You are not a coder, or a web designer or a super affiliate? No problemo. You can be all 3 with just a few clicks. While walking the exhibit floor at the Affiliate Summit Meet Market, I came across this small table, where Mark was already in conversation with Jessie Jones of PopShops.com

Popshops.com is an extremely simple, ajax based, wysiwyg, affiliate store building tool. Confused? Let me elaborate. Popshops pulls the 32,212,693 products from 1271 merchants through datafeeds of various affiliate networks like CJ, Linkshare, Shareasale, Performics, Link Connector and Red Galloshes. So let’s say you want to start promoting “golf balls”. You sign up, and in the sign up process, it gives you 3 options – Basic (Free), Pro ($5/month) and Enterprise ($30/month), although, you can try out the Pro and Enterprise out free for 15 days trial. You then enter your information, next you enter your ID’s from the affiliate networks and you are all set to build your store.

Once you are on the main screen, you can enter your keyword “golf balls” and it searches through it’s database and lists all the merchants across the affiliate network that carry “golf balls”.

If you don’t want to see results from a particular network that you are not a part of, you can filter it out. I am an affiliate for Progolf.com with Linkshare, and Golfsmith with CJ. So, I clicked on Progolf.com and it lists all the products with keyword “golf balls” in it. The great thing about this tool is that you don’t have to build a store, you can actually use it as a widget also. On the top right, it gives you an option for number of columns and number of rows you want. You adjust that, click on the Add button and your products get added, and your new storefront is almost done. You can see all the products that get added on to the right of the page.

You also have the choice of templates to give it that customized look. Most templates are quite bland and simple. I am sure more templates will be added on as time goes by.

Once you have picked your template, you can click on the Shop Preview link, and if you are satisfied with the look of it, You are all done! Click on the Pop It In link, and voila! There is your code to paste on any page you like, and you have a complete ecommerce store with the products, and your affiliate link attached to it.

While at the Summit, there were not too many new tools or concepts that were worth writing and promoting. Popshops was one, and you will find out the other soon.

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I was actually asked this by a few fellow bloggers while at the Summit. “Do you think it’s worth coming here?” or “Will you go to the next one?” or “Do you think you can learn this same thing sitting at home?” and so on.

I will have to break this down into 2 categories – Educational and Networking.

Eductional? Yes. Absolutely. As you can see from my previous posts here, here, here and here that the information was all around, and you just had to listen and execute it. There was so many questions asked by other fellow participants that I could have never imagined, which helped broaden my thinking. Just hanging with the super affiliates and all the one on one chats with them, makes you believe that everything is possible. I call it “Success via Osmosis”

The other aspect – Networking. You better believe it that it was immensely helpful for networking. How often do you get to rub elbows with some of the pioneers in their given industry – Jim Kukral – he made video blogging with a cheap flip camera cool, Sam Harrelson – publisher of ReveNews a must read for any online marker, Shawn Collins affiliate marketing blogger and founder of Affiliate Summit, John Chow who made “making money” via blogging kosher, Zac Johnson a super blogger/affiliate and one of the most humble guys I have met, Gary Vaynerchuck who made selling wine a web 2.0 success story and the goes on.

Also from a business perspective, meeting some of fellow bloggers and affiliates, who are not super yet, was extremely important for networking (I should also add educational here). It was shocking to see that most affiliate marketers are so willing to dish out the secrets when you are face to face with them.

Overall, I would say this to anyone debating whether to attend the next summit or not. Do it if you think you can make the most of your presence there. If you are willing to learn, go for it. If you want to be a fly on the wall, you are better of staying home.

“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”

Cast (In no particular order)
- 45n5.com
- IanFernando.com
- JoeTech.com
- JohnHasson.com
- FatManUnleashed.com
- JohnChow.com
- ZacJohnson.com
- AffiliateTip.com
- SamHarrelson.com
- CdfNetworks.com
- JimKukral.com
- MsDanielle.com
- MrGaryLee.com
- WhoisAndrewWee.com
- WinningTheWeb.com
- MapleLeafTwo.com
- Gary Vaynerchuck

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This was the seminar that was the most anticipated. Moderated by Kris Jones of Pepperjam, the panel of experts consisted of Amit Mehta, Zac Johnson, and John Chow.

