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That’s right, Affiliate Summit East in NYC is coming up quick! It’s being held August 9th to the 11th at the New York Hilton. Finally an Affiliate Summit at a venue that Nickycakes likes!
Over the past few months, Nickycakes.com has picked up quite a few new readers, so for their sake, this post will go over why it’s worth it to attend ASE. It will also have info for everyone attending on what to do in/around the conf, hotels, restaurants, etc.
What is Affiliate Summit? Why Should You Go?
If you’ve never been to one of these conferences before, you’re missing out. Even if you are 2 weeks new in the industry, the information you get just from talking to other affiliates at these shows is priceless. Nickycakes’ first Affiliate Summit was in Vegas in the beginning of 2009. He spent most of his time networking with other affiliates and being treated like royalty by Advaliant, who had a big hand in Nickycakes’ success in the industry (still haven’t forgotten about you guys!). Going to that conference probably cost Nicky around $500 total including airfare and hotel stay and whatnot, and the stuff he learned paid for it many many times over literally within days.
Affiliate Summit is THE conference for Affiliate Marketing. There are many impostors, and very few even come close. For an idea of what actually goes on at these events, you may try to look at old posts on this blog for Affiliate Summit wrapups which go into pretty decent detail. Basically, if you can make it to this event, you will be really sabotaging yourself by not doing so. The Cakes has NEVER heard of ANYONE who has attended one and not felt like it was more than worth it. Plus it is a great excuse for a vacation and an obvious tax write-off.
What Kind of Pass To Get
Ok, for Affiliate Summit, there are a few types of passes: Silver, Gold, Platinum. Most Affiliates will want a Silver pass. Silver passes give access to the meet market, and exhibit hall, but none of the sessions. Newbie affiliates are probably the only ones who would get much out of the sessions, and unfortunately, the platinum passes which include them are a little pricey ($999 for platinum $99 for gold. If you are a veteran, you probably won’t want the Platinum pass either as you will probably just be there for the exhibit hall. Click here to register.
Where To Stay
Ok, so the conf itself is at the New York Hilton. Unfortunately, the Hilton hotel itself blows compared to many of the hotels within 4 blocks. Nickycakes’ personal favorite is the London which is a 30 second walk away from the Hilton, has huge comfortable rooms at great prices and incredible service, free wifi, and a world renowned restaurant (gordon ramsey) right downstairs. For a good list of the hotels near Hilton, look here. As you can see, the hilton is 6th place within 4 blocks with a 3/5 rating.
Travel
Unless you’re taking a train, everyone traveling to ny gets screwed. The airports are too far away from Manhattan, the traffic sucks, etc. If you live on the east coast anywhere north of DC, then hit up the Acela for a smooth ride right into Manhattan and take a 5 minute cab to your hotel. Otherwise, enjoy crowded airport security and having your bags lost like Nickycakes does every time he flies into JFK. If able, get a flight on Virgin America. You won’t regret it. First class upgrades are mad cheap if you do them the same day as your flight, and they have in-flight wifi, mood lighting, and a normal electrical outlet at each seat so your laptop wont die. Pimppp.
Food
Nickycakes’ favorite part, of course. Here are nickycakes’ favorites in several categories, pretty close to the conference:
Sushi - Bar Masa, hands down. Warning: very expensive, probably not quite worth the price. But, soooooo good. If you can afford it, go. Probably the best sushi on the east coast. There is Masa next door which has an outrageously fixed price menu, so don’t accidentally go there unless you have $400 per person to drop on dinner.
Steak - Craftsteak. Well known not only for their wide selection of steaks but also for their amazing raw oyster selection. Eat here if you have a chance. Sooo good. Try the Wagyu skirt steak. Not walking distance from the conference.
Brazilian BBQ - Churrascaria Plataforma. Well, only if love all kinds of meat. They pretty much walk around with all kinds of meats on big swords, and come to your table and cut you slices of whatever they have until you’re about to explode. Everything from your basic steak cuts to chicken legs wrapped in bacon. They have an awesome salad bar and their dessert cart is off the chain.
Italian - Bass056. Great service, amazing food. Try the lobster ravioli. Not sure how they consider it ravioli since the pieces are gigantic but its probably the best Italian food Nicky has ever eaten. In this country, anyway.
Thai - Wondee Siam. Ghetto hole in the wall. Soo good.
Japanese (not sushi) - Menkui Tei. Another ghetto hole in the wall. Best Ramen in Manhattan. Not a huge menu, but if you like REAL ramen (not the freeze dried grocery store shit) then try it out. Cash only, but there’s an ATM next door. Very fast service and very close to the conference.
What To Do?
