All posts by: Matt
Life at Affiliate Summit Boston 2008
Affiliate Summit Boston, has a different feel this year, moving on from a hotel based location we’re at the Boston Convention Centre, with 2300 fellow delegates, 36% of which are affiliates, ASE has a large exhibition hall, and 3 simultaneous tracks running throughout the day.
I have just been to the ‘Ask The Experts’ Session this morning, though there are only 80 to 100 people here in a round table environment its a great opportunity to meet experts within the field of Mobile, Video and SEO, you get the feeling some people are missing out.
The show has overall been good so far, with a number of good networking opportunities, and a packed exhibition hall, the sessions have been for me variable with some excellent panels and moderated sessions.
Chris and I have been interviewing a number of figures here in Boston, some familiar and new to the scene, Chris will be uploading these over at affiliates4u.tv in the coming days.
Big thanks to the Team at Affiliate Future for their hospitality at the Top of The Hub - There were quite a number of unnoficcial networking parties last night and in previous nights. LinkShare for instance held a reception for their clients outside of the conference.
The official webmasterradio.fm party was cancelled which is a shame as these networking events are integral to the success of the trip, well perhaps that’s just in my opinion as It’s a great opportunity to sink a few pale ales with fellow affiliates!
The main difference here, this year is that affiliates seem to be making money more from the long-tail and niches within the marketplace, this appears to be confounded by the number of niche exhibitors rather than larger brands on the exhibit hall, Maybe it’s always been like this, but it appears more noticable this year.
If you’re here and would like us to catch you on film, buzz me on twitter or catch us as we roam the exhibition hall!
Looking forward to a busy day ahead, we have a number of meetings set up as well as a number of sessions in the diary to attend. Though I’m not sure if there is a party tonight, so need to arrange something today!
We’re off to film at Affiliate Summit Boston
Chris Johnson and I will be flying out to Affiliate Summit in Boston on Sunday; we’ll be taking camcorder to film content for our newly released Affiliate Marketing TV channel – affiliates4u.tv
If you’re attending the conference, let’s hook up for a chat and if you’re up for it an interview for the site.
We have already lined up the team at Affiliate Future US, and a couple of exhibitors.
Either ping me or Chris on Twitter, Google Talk or by email and we can arrange to meet up whilst at the conference.
Let us know here if there is anyone you’d like us to hunt down for you, metaphorically speaking!
What to do with Shopping Search?
We have a large number of domains that are lying around for want of a better phrase ripe and ready for development.
One such domain being Shopping Search - As you can see its a relic from 2003 however with some development time we could make it special.
The big question… What on earth do we do with it?
Here are some initial thoughts off the top of my head:
- Use the ShopWindow API to create a CPA based price comparison site
- Use a white label or XML feed from Pricerunner
- Create a mash-up with various XML / API feeds
- A social Shopping Search Site
- A rough and ready Blog
Answers on a postcard or comment!
All that lovely PR from Tech Track 100, Nominations Open
Reading the Sunday Times at the weekend, the TechTrack 100 (note someone didn’t plan their URL structure!) is upon us once more. Whilst I’d love to eneter existem, we don’t just yet have the required £5m turnover to qualify for entry.
Anyone that does meet the below entry criteria shold certainly nominate themselves, all that great PR!
Here are the guidelines:
- Independent tech* company
- UK registered, unquoted, and not subsidiaries
- Sales of at least £250,000 in the base year (2004 or 2005)
- Sales of at least £5m in the latest year (2007 or 2008)
- Year-on-year sales growth in the latest year from 2006 to 2007, or 2007 to 2008, plus forecast (or actual) sales growth
- Excluded companies include computer resellers, and those with accounts qualified as “going concern”
*The definition of a technology company is based on the London Stock Exchange’s techMARK definition, i.e. “a company whose business growth and success is dependent on the development of one or more technologies, and has evidence of technological innovation with regards to a product or service.”
Last year industry inclusions of note were Affiliate Window (35), buy.at (9), Cashcade (49) and Traffic Broker (16)
iPhone, opening up opportunities for affiliates
The new 3G iPhone has convinced me to make the move to O2 from Vodafone and ditch my trusty Blackberry 8310* on 11th July 2008 - if I can get one that is! (Mr Maher are you reading this hint, hint!)
Seriously though the new iPhone really is going to open up a whole array of opportunities for savvy developers and affiliates through apple web applications and new features such as their geo photo tagging. Other mobile phone operators have similar developments, and further simplification and price reductions on mobile browsing and a greater number of models utilising WiFi will enhance the opportunity even further.
I know we’ve all said Mobile is going to happen in the affiliate space for some time, so embrace it now as I have a feeling one day quite soon its just going to knock on our door and we’ll no doubt all be surprised!
Rubbish me if you like, but its already happening on a browser level and web applications will give developers even more control and user loyalty.
Anyhow, back to the Blackberry, anyone thinking about making the switch? My only concern is email, something the Blackberry is awesome with.
<plug>* as a side note I’ll be passing on my 8310 to Mobile Phone Xchange, who will send me a not too petty £31 for it to be ‘recycled’
The affiliate programme is managed by our friends at Existem Affiliate Management - chat to Mark for more details as you can earn around £4.00 per lead. </plug>
SMX Advanced - Too black for some?
This morning I’ve been looking at putting together an SEO panel for a4uexpo. We had a great panel on ‘Extreme SEO’ last year, which was so popular we’ve decided to put it back on the agenda, allowing for even more Q&A time.
From the line-up of SEO superstars I think it’s quite possibly going to be one of the more eventful and useful sessions this October.
This speaker research led me to some current unrest in the search community.
Apparently the recently held SMX Advanced conference in Seattle went too ‘black’ for some. With a number of attendees questioning whether certain dark side SEO techniques should be discussed openly in a classroom environment or kept to smoky downtown bars?
I guess in my mind it’s a question of how you want the search industry to be perceived by clients, brands, newbies and the outside world. After all such conferences help to shape thinking and the future of the sector.
For some verticals grey or black is now the only way to get good rankings. Even good content, page structure and onsite SEO is not enough.
It’s an interesting read and it’s a moral dilemma for the highly respected Danny Sullivan, I suspect he has to make a decision on how such sessions are programmed at subsequent events.