I will point out the interesting points that the expert(s) mentioned:

Amit Mehta:

• Start something. Duplicate it. Scale it.
• Add links to your content pages at the bottom of your landing page. Add privacy page, and about us page for serps. Also, add links to content that talks about solution, and about problems, but specifically talk about the keyword.
• Go for long tail keywords – for seo and ppc
• Best PPC Engines in order – MSN, Yahoo and then Adwords – Adwords is last because Google users are more sophisticated.
• Likes Google content network. MSN also a new content network, and it converts well.
• In most cases, shoot for position 3-5 on Google ppc
• Quality score is relative to your ad position
• Winneralert tool – a tool that will email you daily about your ad conversions
• Use 1 keyword per adgroup using efficientppc
• Adwords editor is the best tool

When the panel was asked what the HOT Markets are and the answer was unanimous – Social Networks.

Come to think of it, most of the other panelists did not talk much. Amit was really the only one answering the questions – ofcourse since most questions were affiliate marketing related, and Zac and John Chow are not considered the experts in that field.

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Myself, Ian, and Joe walked into the conference and got our seats close to the stage, not realizing the concept of this “roundtable”. Anyways, what it was was this. A whole bunch of “roundtables” with an expert in any particular field sitting on it – be it seo, affiliate marketing, payment experts, affiliate managers etc. We just happened to sit on a table which comprised of just the 3 of us, and not expert. Anyways, Jim Kukral got on stage and introduced each of the experts on various tables, and most of them had other participants on it. However, the one next to us had Alex Rampall, CEO of Trialpay.com, with no one sitting by him. Jim asked if anyone would like to join Alex, and since I didn’t have any expert on my table, I decided to join in. Good call on that.

Alex began explaining what trial pay was. Judging by the name, I was assuming it to be just another Paypal wannabe, but I was wrong. Trial pay, according to Alex, is a medium through which merchants can cross promote products. For instance, during Valentines Day, download.com ran a promotion of free downloads for a bunch software from Lavasoft, mIRC, Kapersky Anti Virus etc. that ranged from $20 and up. The way they did it was like this. They offered the software for free, but you had to sign up with one of their partners, like Blockbuster, McAfee, PCTools, eBay, FTD Florist etc. to get the free software. Most people do not want to pay for a software, but since it is Valentines day, and they may be sending flowers, they could use FTD for flowers and get a free software.

What TrialPay does is acts as an intermediary between download.com and other companies. So if a user signs up with Blockbuster.com for instance, Trialpay gets the affiliate commission for it, takes its cut and passes the rest on to download.com – pretty sweet huh?

Since this was a very informal affair, and we were allowed to switch tables, I then sat at John Hasson’s table, who was talking about affiliate marketing. John, I have to tell you. He really does not hold anything back. He will tell you all the dirty secrets, tricks, tips, dos and donts. He is truly an extremely genuine guy, and a shrewd affiliate marketer. I also have a video of John at this table, I will post it later.

I will just bullet point John’s tips, since most of it is self explanatory:

• If you are running financial offers, turn them off at nights and weekends. How many people are really going to be looking for a loan on a weekend?
• Use multiple ppc engines, and not just the top 3 – ie. MSN, Yahoo, Adwords. There are plenty of them. Run a search on Google for PPC Engines that work.
• Try Business.com ppc
• Try Amazon.com ppc

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The speaker at this seminar was Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive. I have to tell you, when this seminar first started, it really sucked ass. I was kicking myself for attending this one, and not one of the others. But after the first 10 mins of boredom, it got interesting.

According to Wil, since a huge part of our web and web marketing lives consists of everything Google – youtube.com, google rss reader, igoogle.com, google.com, gmail.com, google analytics, google adwords etc. we shouldn’t be surprised if it uses all it’s assets to influence results. For instance, it already knows what the users are searching for, watching, reading, subscribing to, emailing about, which links get clicked most and every other aspect of your website. It can use this data, and decide which site needs to be on top of the search result and which does not.

