Affiliate Summit - Day 1 Keynote Speech

Posted on February 25th, 2008 by SOB    -->

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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