Eric Nagel

Tuesday was the final day of Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas – sad to see things wrap up, but 3 days is all I can take being away from my family and working (attending sessions, networking opportunities, walking the exhibit hall floor) nearly 24/7.

I started the day down in the Blogger’s Lounge, where I cranked out my Day 2 recap. Once published, Andrew Wee and I headed over to breakfast, where we found NickyCakes and chatted with him. Along with Kim Rowley, NickyCakes and I were each named finalists for the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate of the Year. NickyCakes had some interesting viewpoints on the award, which he ended up winning. I was able to find a transcript of his acceptance speech, which I’ve included for you here:

Thank you.

The other winners were announced, and then we were onto Brian Clark’s (CopyBlogger) keynote. To be honest, I don’t follow CopyBlogger, so I didn’t know what to expect. However, it seemed to me a lot of his speech was taken from an article (and subsequent follow-up article printed in Feedfront) by SugarRae, “How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution“. If so much was based on SugarRae’s article, why wasn’t she giving the keynote? I also wasn’t a big fan of the musical intermissions during the keynote. While they were making a point, and while I enjoyed watching the ASL interpreter signing “Rock Me Amadeus”, I felt awkward sitting there, watching a man on stage listen to music.

I honestly cannot tell you what Tuesday’s keynote was about, as my ADOLAS was kicking in and I was having trouble concentrating. Maybe including some slides would have helped me follow along. To be fair, Clark admitted this was his first keynote, and aside from watching him listen to music, I felt he did well on stage while he was speaking.

After the keynote, I attended the session, “Scaling Article Marketing For Affiliate Marketers” with Chris Knight, CEO of EzineArticles.com.

On the way to lunch, I noticed the room for Impact Radius was open, so I stopped in to see if someone was available to show me around, and Todd Crawford (despite horrible WiFi access) showed me how the Impact Radius network works. Todd was great, spending about a half hour showing me their system, which is not only extremely transparent, but finally puts affiliates on level playing field with advertisers. For example, if you want to apply for a program, but don’t like the terms offered, you can change them and submit your offer to the advertiser! They can then counter, or accept your modified terms. There’s so much to say about Impact Radius, it’ll be saved for a future date (once I get accepted into the network and do some work with them).

I had a quick bite to eat with a couple of chaps from the UK, then headed over to Jim Kukral’s session, “How To Get Motivated for Success!” I sat in the front to heckle him, but really got a lot out of his session.

To wrap up Affiliate Summit, and to support my fellow podcaster Jason Rubacky (listen to “Both Sides of the Tracks” on GeekCast.fm!), I went to the GeekCast.fm Live! Session. My favorite moderator, Lisa P, was asking the panel (including Vinny O’Hare, Loxly, Daniel M. Clark and my boy Jason) about hot topics in the affiliate industry. Jason fit right in, downing 3 beers and shielding his eyes from the bright lights that shined down on the panel.

During the final session, I found out I won a gift certificate from buy.at (who I really need to do more work with, but their interface confuses me) so I had to sneak into the Exhibit Hall to pick that up. A few of us then headed to a quiet bar (yes, we found a quiet one) to kill some time before being sorely disappointed by VooDoo lounge at the BlogUp blogger meetup.

The BlogUp was put together by Murray Newlands and Eric (from ClickBooth) and was supposed to be held in VooDoo lounge. However, they double booked the event and we couldn’t get in. So they told us to all hang out at the bar (not thinking that when we did that, nobody could get through, including the waiters). I took off early (after a few #voodoofail Tweets to @RioVegas) but I guess the group was moved down to iBar and taken care of pretty well. You don’t want to piss off a group of bloggers.

I wrapped up the night with a group of friends at the Carnival Buffet (side note: if you wonder how buffets make money – it’s on people like me. $24.99 for 1 plate of food? I eat a lot, but not at one sitting).

It was great seeing everyone again this year at Affiliate Summit. However, as I’m flying home (wrapping up 4 blog posts on the flight), I’ll be really happy to see my family again.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to chat with me, who bought me a drink (I’m a cheap date: club soda w/ lime), who bought me dinner, or who commented on my podcast with Jason (good or bad comments – I like to know that we have listeners). Now let’s see how much work we can get done between now & August! See you in NY!