ASW Pre-Game MegaPost

9 January
17 Comments
by nickycakes

las_20vegas

With Affiliate Summit West 2009 in just a couple days, people are already flying out to get a few days hanging out in Vegas first.  For many, this will be their first Affiliate Summit, or even their first conference period.  If you’ve never been, or even if you have, there are some things you should know to help make it a good time.

Staying in Touch

There are several ways to stay in touch with people during Affiliate Summit.  Obviously you can try to exchange phone numbers with everyone, but that can turn into a nightmare.

To keep in touch with other Nickycakes.com readers, make sure to join Cakes Chat which generally has 150-200 people in there at all times.  Many of these peeps will be at the conference and lookin for stuff to do or people to meet up with as well.  This is probably one of the best places to find out where the hot parties are at or where people are going for dinner, drinks, whatever.

Twitter is the next thing you should be hooked up to.   Nickycakes will be on twitter and regularly broadcasting what he’s up to during the conference and afterhours.  You should also subscribe to the affsum twitter which re-broadcasts anyone who mentions affsum on twitter to see what people are doing.  Since twitter integrates really well with phones, especially blackberries and iphones, this makes it perfect to hit people up without knowing their phone numbers.  A little word of warning though, at ASE in Boston, Nickycakes accidentally dickrolled everyone by suggesting they go to a bar that happened to be having gay night.  Results may vary when following nickycakes’ advice.  You can also visit the affsum site to see anyone posting messages with the hashtag #asw09.

Where to Eat

Ok, Nickycakes could list his favorite restaurants, but seriously, there are so many places for good grub in vegas, and it’s mostly all really inexpensive.  The buffets at the good casinos are out of control, and they have tons of other bangin normal restaurants too.  Really just go on yelp.com and search for whatever food you’re in the mood for in vegas and pick one of the top 10 it gives you.

What to Wear

Business casual.  REAL casual.  As in, several people showed up last year in sweats and baseball hats.  If you’re an affiliate, there’s really no reason to dress up, it’s the affiliate networks trying to sell you, not the other way around.  Everyone knows you work in your boxers in mom’s basement anyway, so dress the part.  If you work for a network, you probably have some kind of dress code your work is making you put on, unless of course your name is Jason, you own ads4dough, in which case feel free to wear a half buttoned down shirt and a black kangol.

Parties

There are tons of parties this year.  Ask around NOW and try to get on the lists for them.  Here are a few:

Saturday:
Buy.at – probably going to suck..@moon nightclub at the palms, 10:30pm-2:30am
Wickedfire Pre-ASW party – probably going to be awesome details.

Sunday:
Share-a-Sale – Their semi-annual sausage fest.  This time with an 80’s theme.  8-12, at which point all attendees will retire to their rooms to keep their fleshlights company. (they will probably pay you to attend)
Glam Interactive – Rojo Lounge in the palms 7-10pm…who are glam interactive?
Advaliant – Giant blowout at undisclosed mansion location with rumors of open topshelf bar, catered food, and nsfw entertainment a-plenty. (must be invited)

Monday:
Some Corporate Suits – 6-9 happy hour in the palms lounge…”invite only” (plz crash me). Link to details
Revstars/Vantex/Adstation/MOSS – at the playboy club in the palms 9-11pm, probably join one of those networks or whatever they are to get invited.
Leadflash party – hollywood suite at the palms…rsvp to Caroline@leadflash.com and lara@leadflash.com
Copeac – Probably great party at the Palms (must be invited)
CX Digital – Same as above, except they pack a better hot female AM to affiliate ratio, not that copeac is necessarily lacking or anything. (must be invited)

Exhibit Hall

As mentioned in a previous post, don’t bring business cards if you don’t want to.  Take them from the merchants/networks you want to do business with.  If you give your card to everyone, then 2 weeks later you’ll be getting tons of phone calls from Joe’s Affiliate Network telling you they have a great exclusive acai offer they can give you $15 a lead for and maybe another $1 if you bring tons of volume.  Do yourself a favor and skip the sales pitches, go meet as many other affiliates as you can, go meet your affiliate managers that you already work with, make new friends, buy people drinks, etc.  Once you get over the fact that you can get more free gym-worthy tshirts than you can fit in your suitcase, you’ll want to move onto something more productive, like trying to get a pic with your idol, john chow.  Just make sure you bring a panoramic camera that can be turned horizontal so you can fit his entire Guile from Street Fighter II haircut in the pic.

There will likely be an impromptu nickycakes.com/wickedfire/whoever meetup outside the exhibit hall on sunday afternoon…check twitter.

Sessions

Mostly not worth going to, to be fair.  Nickycakes, will be speaking at the first session at noon on sunday, which should be fun, but honestly there are no real secrets in this industry after you figure out how to set up tracking, landing pages, and ppc campaigns.  Everything else is just hard work and tons of testing.

Free Dinners

Make sure you set up “meetings” with as many affilaite managers as possible.  You get to sit through lunch while they try to convince you to run their offers and in exchange you get free food.  Bring your friends.  Not a bad deal.

Weather

Last year it was pretty chilly at night.  It looks like this year will be like 60ish in the day and like 40ish at night.  Bring warm clothes for night time.

People Nickycakes Is Looking Forward to Meeting

Everyone who reads this obviously.  Destone…zero1two if he comes…uhh…yeah pretty much everyone from #cakes.  Please keep in mind that Nickycakes never remembers anyone’s names, but always remembers faces.  Don’t be offended, seriously.

See You in Sin City

Yep, just sign up to nickycakes’ twitter, and hit him up with a message if you’re trying to find out whats goin on.

Keep it real…don’t get arrested…much..

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