Adam Jewell – Search & Affiliate Marketing

On September 9, 2007, CJ kicked off another stellar CJU conference in Santa Barbara, CA. Having been to and spoken at numerous Internet Marketing conferences, CJU is always among the best. As is the case at most conferences, the presentations tend to be pretty basic but you always pick up a nugget here and there. The real learning & networking happens in the bar, at the networking events, and at other random places & activities.

CJ has a coupon feed in addition to the merchant catalog feeds that might come in handy. I don’t have a coupon site but knowing that such a feed is available, provides a bit more incentive to work on one.

It was great to meet affiliate managers from companies I’ve worked with for a while that I’d never met before, reps from CJ in various departments from technical services to client and account managers as well as lots of new people from companies ranging from HSBC, Chase Bank, to Fox Interactive and 1and1 Web Hosting. At an affiliate conference you tend to meet people who know how to get things done, to generate sales & leads; lots of them. There were plenty of top performers there with loads of different business models. Of course any conference has a schedule of presentations & some of the highlights are below.

While out there, we had some great times, great food at the CJ events and the local restaraunts, took a spin on some Segway i2′s from Segway Santa Barbara, had a few drinks, made lots of connections and came back a little exhausted but full of new ideas and contacts.

Once again Comission Junction will be holding the highly esteemed CJU affiliate marketing conference in Santa Barbara at the stunning Fess Parker Double Tree Resort. Conference dates are September 9-11 (hope that is not a bad omen) with a full schedule of events planned, as always.

There are good conferences in the Internet Marketing industry and then there are great ones. CJU is a GREAT conference. When you work in search or affiliate marketing, you come to expect that unless they actually do what you do, nobody has any idea what you do. Even if they say they do, they probably don’t. No matter how you try to describe it, lay it out, or explain it, 99.9% of people just don’t get it.

At CJU, you have some of the best minds in the industry in performance marketing and Internet marketing in general. Unlike most agencies and marketing service providers that generally get paid just for buying, planning or setting up advertising campaings, affiliates only get paid when they sell something. At CJU you’re surrounded by people who are experts in targeting, keyword selection, landing page design, PPC advertising, and making money with limited resources and limited margins. If you can’t sell stuff you can’t be an affiliate. Since it’ll run you about 3K to go to CJU, you’ll have to be a pretty good affiliate to have the cash to go.

At CJU, like most conferences, it is the networking, the after hours events, chance meetings, and late night pub crawls that tend to be the best experiences and lead to the best connections and relationships.

The schedule of events this year will offer sessions including:

Speakers will typically be top affiliates, long term reps from CJ and superaffiliates like Jeremy Palmer from QuitYourDayJob.com

Along with the educational sessions, Buy.com will sponsor a party, there will be GREAT food (rare for a conference these days) and ample opportunity to network, explore and relax in the beutiful weather and beaches that are Santa Barbara, California.

See ya @ CJU!