Attending Affiliate Summit East 2010 in New York City was probably one the best things I have done this year so far. It turns out that this recent Affiliate Summit East had the largest number of attendees to date. Affiliate Summit was attended by only 200 people when it was first launched back in 2003. Today it is the most important event in affiliate marketing industry.

How Did I Get There?
For the past two years I have been trying to attend the Affiliate Summit, however I had to cancel my attendance twice even though both times I was a lucky recipient of a Press Pass. Each year Affiliate Summit offers press passes to bloggers and journalists. All you need to do is to show up and cover Affiliate Summit in your publication. Press Pass offers you the same access to the show as Platinum Pass would, with some limitations (I am not quiet sure what are the limitations, but my badge said so – pictured to the right).

How Can You Get There?
The dates for the next Affiliate Summit are January 9-11, 2011 and the show will take place in Las Vegas. The registration for Affiliate Summit West 2011 is now opened and you can find more information by visiting Affiliate Summit official website. Interested in Press Pass? Submit your information here.

Interested To Become My Sponsor?
While I am thankful to Affiliate Summit for offering me the Press Pass, I think there are much better bloggers out there who can benefit from the Press Pass. I am still interested in attending all future Affiliate Summits, but as of today I cannot do it unless I find a sponsor. If you are interested to be my sponsor for the upcoming Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas please contact me to learn how you can benefit from sponsoring me.

About Post Affiliate Summit Notes On My Blog.
Going to Affiliate Summit I had every intention to cover the summit on by blog while attending it myself. I quickly realized however, that I was giving my blogging skills too much credit. So instead I decided to start on my blog something I will call from now on “Post Affiliate Summit Notes“. In these “notes” I will share about my experience, the things I’ve learned and wonderful people I have met. If you think you can benefit from these notes, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter (the form located on the top of the sidebar).

My first ever time at the Affiliate Summit is turning out to a great experience. As a newcomer to Affiliate Summit, my game plan is not extremely ambitious. I plan to finally meet bunch of people whom I’ve had pleasure to know on Internet. Meeting new people. Hopefully discover a new opportunity or two. That’s pretty much my game plan.

Literally minutes after arriving to Affilliate Summit I ran across Jeremy Palmer from Quit Your Day Job. Jeremy and his “High Performance Affiliate Marketing” e-book were quit instrumental to get me started in affiliate marketing back in 2006. To meet him right in the beginning of the summit Was definitely a treat.

I plan to attend few sessions, but I think there is nothing better than chilling at the bloggers room! Special thanks to Heather Smith of Beautiful British Columbia for being a great BlogMistress! Stay tuned for more from Affiliate Summit!

This post is so long overdue! To begin, I would like to thank Shawn Collins, and the entire team of Affiliate Summit. In the past I have hoped to attend this great conference however things were getting on the way- from health issues to a law suit, something seamed to always stand on the way. This year was no different, I had no plans to attend the Summit because I could not budget for it. After canceling my attendance in the past- it id not feel right to ask for a “press pass” again. I am however easy to persuade, if you don’t believe me – ask Shawn. So thank you guys!

Going there as an affiliate, coming back as an affiliate manager…

I wish to be able to to last through half of all the sessions at Affiliate Summit TrishaLyn is planing to attend, still I can hardly wait for August to be here!

Last two years I have been helping a dear friend of mine, and the owner of The Chocolate Belles, in Brick, NJ. Not only have we launched a successful online store, we are also just few months (I hope) away before launching an affiliate program.

The Chocolate Belles is a candy making and cake decorating supply store. In addition to selling hundreds of candy making and cake decorating tools they also make custom cakes and offer class decorating classes. They teach anything from making chocolate cowered strawberries to decorating elegant fondant cakes:

On one hand it is very easy to work with well established and very successful business. However, an affiliate program will be the next HUGE step for both, myself and The Chocolate Belles. If you plan to attend the Affiliate Summit, and have experience in managing affiliate programs, I would absolutely love to hear from you and to meet with you at the Summit. Feel free to drop me a line or two so we can plan.

Having never attended Affiliate Summit in the past, I had very little expectations going to Affiliate Summit Social Media event that took place this past Sunday in New York. Needless to say the event surprised me on many levels.

I hope some one else writes detailed review of the conference. I am sure Shawn will have videos of the event ready soon as the cameras were rolling all day long.

I did not count how may times Twitter was mentioned during the event, but if I were to estimate I would say it was mentioned about 100 times every hour.

But what impressed me the most was that whenever “video blogging” was mentioned and the fact that most of us affiliates don’t utilize this medium enough in our work- I felt they were speaking directly at me.

What downed at me, thanks to Steve Rosenbaum, that those videos don’t have to be necessarily my own so I highly recommend his Magnify.net and maybe there is an idea or two for you as well.

It was also great to hear that some merchants are taking video technology to the next level as well. In fact I joined Buy.com’s affiliate program just because what I have heard at the conference during presentation by Melissa Salas . But there are more reasons why you would want to join their program besides what these guys are doing with videos (hopefully I will get to it one of these days).

Of course you can always make your own videos. Heck Jim Kukral managed to moderate the event while recording his, I suppose, next daily flip. However you can consider creating “screen cast” if you are not conformable to put your face out there. Few screen casting applications were mentioned during the keynote by Don Crowther, such as Camtasia (Windows) and Screenflow (Mac). I am currently comparing several solution for Linux/Ubuntu, hopefully I will update this post when I decide which one I will end up using.

The theme that resonatted with me the most was “video”. More than one merchant on Share A Sale now offering affiliates video creatives.

However if you asked me what was the best part about the event. I would have to say it was not the presentations. As informative and educational as the entire event was, it would mean nothing if if wasn’t because of the people behind the event and those who attended. Finally I got to meet the affiliates from the great state of New Jersey face to face instead of just crossing paths on Internet: Zack Johnson (I am ashamed to say that I have not attempted to meet him sooner since we live literally 5 minutes away for each other), Ian Fernando and Benny Tejeda. What can I say, New Jersey is the best!

Things have dramatically decreased as far as blogging goes since I have taken on an extra job to pay for the frivolous lawsuit I have been fighting since last June.

However I was able to to shuffle my schedule in such a way that it freed me to attend Affiliate Summit Social Media 2008.

The impressive list of speakers include: Jim Kukral, Zac Johnson, Don Crowther.

Since “taking on” affiliate marketing I have never been to any of these events and I am very excited to finally be able to meet affiliates who’s blogs I read daily.

A very special thank you to Missy Ward for helping me out with registration for this even.

Will I see you there?