Have some free time to spare during the day? Well, the area around the conference is home to a ton of great places to go see. Just a few blocks north is Central Park. Nickycakes gets lost every time he goes in there. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is a must-see if you haven’t been yet. A couple blocks east of the conference is 5th Avenue. Plenty of shopping there if you want to cop some gucci sneaks. And just a few blocks south is Times Square. You will also be close to all the Broadway shows. Some that Nicky has seen that he really liked (in order of how much he liked them) are Wicked, In the Heights, Jersey Boys, and Mamma Mia. If you want a good view of the city, check out Top of the Rock. It’s like $20 just to go up to the top of this building, but a pretty good view. Oh and don’t forget to get your tickets to the new Yankees stadium, where you can see them get crushed at home by the Red Sox August 6, 7th, 8th, 9th and see them beat Toronto the 10th and 11th and 12th.
If you had a platinum or gold pass to ASW, you should have gotten an email already with login details for viewing the video of Nickycakes’ panel at Affiliate Summit West. If not, the audio has been posted on geekcast. Shawn Collins was nice enough to send Cakes a raw copy of the video of the session, but asked that it not be posted in its entirety. Maybe when he gets time, Nicky will chop it up and post some of the good parts. Anyway, you can listen to the entire thing here, although it may be hard to tell who’s who with just the audio. Enjoy anyway:
There were a ton of parties at ASW this year, so it was kinda hard to choose which ones to go to. Most of the Cakes readers ended up at the Advaliant mansion party, the Copeac party, the CX digital party, or some combination of those three. All three ended up being off the hook in their own way, as Nickycakes had predicted in his pre-game post. This post should give a little rundown of these events.
The Advaliant Mansion Party
So what Advaliant seems to be doing lately is throwing a giant blowout party at these shows rather than getting a booth. It seems to be working well for them. At ASE 08 in Boston, they took all their top affiliates out on a big fishing boat and then to a nice restaurant. Then at adtech they had a big party at 2 connected nightclubs which was awesome. It was actually a group effort with them and a few other companies, especially Gene Miller and GMB Direct. Gene is pretty much a genius when it comes to these types of things, and from what Nickycakes hears, was the brains behind the mansion party. Here’s a picture of Gene with a portrait someone did of him:
Ok, so here’s the thing…the party itself was awesome, but Nickycakes was only there for like 20 minutes. Guys…don’t take a girl to Vegas with you unless you know they will be able to hang out with your work friends. Nuff said. Cakes got taken away from that party quicker than Uberaffiliates fake ID at the last ASW. But, that aside, the party was pretty jumpin. The place was packed, and you couldn’t walk anywhere without seein some people from wickedfire. There was a huge pool out back and apparently an indoor pool somewhere. Tons of hired dancers everywhere, loud music, open bar, poker tables, the works. Here are a couple pics that someone managed to snap before Nicky had to bounce:
Copeac started the night off with a bang by hosting a poker tournament in their sky villa suite at the Palms. Nicky was supposed to take part in that, but ended up having an important dinner, and everyone knows he keeps it real when it comes to eating. Not really sure who the winner of that was, but apparently Barman came in 2nd. There was also some drama with the idiot from bannerblindness (featured at #2 in nickycakes’ 2008 top 10 worst post) throwing business cards all over the table when he lost, and then later begging for money to pay some adult entertainers for something or other since he was short on cash. Sounds like a real standup guy.
Anyway, a little about the Sky Villa suite (CX digital also had a sky villa for their party, one floor down): it’s like 6k square feet, has a jacuzzi pool which hangs out over the edge of the building, a couple bedrooms, a steam room, gym room, spinning circular bed, and pretty much anything else you could ask for in a party spot.
The party was invite only, and they had bouncers being real dicks at the door to anyone without an invite..which was great, because theres nothing better than watching bitchy drunk girls who don’t belong getting angry that they can’t get into the party. If you didn’t already have a relationship with Copeac, then it would have been pretty difficult to get an invite. But it’s not that hard to get on the list if you at least sign up and talk to whoever your affiliate manager is over there, and run a little traffic. They definately take care of their affiliates. That said, there were tons of people there. Affiliates, affiliate managers, network owners, big merchants, whoever. Place was jumpin, especially around midnight.
One of the best parts of the party was meeting some of the people from the ad approval team at Facebook. They seemed really enthusiastic about changing their policies or at least making them more clear. We’ll see, but here’s a pic of Nick with Marisa, the girl responsible for disapproving all his ads:
And then here’s one with Shoemoney:
Thanks to Mike for the party. Definately one of the coolest network owners in the biz.
CX Digital Roll Like a Billionaire Party
The venue for the CX Digital party was almost identical to the Copeac party, just one floor down, however the parties themselves were quite different. CX decided that it would be better to invite ONLY their affilaites. No employees from other networks, no merchants, no non-affiliates basically. There were really no exceptions and getting in without being on the list was near impossible. This made for a really nice party where nobody was trying to sell anything, and everyone was pretty chill and just enjoying themselves.