He also said that free and paid directory links are getting less relevant, just like meta tags. What you need to really have is a good description tag, since that is what the web user will read before clicking your link on the search engines. You can see in the image below, the timeline of changes in the relevance for search results.

He also pointed to Micrsoft’s Ad Intelligence which works with Excel 2007 to help you to research keywords. He also talked about how videos are being integrated into serps, and just like the panel in the Video Marketing seminar said, that videos are searchable. Wil suggested a tool called Tube Mogul to upload your videos to multiple video sites. A really good way to get content would also be if you actually transcribed your videos, and replied to comments left for the videos on youtube etc.

I will list some of the tools that he suggested that we look into for improving our ability to do SEO:

• Touchgraph – allows for the creation and navigation of interactive graphs. Ideal for orgainising links, or mind mapping.
• Copernic Tracker – a specialized Web page tracking application which offers many options such as monitoring of specific keywords, new links and new images.
• To check for mentions of your site in forums take a look at boardtracker.com
• Check out Wil’s Del.icio.us/wilreynolds link (for all the SEO related links and sites.

A very entertaining part about this seminar was also the fact that Jason Calcanis was in attendance and asking questions. If you have read my previous entry about the keynote speech, he has in the past and today said that “SEO is Bullshit”

Also, these posts that I am making about these seminars, I am pretty much typing what I have in my notes, and I take notes only of the interesting stuff and don’t write down every little thing that is mentioned.

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Moderator: Melissa Salas – Director of Marketing Buy.com and Buy.tv co-host

Panel (In the picture above listing left to right):
Tim Carter – askthebuilder.com
Joel Comm – joelcomm.com (best known as The Adsense Guy)
Steve Rosenbaum: magnify.net
Brian McCarthy: revver.com
Gary Vaynerchuck: Wine Library TV – This guy is a riot. He was the most entertaining part of the entire show, and a real SOB, that didn’t like to bear around the bush.

Melissa started the seminar with a question to Steve, about whether he thinks that videos are necessary for a site’s success. He replied, “Videos can be best equated to beer” which means that even though you don’t drink beer, but when you attend a party, and find out that there is no beer, you are shocked. You assume that if nothing else, the party will have beer.

Tim was asked about the longevity aspect of videos, and he said that videos are here to stay. He has been doing videos on his site for years, and it is a large part of the success of his site. Videos, according to him have that captivation aspect, and videos work at keeping the reader on your site.

Gary, in his ultimate wisdom and wit, blurted, that asking about the longevity of videos is dumb. Ofcourse they are here to stay. People watch tv more than they read newspapers. People like to watch more than read. He said that find a niche and work it. There are many niches out there that are not really promoting the video on web aspect. He gave example of Sportscenter, and how it “sucks” now, and he thinks that someone with the knowledge of sports should probably start a website, with videos, about sports, since there really is no competition in it. Or how about a cooking show for the web?

Then Joel busted out his iPhone, and said that it is a must have, because you can view Youtube videos on it. Big f-ing deal. I personally am not a big fan of iPhone. I bought my wife one, but I hate it. It is just a glorified low end camera phone. But don’t get me started on that.

All of them suggested that don’t just rely on Youtube to distribute your videos. Submit it to every possible avenue out there – youtube.com, metacafe.com, revver.com, googlevideo.com etc. They also talked about how long a video should really be, and the consensus was that it should be about 2 mins, since most people view them at work and don’t have much time to watch them. But you have to listen to Gary regarding this, watch the video below.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRa10wcHbyc]

One cool thing that I was not aware of was, that video content is searchable, and this was reiterated in the next seo seminar about which I will write later.

Next

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The started earlier than most of my days. Just not a morning person, but did make to the bloghaus room around 8:30am and was met with Mark with 45n5.com, and Israel with fatmanunleashed.com. Had a nice chat with Jim Kukral (jimkukral.com)

Before I get to the details of the day’s happenings, let me tell you. Most A-List bloggers are quite personable, and are quite eager to what you have to say. Jim is an awesome guy, and with the fame that he has (in a techie world, he is quite down to earth. One other guy that totally surprised me, and I hung out with for the day was John Chow, who is here with his wife Sarah. John also is extremely down to earth, and personable. While at the party last night, I got a chance to chat with a bunch of affiliate marketers and bloggers, and I was surprised to find out that they are more than happy to give out information and tips to improve affiliate marketing. John Hasson of johnhasson.com actually spent a good 45 minutes with me and Mark dishing out tricks and tips, and giving us ideas on how to improve our affiliate marketing efforts.

