ASE11 Wrap Up

Affiliate Summit East 2011 is in the books and I’ve been home for a few days. I gotta say that this month has been the most hectic month ever for me. In between some new projects at work, the second dance studio location opening up, industry conferences for both my wife and I, moving into our new place. I feel like we’re running on empty….not to mention with moving expenses, the additional studio, two NYC weekends, weddings, hotels, food, everything….we are definitely feeling the cash crunch on the old green stash.

However lets do a little recap on how Affiliate Summit East was. I had mentioned in a post the other day that I went to ASE10 last year for like $75 (TOTAL!). This year was significantly different cash wise .

Months ago I had jumped onto an ASE11 group buy on PPV Playbook (Thanks again Lee!). I picked up a Platinum pass and a Silver pass. With the early discount/group rates the prices were like $679 and $79. I had planned on bringing my wife with the silver pass or maybe a friend. In the end I couldn’t find a single local person to go with me. I even invited some local internet marketers but no takers. As it got closer to ASE I had a few family birthday parties to go to and as much as I love hearing some good speakers I wasn’t about to pass up my nephew’s 4th birthday on Saturday. This meant that I wouldn’t be arriving into NYC until Sunday afternoon at latest. I had opted to take a bus in from Boston since my license is still revoked in NYC from ASE 2010!

Knowing that I had a few meetings schedule, a PPV Playbook event, and some other plans I really thought I wouldn’t make the most of my Platinum Pass. I threw that up on eBay for $999 buy it now and ended up brokering it to someone via PayPal for $800. So with just my silver pass in hand I didn’t attend a single session at the actual conference.

The Hotel

Booking everything last minute I went onto Expedia and booked a hotel at Algonquin Hotel Times Square, Autograph Collection. This was a 4 star hotel that was about 10-15 minute walk away from the Hilton where the conference was at. The average book value of the hotel was like $524 per night. I did one of those Expedia unpublished rate deals and got it for $134 a night with like $20 taxes. So although I had a slight walk to everything I ended up saving some green on the hotel room.

The hotel itself was pretty nice. They had some upscale piano bar style stuff going on downstairs and all the rooms were fashioned kind of like old school mobster style looking stuff from the FDR era. I would definitely stay there again for that rate!

The Meet Market

I despise the meet market. I really am not a fan of it but hit it up for just two things:

• Share A Sale party passes (they give these out at their table).
• All About the Cookies book. They had a promo running that you get a free ASW11 gold pass if you buy the book and all proceeds go to breast cancer! Double Win!

The meet market is always just too packed for my liking but it definitely seems like a cost effective way to have a presence without having to compete with the $50,000 booths during the exhibit hall.

The Exhibit Hall

The exhibit hall was top notch as always. I saw plenty of great companies there and got a chance to meet a few that I haven’t met in person yet. They had some really innovative things going on. One group actually had a Delorean car there. Actually it was (probably a replica) the back to the future car…Flux Capacitor and all!

The C2M guys had their usual keg. Some other companies had excessively large presences there. Like they literally had 10+ employees grabbing everyone. Others were very laid back and seemed not interested to talk to anyone, they were just kind of stuck there.

I really HATE talking business at the exhibit hall. If I approach you and I want to talk actual work, campaigns, working with you guys, I will, plain and simple. Often I am more interested in meeting AMs, owners, and staff and getting to know them. We can talk business after, this is my one chance in the next 6 months to build a face to face with some people. Some networks CLEARLY got this, others…nope. If you are badgering me for traffic, it probably won’t happen. If you are talking sports, telling me how your life is going, casually talking about your business, then I am probably going to remember you very good and recommend you to people when they ask if I know any good AMs to reach out to, or networks that might be able to help them, etc.

It really frustrates me when I approach a place to learn more about their actual business and they sit there like its the first time they’ve ever talked to a human. So many people had this look “oh god…a booth visitor…where are our promo gifts!?!” Damn at least have a smile and introduce yourself.

Parties

I gotta say this year was even better than last year for parties.

Sunday night I never made it to the Share A Sale barn dance like I had hoped. I was lingering around the PPV Playbook meetup til around 10 PM then Drew Goodman and I met up with the Daily Conversions crew at the Empyre Media Neon NYC party. We stayed there for a while before eventually ending up at some ‘classy’ club…

The PPV Meetup was awesome! I’m pretty active on that forum and it was great to put some faces to names. In addition I got to meet a few networks that were there. The Ads 4 Dough guys were really cool and everyone just kept telling me how much they love Chase. CPA Tank was representing there with Adam and the general Vito Glazers, two of the coolest guys I met the whole time I was in NYC. If you’ve never got a chance to meet with them I recommend it. They were dropping knowledge bombs like there were terrorists around.

The Empyre party was packed but we were able to score an outdoor couch. The thing I heard everyone complaining about was the prices there. Not that I expect open bar at a lot of parties, but this one was just pricey even for NYC. When buying a round, the drinks were averaging about $20 each. Someone went to go pickup a bottle for our table and came back with a funny “Nevermind!” People were joking that the Empyre group must’ve struck a deal to get commission on the drinks and that was going to be their big night for the year. All the same it was a good time!