The food there was great. They had all these little fingerfoods catered. Especially good were the little one-bite hamburgers. They had lots of other good stuff too like shrimp and little ham sandwiches and stuff. Nickycakes could have thrown together a pretty big ass meal if he hadn’t already eaten too dinners. The best, though, was the cheesecake guy. They had this dude serving scoops of cheesecake in desert glasses and had all sorts of bangin toppings to put on them. Was really really really bangin. Cx, please get that again next year, kthx.
The entertainment was great as well. First, they had a blackjack tourney, which Nickycakes ended up not realizing was happening until it was too late. Danielle (also featured on nickycakes’ 2008 top 10 worst post) ended up winning. Looked like a lot of fun. They had quite a few hired girls walking around the party and dancing and stuff. Didn’t make for bad scenery:
Hey..nice shirts ladies…oh wait..no..that’s just paint.
Here’s the DJ:
Great party by the peeps at CX Digital.
How to Get Invited Next Time
Ok, golden opportunity to drop some referral links, but the fact of the matter is, if you’re not signed up to these networks (and yes, they have big ass parties at pretty much all the events) then you are unlikely to get invited, so sign up and build a relationship with them for next time: Advaliant - Pretty much all the AM’s there are great. Copeac - Jeff or Ryan are great guys to work with, so maybe ask for one of them. CX Digital - Ask for Winkie if you already kinda know what you’re doing, or Frazier if you’re from digital point, speak broken english, you’re under 18, or you just don’t seem to be able to figure out this whole “affiliate marketing” thing.
Thanks to everyone who gave Nickycakes pictures, like Alla and Dan Wallace. Any more pics people have of parties like this, feel free to email to nickycakes at gmail so he can add the good ones to this post.
Keep it real, and stay tuned for the 3rd part..which should cover some juicy drama.
First, Nickycakes would like to say that he was absolutely humbled by the number of people who came up and thanked him for providing a useful resource for new and experienced affiliates. That is the ultimate goal of this site, and is really the best payment for this job…well..other than the buckets of referral commissions of course. It was really awesome meeting everyone, and this was, by far, the best Affiliate Summit that the Cakes has had the opportunity to attend. Another big thanks for everyone who showed up to Nickycakes’ session. It was great to see so many people awake at noon in vegas. Cheers.
Ok, so the wrapup post will have to be broken into 3 parts just because there is sooo much stuff to cover. The first of the 3 parts will cover the show itself. It’s important to separate the show from the rest of the conference this year because so many crazy ass things went down, and the affiliate summit staff may not want everything directly associated with them. And, to be fair, it is vegas after all…so crazy stuff is bound to happen. So after reading this post, stay tuned for the other installments which will contain parties and drama galore.
Day 0: Saturday
Nicky didn’t end up getting into vegas until late Saturday evening, which felt like even later due to the time zone difference, so he ended up just crashing and missing the Wickedfire Meetup on Saturday night. Apparently it was good times tho, and many pictures were taken. There were also the exclusive wickedfire T-Shirts given out which Nickycakes was proud to have designed the back of. Ruck, cakes’ good pal and owner of Convert2Media footed the bill for the shirts and had the shirt order rejected by two separate printing companies due to the dickroll url on the front. Awesome.
Day 1: Sunday
Arriving at the Rio about 20 minutes before his panel, Nickycakes went down to the conference center to find a long ass line at the registration tables for people trying to get their passes. He decided that half an hour was too long to wait, so he just walked to the front of the line, found an open computer, filled in his registration info, got his pass, and went on in. Good game.
The panel Nickycakes was speaking on was at noon on Sunday. It was the first session of the conference…why not open with a bang, rite? The panel was supposed to be about Affiliate Marketing…lead generation strategies, whatever. Andrew Wee was the panel moderator, and Nickycakes, Geordie Carswell, and Miles Baker were the panelists. Geordie is another ppc guy, and Miles does SEO. Andrew….attends conferences and has a blog…as well as plays some facebook games from time to time. The way Andrew set it up was..he would ask questions of the panelists, and then they would answer citing their experience in their fields. The questions were pretty basic, and didn’t really have much depth to them, so it was hard to go into much detail. The weird thing was, after the panelists answered, andrew would go off on some tangent about blogging which didnt really relate much to what we were talking about…but i guess that just everyone on the panel a chance to drink some water.
