First and foremost I want to thank Zac Johnson for choosing me as one of his Affiliate Summit ticket winners. I meet up with him and his girlfriend Reena and they both are down to earth as you can get. So thank you Zac and Reena for a great time.
My 1st day at the summit:
First off I went to the breakfast and met with some great people like, Alyssa from Card Scan (one of my favorite office gadgets), Meagan from Myvu, and Don from Vista Print.
Then it was off to the opening keynote by Jason Calacanis from Mahalo.com. He had some pretty interesting things to say about the Affiliate Marketing as a whole, that a lot of thin affiliates are “spammers†and really not bring anything to the user’s experience.
He then also put a picture of Shoemoney and Zac Johnson holding up their checks and classified saying that it was said it was “patheticâ€, “desperateâ€, and “sad†but right after that he said we are some of the smartest people he has ever met.
I am not sure if he was classifying them (Shoe and Zac) as “thin affiliates†or if he was just using them as targets. Of course I think a lot of people were put off by what he said.
In a lot of ways I agreed and disagreed with what he said, mostly about thinking big and long term and not going for the quick buck.
Shawn Collins has put up audio of the program on his blog. Listen to it out and let me now what you think. You’ll enjoy it.
Tomorrow I will post the sessions that I attended, for now I need to get some more sleep.
Wow what a great time, last night was the first night I slept more than 3 hours. I am putting together some of the pictures, which isn’t as much as I thought that I took. I will be writing up a couple of my reviews of some of the breakout sessions that I attended.
Last night Webmaster Radio, PepperJam, and some others programs put on a private performance of The Blue Man Group at the Tao Restaurant at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino last night and it was packed, loud and dark, my voice was killing me from having to talk so loud over the music.
They performed for about 10-15 minutes; it was kind of disappointing, not because they didn’t performed that long. It was that they aloud people to go right up front along the stage where unless you were 10’ tall you couldn’t see them.
Here are some pictures from the event, you can see how packed it was and my vantage point.
I just got a e-mail from Yahoo, this will be interesting to see what transpires.
Yahoo Search Marketing Minimum Bids will no longer be fixed at $.10.
Starting in the next several weeks, the minimum bids for a number of Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. Your new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10.
This update is intended to align your minimum bids with the value and quality of your keywords. It also is designed to help improve the overall search user experience by rewarding advertisers for better quality with lower entry points into keyword markets.
The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as:
• The relevance of your keywords (as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them)
• The number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market.
A keyword term becomes “active” — switched “on” in the system and eligible for display — when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. If your bid falls below your minimum, your keyword will not be displayed. You’ll be notified of such changes and will have some time to adjust your bid.
Today has been a busy day. I arrived in Las Vegas around 10:15 AM, headed over to the Rio and checked in, but my room wasn’t ready so I dropped off my luggage and headed over to The Mirage for the National Demolition Association Conference.
Spent some time there seeing some old friends and making some new ones and then at 5:00 I set up an informal forum meet with some of the members of my Demolition Forum. We had a great time, we had to meet at The Stack because where we were supposed to meet couldn’t handle us, they “lost” my reservations.
So after all that I finally have made it back to my room at the Rio. Not a bad place! I am meeting with Matt, my Affiliate Manager from Azoogle here in a little bit.
I will post some pictures in the morning. So till tomorrow!