Keynote Speech

Jim Kukral started his introduction with a video, and introduced the keynote speaker Jason Calcanis of Mahalo.com – Jason pretty much started the speech with his famous quote “SEO is Bullshit” and later added jokingly “Affiliate marketing is bullshit” Listening to Jason, it seemed that Jason misses the good old days of web 1.0 where search engines were search engines and not filled with spammy ads and links. He displayed a slide that showed 3 basic principles that internet was founded on:

• Free communications – going back to the days of usenet
• Free information
• Level playing field

He then talked about the first spam that was sent – the Greencard email that was sent to all usenet users, and that was the beginning of spam. From his speech, one aspect was clear that he is not a big fan of affiliate marketing and pretty much blamed the marketers for polluting the pond ie. the internet. He showed examples of searches on Google, and on the first page, majority of the results were malware.

He then talked about most of the top sites on the net like Technorati.com, Squidoo.com etc. and called them polluters of the net with spam and affiliate links. Then turned his attention to Ted Murphy of Payperpost.com, and pretty much called him a “dumbass” in a nice way.

Top affiliate marketers were in his sights, and what came next shocked most affiliates. He showed a picture of the famous Shoemoney Check and then Zac Johnson’s check and said that showing that check is ridiculous. Show a check with a couple more zeroes in it.

Ofcourse, Jason was there to promote his search engine Mahalo.com, which in my conversation with him, he called it a content generating site. He said that his site generates content, and that’s why it is not competing with Google or Yahoo etc., but rather working with them to generate content from their sites.

According to Jason, think big, and think long term. Think higher effort and higher rewards, rather than little effort and big rewards. Think great products, not great profits. He also pointed out that just because something is big today, does not mean you can not compete with them. He walked down the memory lane and contrasted with the successes of web 1.o with web 2.0

Video on web failed with Pseudo.com until Youtube.com

Social Network on web failed with sixdegrees.com until Myspace.com

Music on web failed with Napster.com until iTunes.com

Search Engines on web failed with infoseek.com, northernlights.com, altavista.com etc. until Google.com

Watch out for my next post where I will update you on the 2 seminars today – Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing and How to Futureproof Your SEO Efforts.

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You have been to parties and you have been to PARTIES. And this was the latter. A suite on top of Palms Las Vegas, 2 storeys (it also has an elevator for the lazy), a pool, a revolving bed in the bedroom, and a bathroom the size of most bedrooms.

This party brought out the whos who of the affiliate and blog world.

John Chow (johnchow.com)

Zac Johnson (zacjohnson.com)

Joe (joetech.com)

Joe (joetech.com), Mark (45n5.com), Israel (fatmanunleashed.com)

Mark (45n5.com), John (johnhasson.com)

Ian (ianfernando.com)

View out of the suite

Networking at the party.

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I have been to Vegas plenty of times, but this was my first Internet related conference. Today was the first day of the ASW08, no seminars, but still quite eventful.

I got to Rio at 10am for registration, thinking that the meet market starts at 10 am also. Which I later found out that it started at 12 noon. Anyways, registered, got my goody bag (and it was heavy), and walked around to kill time.

I came across the poker room at Rio, and found out that a tournament is starting at 12 noon. What is a guy to do? Go to the meet market or play the tournament? Guess what I chose? Poker! Good thing too. I won the first prize – $980 – not bad for 3.5 hours of play. Then I headed to the meet market. One really cool thing I saw was the slot machines dancers at Rio.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAsBW5N6EOY]

Meet Market

Mark Wieglus (45n5.com), Chad (cdfnetworks.com), Shawn (Campingworld.com)

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If you are going to be at the Summit, see you there.  Will try and post daily updates about the conferences and other goings ons here.

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