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Welcome to the 3rd and final installment of the ASW 09 wrapup post. Most of you were probably holding your breath for this one, but before it gets out of hand, a little disclaimer. The information in this post is probably all made up, fiction, satire, alleged 2nd hand knowledge, unreliable, and for entertainment purposes only. Also, any events that may or may not have occured outside affiliate summit, such as things that happen at parties, are really in no way related to the show itself. Things can get a little crazy in vegas.
Tame In-Show Drama
It’s always fun to see the interactions between companies that dislike eachother when they’re forced together at a trade show. Last years ASW had Azoogle and Copeac booths located next to eachother which made for some fun times and hilarious promotional materials. Copeac had some great little flyers with an arrow “coincidentally” pointing at the booth next door and saying some fun things about “the competition.” At this ASW, as well as ASE in Boston last year, copeac brought these awesome foam slingshot rockets and had their booth mysteriously within firing range of “the competition.” Some chick at the booth started getting pissed when Nickycakes and his friends rolled up and started grabbing rockets and firing them en masse across the exhibit hall. What did they expect?
Worth mentioning are Toronto rivals CX digital and Azoogle booths being next to eachother this year. Also Frazier from CX and Ryan Sessler from Azoogle look a lot alike.
Also funny was to see the singlesnet.com and match.com booths directly across from eachother. Even more funny was to see so many guys working for dating sites who were so unlikely to…have girlfriends.
Party Drama
Cx Party -
The CX digital party, as mentioned in the last post, was really nice. Their guest list was only affiliates that worked with them and maybe like 1 guest if they were lucky. That’s what made their party so good. No companies trying to pitch them stuff, etc. Nicky spent a few minutes downstairs in the palms hanging out with the cx people as they were checking people in, and they were turning non-invitees away faster than evolution books in a Wasilla library. Somehow, Nate Whitehill, the dude who designs like…john chow and uberaffiliates blogs, got in as someone’s guest. But instead of just staying and enjoying the party, dude starts calling people and telling them to come there and to say they’re his guest. So these people show up, and the cx people are forced to go down 29 floors to tell the douchebags to leave cause they weren’t invited. Honestly guys, things are getting a little rough for you on the party scene when you’re trying to namedrop nate whitehill to get into a party. Just sayin. Pretend to know the dj or something, at least.
Advaliant Mansion Party -
By now, you have hopefully read the full story of the rug adventures at the advaliant mansion party at red rock. Nickycakes had half a post written up about this whole ordeal but had to scrap it when Barman beat him to the punch complete with skillfull photoshops and whatnot. This is probably the funniest story of the whole time in vegas, so go read and enjoy: PPC.BZ MisAdventures: The Rick Flair Rug From the Red Rock Mansion. And big thanks to c0ck (the guy with the rug) for the cuban cohiba. He keeps it real on the cigar tip.
Undisclosed Private Poker Game -
Alright, just to repeat, this is all second hand and probably false info. Anyway, there was this private poker tourney in a suite at one of the bigger hotels in the area. One of the attendees was John Kitover, owner of bannerblindness, which was featured at #2 on nickycakes’ top 10 worst sites 2k8. So John ends up losing the poker tournament early…not surprising. He then proceeds to make this big sales pitch, holding up the game, bragging about how he has 10 employees (lol) and if you need any work done just call him and starts throwing his business cards all over the table like a retard. John then proceeds to disappear into some room with the two hired adult entertainers who happened to be at the poker tournament. 20 minutes later, an extremely drunk kyle irwin becomes irritated that the adult entertainment has left the party, so armed with his camera phone kyle goes on a quest to find the missing strippers. Upon opening a door to one of the rooms, Irwin is greeted by angry yelling followed by John throwing water on him and trying to slam the door in his face. Enraged by the water throwing, irwin proceeds to kick the door open in John’s face a few times before giving up and going back to the party with a hilarious video on his phone. A few minutes later, Barman needs to use the restroom, which is located through the bedroom in question, so he ends up walking in on John sitting with one of the adult entertainers who then asks barman to “spot him $500″ to pay for some undisclosed activity. Barman laughs in his face and basically tells him to go F himself, at which point John proceeds to walk out into the party and start individually begging people for money, including asking the head of one of the biggest affiliate networks to spot him $80. Then, John goes and finds Kyle, who is at this point watching the video with a bunch of other guys and laughing, and buys the memory card from his camera for $100 in a desperate attempt to cover his tracks. Stay classy, Bannerblindness.
