stepped up as sponsors and speakers.

Our little venture was immediately profitable, and people liked what we did. We were sold out a month before the conference.

Shawn Collins, Andy Rodriguez and Missy Ward

That first event was a big hit, and we rolled the success into the 2004 cruise. The people in the industry had shifted to our event, and the guy with the other event ended up canceling and screwing many other people out of money.

In the span of a year, he went from being the main event in the industry to going out of business. He topped out at around 200 attendees. At the end of our run, we were pushing about 8,000 in Las Vegas, and he is long gone from the industry.

There is a lesson in there for you… treat people with respect and honor your obligations, so you don’t get obliterated by a spite store.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Summit Tagged With: Affiliate Summit, Baruch College, Missy Ward, Shawn Collins, Spite Store

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

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