I might have got sidetracked just a little bit about my first day at ASW with my observations on Jason Calacanis’ viewpoints of Shoemoney Photos, so I wanted to make sure that I get the rest of the day caught up with, so that you guys know that more is going on here than name-calling and ego-boosting!
So after the infamous keynote speech, we headed over to session on “Video Innovation in Affiliate Marketing” featuring Melissa Salas from Buy.com, Tim Carter from AsktheBuilder.com, Joel Comm from Infomedia.com, Brian McCarthy from Revver.com, Steve Rosenbaum from Magnify.net and Gary Vaynerchuck, the host of Wine Library TV. The theme of the session was again the quality of content determines the popularity and traffic of your video. There was a little bit of insight on how Google Videos timestamps and transcribes the content in a video to make it more search-friendly. Also, Steve Rosenbaum gave some demographic information by telling us that a majority of videos are viewed at the office, so keep that in mind that the average internet video user might not have an elaborate setup at home to watch video on their home big screen. Other than that, Gary was trying to get attention by using profane words and outlandish claims like going against Yahoo’s advice to make his videos shorter from the original 14 minutes to a more friendly 6.5 minutes and instead making them longer to 25 minutes because his content was that good. To each his own, but I know this session was only scratching the surface of what is to come on the internet.
Danielle, Greg and I then headed over to the luncheon where we sat down with the crew from Shopzilla.com. A guy named Dave something started asking Danielle and I about Pink Deals and was selling us on his ideas of how we could integrate their feeds onto our site. He didn’t really say anything we didn’t know, so we just smiled and continued to eat. The awkward silence was broken when a quiet Asian guy in a suit comes and sits at our table. At first, I was just happy he sat down at our table because he had with him one of the best giveaways at the conference - a skateboard with a Las Vegas collage on the background. I wanted to ask him where he got it, so I could make sure to get one for myself before I leave. To my surprise and also to Danielle’s (see her reaction here), the quiet Asian guy that was getting his ass kissed by Shopzilla was Ben from BensBargains.net - one of the oldest and most successful deals/coupons site on the internet. To tell you the truth, Ben’s site was the site that truly inspired me to become the online entrepreneur I am today, so having him sit at our table out of the hundreds of tables in the luncheon room was quite amazing.
We got to ask him a few questions and he was very straight forward with his answers. He began his site while he was at college and populated the site with deals between classes. I remember his posting pattern was about 20 some time during the day and then 20 more at night. While I was at college, Ben’s site was the place to go if you wanted to get any coupon for Dell computers. For a stretch, I remember I was buying an item from his site on a weekly basis. It was sick. He also told us that all his posting was done manually and that there was no way to maintain quality control while having feeds populate your site. Bottom line - it’s going to take a lot of work to get Pink Deals up to par with Ben’s Bargains! No matter though, Ben was very cool and offered his business card to contact him at any time if we had any questions. I really appreciated the offer and we wished him well.
After lunch, we met up with Greg and John over at another table in the lunch area. We were talking about some kind of new online reality show that John might be a part of and the other sessions we were going to after lunch. All of us went to go check out Wil Reynolds speak on “How to Futureproof your SEO Efforts” which wasn’t extremely informative, but instead, was a very engaging presentation:
Topics and Points that I jotted down on my notepad (in no particular order):
Inequalities:
- Putting a Digg Button on your website does not equal Social Marketing
- Writing a Blog does not equal Blogging
- Recording a Video does not equal
Link Bait Tips:
- Use Digg
- Get Social Traffic
- Be Creative - it takes time, but it’s worth it.
- Be involved - get out there and comment on other people’s blogs. Integrate yourself.
Link Tips:
- Get rid of your reciprocal links
- Buy good quality Directory Links
Meta Tips:
- Write quality descriptive titles and descriptions that get users to click on your link instead of stuffing as many keywords as possible.
Tools:
- Digital Point Keyword Rank Checker
- Touchgraph
- Google Alerts
- Copemix Tracker
- Adcenter Plugin for Excel 2007 - this one he swears by and is something I will be testing out very soon.
Guess who’s the guy with the Flat Top rocking to Blue Man Group!
After that session, we just headed back to our rooms to get ready for a night of food and partying at Venetian’s new club - Tao. The party was sponsored by Pepperjam, RocketProfit, Webmaster Radio and some other affiliate networks. I’m really not going to talk much about the party because it sucked. It really did. Here’s why:
- I didn’t need to RSVP for this party. They just wanted my information.
- The line at the bar wasn’t too long, but the bartenders were horrendous. It looked like they just got out of bartending school since I saw one girl printing out a cocktail recipe and all of them were on edge, making sure they made the perfect drinks. It wasn’t until everyone left the party that I got a bartender to get me drinks quickly.
- The DJ for this party was THE WORST DJ EVER! I don’t know who it was but it had to be the kid of the club’s owner. It was worse than an iPod DJ. It was worse than just setting up a radio at a house party. The DJ had no clue how to control the ups and downs of the party. He had no idea how to turn down the music to make announcements, but instead, just turned off the music. He didn’t even know how to make annoucements as I’ve heard commencement speeches shorter than his “shout outs!”
- The Blue Man group that performed were aight. I’ve definitely seen better and I definitely wasn’t too impressed. The crowd wasn’t too enthused so I think they may have just cut the show short because of that.
After the party, we headed back to our room at the Rio where we got some drinks and I passed out.
Today, we’re headed over to hear John and Zac speak and then we need to go snag a skateboard.
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SMURFS!!!
So you met the shopzilla.com guy eh? I became an expert at doing that Shopzilla XML feed through the TTZ Project.
ya . met them, but one of their reps just seemed a lil shady . . . someone told me not to trust them too much
[…] Gary Lee - First Day at Affiliate Summit West […]
Interesting comment regards feeds / quality control.
You could go halfway and feed a console from where you could post or reject coupons… It really depends on how much time it would save… and how short of time you are!
Jez
i personally think it makes a lot of sense to include analytic and feed information into SERPs . . . that’s not something you can game too easily
[…] Mr. Gary Lee asking you to guess who’s rocking with the Blue Man […]
Gary,
Thanks for the shout out…quick question, drop me a line and let me know what more I could have done to make it a more useful presentation? I am always looking for feedback to sharpen the saw so to speak.
Thanks!
–Wil
[…] One good long day filled with people to see, sessions to attend, and free drinks at night. Gary Lee posted a summary of his day 1 events. […]