Adam Jewell – Search & Affiliate Marketing

Despite a tough economy, slowing e-commerce sales and a glum outlook for 2009 and beyond, Affiliate Summit West 2009 scheduled to kick off in Las Vegas on January September 11, 2009 SOLD OUT. For as long as the Internet has been around, affiliates have been running circles around agencies and in-house teams when it comes to marketing, selling and making money online by aligning their websites and search campaigns with the way people search for, think about and want to buy products and services. Simply put, affiliates let analytics and performance guide their decisions and budget outlays rather than putting a bunch of overpaid clueless people in a room to brainstorm like they are coming up with irrelevant [to the web] creative concepts for the next national Pepsi television campaign.

Affiliate Summit West 2009 will be packed with some of the best marketers in the industry – the ones that can actually sell things instead of the ones that just talk about seling things and make up metrics to justify online advertising campaigns.

The event will be held at the ROI Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas which should be a nice place to have the conference since the hotel and convention center will both be in one place.

I’ll be getting in the afternoon of Janaury 10th and staying at Planet Hollywood through the morning of the 15th. Will probably be meeting up with Online Marketer for the traditional all you can eat sushi at Todai Sushi right in the Planet Hollywood mall. The Steelers will also be beating up on the Chargers so will be watching the game somewhere in Vegas as well.

Stay up to date with the latest info on Affiliate Summit West 2009 Vegas on Twitter and come meet some of the best marketing mind in the business who actually know how to sell stuff.

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!

Affiliate Summit is coming up again in a little over a month. Along with CJU, it’s probably one of the best affiliate marketing conferences in the industry. I’ve never been, but since I’ll be out west for SMX – Search Marketing Expo and CJ was offering great coupons for Affiliate Summit, it seemed like a great opportunity to check out the conference.

It’ll be the first conference in quite a while with no speaking engagements and an opportunity to go without having to worry about doing a presentation. The presentations should be excellent and contain some golden nuggets, the atmosphere will be festive and generally, any affiliate gathering is full of a great bunch of people.

The conference hotel is the RIO Las Vegas and the conference rate is $159.00 for the block of rooms reserved for the conference. At the WebmasterWorld PubCon conferences, I tend to stay at the Renaissance Las Vegas – no gambling, no Vegas bars, just a nice quiet place to sleep away from it all.

Search Engine Strategies without Danny Sullivan & Chris Sherman, who would have thought? Well, now Kevin Ryan is at the healm of Search Engine Strategies and Danny and Chris are making tracks with Search Marketing Expo (SMX) under the umbrella of Third Door Media. Along with Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld, Danny & Chris are two of the most knowledgeable and experienced search gurus that host search focused conferences.

The conference will cover all aspects of search, have some exclusive content and insights that only Danny, Chris & other speakers and modertors will be able to provide and skip the boxed lunches! This might not seem like a big deal but one of the bast parts of CJU is the outstanding food served throughout the show. Most other conferences serve stuff your kids woud be embarrased to call a school lunch. Back in 2000 when SES was first getting off the ground, they used to serve good food but then the accountants teamed up with the shareholders and decided that they could make more money if they served cardboard to the attendees. Great food – just one more reason to head to SMX West.

SMX has also teamed up with the Las Vegas Affiliate Summit conference to offer great deals for those who go to both conferences. Register for SMX West or Affiliate Summit and get 50% OFF the admission fee to the other conference.

The conference will have quite a variety of sessions and keynotes. I’ll be on the panel – Defending Your Search Budget Against New Ad Fads in the paid search track on Day 1.

Are social media, blogs, widgets, NeverEndingFriending and other new ad opportunities attempting to take money away from search? Learn how you should look at and allocate your budgets to get the most bang for your buck! Even after all this time, search is sometimes still misunderstood, the metrics and measurements may not be in place to make a strong stand for search. Learn how to look at and present your case to keep get your organization to find funds elsewhere to fund the latest ad fads. Since search can be intangible and you won’t be submitting your search campaign to any “Addy” or other award contests, it seems more intangible and harder for old school budget allocators to understand. As a result, you need to make a strong financial case for your search budget.