Copeac Party -
Later that evening, in another location, Kyle Irwin from the previous story ends up extremely drunk. EXTREMELY drunk. Starts walking around and trash talking pretty much everyone in sight. He ends up spouting racial slurs and threatening the wrong dude and gets punched in the face once and then ejected from the party. Guy doing the punching ends up hero of the party and possibly ASW. Kyle is actually a pretty good guy, usually. Apparently later he was spotted puking between some slot machines. Good times.
That’s It For This Year
Well that’s about all Nickycakes has in him about ASW 09. Now you know what you’re missing if you didn’t go.
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.
Timjon claps back with his new joint “100 Bars of Soap” which is more like 140 bars…and is nasty to boot. Only prob Nickycakes sees is he pretty much spends the whole time clowning Dullspace’s rhymes but could have been much more creative by doggin’ his campaigns, landing pages, click costs, epc’s, digital point background, low epc’s, john chow rss subscription…the possibilities are endless. Still, his production is on point, and the boy has serious skills. Is dullspace outie or will he drop knowledge bombs on timjon before christmas?
Well, it looks like there’s an sql injection vulnerability in prosper202 up to version 1.1.1. If you’re running the prosper202 software, you need to go upgrade to the latest version. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS HERE first, before going to the download page and getting the latest version.
This is very serious as some douchebag has been going around stealing peoples campaigns and rooting their servers. Apparently there is an affiliate who’s known about this vuln for a week or two at least and when asked to report the bug to Wes, he decided instead to keep it for personal benefit and give it out to his friends instead. A giant FUCK YOU goes out on behalf of nickycakes.com and probably many others. The respect you would have earned by doing the right thing far outweighs any tiny ass profits your buddies made. You know who you are.
In any case, Nicky’s stuff doesn’t seem to be hacked and is all patched up now.
Since the new version is open source, you can now do some fun stuff with the software that was more difficult before. For example, if you’re like Cakes, you may have mis-named some of your traffic sources which make them show up as a question mark in spy view. You can now go into the 202-config/functions-tracking202.php file and change the regex responsible for deciding which icon to use, as well as add new ones for traffic sources that aren’t by default included.
Many of you have at least tried Myspace Ads over the past couple weeks, many at a profit, most at a loss it seems. There is certinaly a TON of traffic and a lot of money to be made if you’re smart.
Anyway, it seems that their billing system is broken. If you have your card declined, they will attempt to bill you again a few times within an hour or so and then just give up, rendering your account useless. Even if you change to a new card, they won’t even attempt to bill you. Your account will appear to be functioning properly, and you can even submit ads and have them approved, but none of your ads will show and your account will remain broken indefinately it seems.
Submitting support tickets seems to do nothing either.
Just making a new account seems to be the only working solution right now. This problem is affecting quite a few people.
Update:
Got this email from myspace regarding the billing issue:
Hello,
In response to your inquiry regarding why you are not receiving ad views after you have updated your credit card information, we will be happy to assist you. This is a known issue that we are working to resolve. For now you will have to resubmit your campaigns after you update your credit card information. We do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Please note: Ads are reviewed in the order in which they are received. We appreciate your patience during the review process. During the beta test of this advertising platform we will have MySpace SSAP agents approving ads Monday thru Friday, from 10:30 AM to 6:30 PM (Pacific Standard/Daylight Time).
