Ads4Dough Meetup Wrapup
Over this past weekend was the Ads4Dough Meetup in San Diego, CA. The actual event was on Saturday from around noon until around 6pm, and there was stuff going on Friday and Saturday night as well.
Nickycakes decided to make the drive from Vegas this time instead of flying, since he hates having to wake up at a certain time and rush to the airport. It ended up working out well, and traffic and weather were good. Cakes got in around 6-7pm and picked up Dr Ngo and Jay Kim and went to go meet up with some people for dinner.
Dinner Friday was at Basic which is this popular pizza place and bar in downtown SD. The group of 20 affiliates was a giant sausage fest, but the pizza was REALLY good. Not sure the name of it, but there was one pizza with potato, bacon, and white cheddar, which was probably called “potato skin pizza” or something like that. Apparently everyone went to some club after that, but Nicky got a bad case of the ‘itis, especially after driving all day, and went back to the hotel (hard rock) and crashed early.
Saturday started pretty well. Since Nicky woke up late-ish, most everyone already had breakfast, so room service was ordered. Ridiculously good omelet and then down to the meetup.
The meetup itself was crazy. Originally there was expected to be maybe like 60 people or so, but there ended up being like 200 in the end. People flew in from all over the place including Mexico, Canada, UK, etc. All for a 6 hour free event.
One thing that everyone learned quickly upon arrival, which sucked, was the lack of wifi in the conference room. Apparently the Hard Rock wanted to charge like $150 per attendee to use the internet for 6 hours. It would have been cheaper to go to verizon and buy everyone aircards and like 6 months of service probably. Luckily, Nicky had his aircard, cause pretty much his entire presentation was just a demonstration using the internet.
Here’s a little rundown of all the presentations:
DK – Facebook Ads
While DK doesn’t have much experience running CPA offers on Facebook, he gave some great tips on how to increase CTR and some really awesome stuff for anyone interested in breaking into the local affiliate marketing space.
Hagan – Leadgen
The leadgen presentation was informative for anyone who doesn’t do much leadgen and wants to get into it.
Mike Powell – PPV
Mike is a great speaker, and even though his computer wasn’t working properly to show his presentation, he did a great job of packing as many bits of helpful secrets about ppv that you can think of into the time he was given. Real eye-opener.
Lawyer Guy – Lawyer Guy Stuff
Nickycakes thinks everyone in the room was getting pangs of guilt as this guy was talking, since he was basically telling everyone to cut out the stupid non-compliant stuff or risk getting sued. One big point that was a little surprising was how easy it is to sue someone for damages if they steal your landing page or creative content.
Wes – Referer Cloaking
Man, Wes can talk. He basically gave the audience everything they need to totally hide their traffic sources from affiliate networks and advertisers. Not to mention, he put the presentation together from nothing on Nicky’s laptop about 10 minutes before he went up to talk.
Nicky – Spying on Competition and Hiding Your Stuff
Presentation seemed to go over well. For anyone who was there, how was it?
Smaxor/Dr Ngo/Powell/Nicky – Q&A Panel
Smax (Jason from a4d) was supposed to have his own presentation but the time ended up running out more quickly than expected, so that was skipped in lieu of the Q&A panel. Everyone seemed to want to hear from him anyway, though, so the majority of the time was spent with Jason talking about stuff, and some good tips from Dr Ngo.
After
Well, UFC was on that night, and a lot of people wanted to go see the fights, so Jay was able to find a bar for a bunch of people to go to watch. Unfortunately, everyone was starving, and the bar had no food left. Rather than go out and find a nice restaurant to sit in and eat, everyone bolted out between fights to a subway down the street, wolfed down some subs, and ran back to watch the next fight. Overall it was good. A lot of people thought the GSP fight was boring, but that dude Hardy must have had an operation to get rid of the pain receptors in his brain, cause he just wouldn’t quit.
Once UFC was over, everyone went over to the 207 club at Hard Rock. Cakes was staying at the hotel so got in the vip enterance and was able to sneak Irwin in as well, but everyone else had to wait in line for a while. People just hung out and talked for a while, and there was apparently some rapper who performed later that night, but Nicky knocked out around 12ish.
Thoughts for Next Year
Overall, this was the most valuable “conference” Nicky has been to in the industry, and it was free. If you missed it, you’re retarded.
Next year, there will probably be a lot more interest, so they’ll either have to find a bigger venue, or limit the people attending. And definitely find a place with internet in the room.
A huge thanks to everyone at Ads4Dough for hosting the most informative event in the industry. Thanks to heavyt, m, and navarini for taking photos. Nicky apparently still needs to figure out how the aperture wheel on his camera works hurrrr.
Keep it reallll.
damn this seems to be one of the biggest meetup non aff conference… smax did a friggin good job on it – def should of just went
Yup I am thinking the same thing, I didn’t look much into it and just figured it was just another typical meetup. Ah well.
Yeah, I haven’t been to a conference yet, but I definitely need to start attending. They look like a ton of fun!
PS- Look at Wes’ right hand in the picture – looks like he has no thumb!
shh. wes is really sensitive about his missing thumb
had a great time, trip was awesome. It was good seeing you again. Heavyt
http://www.nickycakes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_1383.jpg
Come put your hands up in the air, it’s a middle finger affair, yeah
are you the real tupac?
I thought your talk went really well Cakes, I learned a lot about covering my ass. I really liked your tip about the free who-is protection from name cheap.
Also:
A4D is also holding a lead gen contest to all the affiliates who made it to the event. Talk to your affiliate managers if you’re interested folks.
Yea Ill give you a few tips as well
Take your address off your site, resume(online version), etc…
It was a pretty incredible batch of brain in that room! Good speaking with you for a bit Nicky. Props to A4D for making it happen.
Count me in for the next one – sorry I missed this one.
Nice middle finger in the next to last picture.
Sounds like I missed out. I’ll keep this in mind next time Ads4Dough puts together a meetup.
Come put your hands up in the air, it’s a middle finger affair, yeah
ha, good point. I don't attach any of my offers to that hosting account though. It's a portfolio – kinda the point when I want people to get in touch with me for projects.
fricken amazing. I was much more intimidated speaking to that crowd than I was at Affiliate Summit. This was about the most concentrated high end crowd I have ever hung with in the internet business world.
It was fun actually getting to connect with Mr. Cakes in person. Honestly I was super impressed with how smart he is (why on this site do I want to slip into third person narrative?), his sarcasm only really shines in public, but armed with only a pinkberry behind the scenes is quite likable, and a really genuine guy.
I totally dug your talk by the way, and had a lot of, oh f#$k moments about what competitors could do quite easily.
It was the first day of scheduled speakers since 10th grade that I sat all the way through without ditching.
Other than myself, the speakers just rocked and I learned a ton.
Looking forward to Dim Sum.
What Dim Sum?
There are 2 really good dim sum places in vegas. I go at least once a week.
Aww I like food pictures.
I thought you were gonna put some of my pics in your post?
I was but I needed higher resolution ones than were available on your flickr so I just used morgans instead. I love flickr though cause it lets you see EXIF data and I figured out that I was using an aperture that was way too small for what I needed which ended up making all my pics suck from long exposure times. Should be good to go now though
lol, the no look middle finger is the best part of your post. I assume that was on purpose?
NIcky can you refer me to a place where I can learn about some PPV secrets on facebook X) please
yea bro. go here
makemoniesonline.com
Hey Nicky-
Is it possible to see your presentation?
I posted complete notes about this meetup including details about Nick’s presentation here:
please remove my info
done
run a lot of offers at a4d – definitely going next year. damn can’t believe we missed this event