Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

So I didnt’ pay to much attention to the exact dates or the agenda for Affiliate Summit West. Affiliate Summit & SMX were cross promoted with discounts to one if you bought a pass to the other. With a speaking gig at SMX on Tuesday, all I had time to do at Affiliate Summit was register, pick up the pass and the SWAG bag, pop into the first networking thing, grab a few free drinks and head out to the airport on Monday morning to SMX.

There were a few familiar faces there, George Yuba - great guy from CJ, a few fellow CJ affiliates, some others I knew from CJU and WebmasterWorld PubCon shows. It would have been nice to be able to hang out for a while longer and see some of the presentations, find out what is new in the world of affiliate marketing but that will probably have to wait till CJU in September 2008 in Santa Barbara.

Maybe next time, they’ll stagger the conferences a little more to facilitate going to both of them. The RIO seemed like a decent place to have such a conference. The place is HUGE, has conference facilities right on site and seemed to have a number of restaurants and lots of casino floor space in the hotel/convention center as well. It might be a better all-in-one package than the Las Vegas convention center down by the Las Vegas Hilton and the Renaissance Las Vegas.

By the time I booked, the RIO wanted about $300/night so ended up staying at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas instead. Maybe if I had been able to go to the whole Affiliate Summit conference it would have been better to stay at the RIO but Planet Hollywood worked out great and was a really nice place to stay.

Since I’d been to Vegas 5 or times in the past and gone on a Grand Canyon tour once but had never been to a show, I decided it was time to make up for lost time and went to four shows - Blue Man Group at the Venetian - KA at the MGM Grand - Crazy Horse Paris at MGM Grand and Zumanity at New York New York. The shows were great and the Las Vegas discount show tickets were cheaper than buying in advance or a the box office!