As the thing was filling up, Nicky was able to take a couple pics prior to everything getting started. Most of the room ended up pretty full of people with a few standing in the back (click to enlarge):
And a few pics of the session in progress:
In all honesty, the thing went pretty well. The place ended up pretty full as people were able to get their passes and wake up from partying the night before. There were some decent questions asked, and good answers, and there were also some pretty awful questions asked as well. Overall, not a bad first professional speaking gig for the Cakes. More to come hopefully.
Destone (seen sitting in the front row to the left with red hair in the panorama pic) was met with utter failure when he tried to rickroll the entire room at the end using…..an iphone… Cakes couldn’t even hear it and he was sitting 5 feet away and the room was silent expecting him to ask a question. Stay classy Craig.
After that, there were more sessions, but the Cakes went to the Meet Market, which is just a giant room with tables set up for a bunch of companies, networks, whatever, and you can go around and talk to everyone. Kinda like a more casual version of the main exhibit hall which starts on monday. One of the fun parts of the meet market was the booth that Facebook had set up. Facebook decided they wanted to come to ASW to see first hand exactly how much everyone hated their ad approval team, and the resounding answer was: a metric fuckton. One of the guys at the booth even held up a video camera and recorded Cakes going on a rant about how he’d love to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on facebook traffic if they would let him, but since they wont, that money is now going to other people, like myspace and google.
Day 2: Monday
Monday is when the exhibit hall opens and you get to go see all the real big booths. Nickycakes was up early and decided to try the continental breakfast at the conference. It consisted of cereal, pastries, and fruit, and there was orange juice and some other stuff to drink as well. Not exactly the giant omlette that would have been ideal for a starving affiliate, but it was enough. Nicky then headed over a little late to the Gary Vaynerchuk keynote. Apparently this guys claim to fame is that he hosts some wine show on tv and has some related website. Well, he was a good public speaker, but the keynote was devoid of any real decent information that could be used towards affiliate marketing, unless you spend your days endlessly trolling digital point and joel comm’s blog. Probably the only useful thing he talked about was like…don’t reply to too many people on twitter cause it’s annoying.. The Q+A session that followed was all just people trying to get voice time on the mic to promote their shitty websites, so Nicky rolled out early to avoid bothering everyone with his snoring from the back row.
After the disappointing keynote, most everyone headed over to the exhibit hall, where all the still-half-drunk affiliate managers were struggling to finish setting up their booths and choke down some alka-seltzer in time for the crowds to show up. As far as the show itself is concerned, the exhibit hall is where it’s at for affiliates. Not necessarily because all the networks are there, but because the other affiliates are there and you get to go hang out with them and talk shop a little. You can’t really talk shop at the parties at night cause most people are sloshed and don’t feel like talking about work that much, but in the day, everyone wants to talk some business.
Now a little bit about booths. If you’re an affiliate network, you might want to pay attention to this one if you want to attract any affiliates to your booth. Put yourself in the shoes of an affiliate walking around the ASW exhibit hall. Almost every network is trying to get you to come over and chat so they can tell you about their “most exclusive offers”, “best payouts”, and “best affiliate managers” or whatever. EVERYONE. It gets boring having every booth trying to sell you something. That’s why most affiliates just walk around and talk to other affiliates…it’s much more productive. So…your goal is to attract affiliates to your booth. What do affiliates want? Do they want some flatscreen displays with a signup form to your network? Do they want a variety of free pens with your network name written on them? Or maybe some anti-stress foam things? NO. Let’s take a look at some good and bad booths.
Here’s the bad..this is a double booth during a really busy time when tons of affiliates and other people are jam packed in the exhibit hall. You can almost hear the crickets. The logo has been removed since this company seems to be [allegedly] rather trigger happy with the legal documents.
Really? Two chairs and a glass table? Do you honestly thing this is going to bring you more business?
One booth actually hired a freakin magician…well you could really just call him a 5yr old birthday party type clown except with no makeup and a suit on…
Ok, lets take a look at some booths that actually attracted affiliates:
Jason from Ads4Dough was pretty much spot on with what affiliates want in a show booth. He just got a decent sized flatscreen, nintendo wii, and a big ass wrap around sofa. The thing was packed the whole show. There were like at least 1mil a month in revenue worth of affiliates on that sofa like the whole show.
And then there was the booth that had the foosball table. People were all over that one:
No pics available of it for some reason, but copeac had a keg and a sofa at their booth which was a pretty good draw as well.
Day 3: Tuesday
With monday being the big day, tuesday is more of the same as monday, except things are kinda winding down. Especially since there are so many parties monday night, and pretty much all the attendees and exhibitors are hung over, it’s a pretty slow day. As none of the networks who took pics with me have responded to nickycakes’ requests for said photos, here is the obligatory pic of nicky with his favorite cx digital affiliate manager…
Whenever network people get off their collective asses and send me more, they will be posted.
update pics:
That’s it for the official conference stuff…more to come on parties in the next post.