Monday was absolutely crazy. Brian Evans was hosting a dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse in NYC that was sponsored by Lead Cola. Last year Brian and I got the chance to go to this steakhouse and I was looking forward to having the food again for weeks. I’m a pretty plain eater myself, so if someone can do me a few sides and a steak perfectly, I’m in heaven! I have to say hands down, Lead Cola treated us EXTREMELY well that night. I got a chance to meet with Jared, Suha, and Amar from lead Cola. Amar started the night off by asking the waiter to bring 18 shots of Patron Silver to our private room.

In addition to being taken care of by the fine folks over at Lead Cola I got a chance to meet up with some awesome affiliates! Big thanks to Brian Evans and Lead Cola for the great time!

After the dinner most of us grabbed cabs over to the Affiliate Ball. I had heard some really negative things about the Affiliate Ball and I was actually planning on attending the Clickbooth party instead. Before I knew it though Doug E Fresh was coming on stage. The venue was actually pretty sweet and we had a table right on the floor. Fresh was actually very entertaining getting the 95% male crowd to start popping. Pretty quickly Morgan Thomas arranged for some bottles at our table. With no lines back to the bar I really got a chance to do the white guy pretending like he can bob around in a crowd technique.

Afterwards we swung up to the A4D party but there was a wait outside the door. We ended up heading to another club that was like 2 blocks away from my hotel and so I decided it would be a good idea to call it a night and head home.

Unfortunately my phone had died at this point and after several drinks I was really struggling to remember exactly what street my hotel was on. Needless to say I walked down the wrong way and had to backtrack and went down the incorrect street and found myself surrounded by a bunch of rough looking guys. I casually tried to continue walking through as 4 fellows surrounded me and pulled the old arm stop to me. After some brief exchange of some not so nice words I ended up hearing a phrase that I had in the deep edges of my mind categorized as ‘Hopefully no one ever says this shit to you’. One of the guys put two hands on me and said

“Alright Nigga, let’s see what you go in those pockets!”

…was this really happening? Was I getting mugged? Now a sober Mike Chiasson probably would have used some intelligence and handed over the short change I had left in my wallet. However barely able to walk Mike had a different idea in mind. I was fortunate enough that as I rolled my sleeves up and got in this guys face and answered his threat with a challenge to throw down right there, that one of his buddies broke the situation up and proceeded to pull the “c’mon guys this nigga aint worth our time!” card. At the time all I could think of was ‘alright this guy is next’. Looking back on the situation I should’ve probably thanked the guy for saving my ass.

After they allowed me to walk past peacefully I walked right into my hotel that was like 50 feet away and proceeded to drunk tweet. End of night. I survived. Yes!

Overall

My Affiliate Summit experiences proceed to get better each year. It was great seeing everyone and I definitely look forward to ASW in January. Already booked my flights and got my pass.

Verizon Union Workers 10x Better Than Corporate at Marketing! (PICTURES)

In case you live under a rock there has been a massive strike going on within the ranks of Verizon. I’ve had the fortune of having a close friend of mine’s mother be in a management position at Verizon and she has been talking about the looming strike for months. Eventually it went into effect about 10 days ago. Most of the Verizon union workers on the East Coast opted to picket instead of working. I got a chance to see some of these protestors live outside a local Verizon and wanted to comment on the situation as well as who is doing a better job marketing their side.

Now I don’t know all of the reasons they are fighting for or what the exact outcome will be but I do have a few personal opinions to share before I get to the nitty gritty of this post.

1. I think unions are worthless. They are a remnant from the days or horrid working condition in the US and now only serve the purpose of protecting the weak. Someone who is good at their job doesn’t have to fight for it, plain and simple.
2. This isn’t to say that the people in the unions are worthless. Often times to work at an organization you might have to join the collective bargaining group and follow their rules whether you agree or not.
3. I DO acknowledge the fact that the reason why we have the benefits today is because of the hard work of unions in earlier years. I just believe things have gotten out of control now.
4. I really can’t grasp how the country could let unions tell a business owner (large or small) how they have to run their business with the threat of a strike.
5. I for the life of me can’t get WHY anyone would want to strike (ie: hates their company) instead of just leaving and finding another job. Obviously it can’t be that bad if you still want to work there right?

The Sides

You basically have 3 definitive sides here. You have the Verizon Union employees who according to my brief interaction are fighting to stop their jobs from going oversees. Verizon Corporate, this involves executive management and non-union staff who are still handling the current massive VZ networks. Independent contractors, these are many of the employees you see at the Verizon corporate stores, kiosks, installation providers, wireless stores, etc.

Although the only people really battling here are Corporate vs. Union, its important to see that the current struggle surely effects the livelihood of the independent groups as well.

Corporate

Corporate Verizon just recently began regional radio campaigns that feature question and answer style interviews. The one I heard on the ride home today featured two people discussing the current situation and these are some of the highlights (paraphrased).

• “Verizon is currently working with its talented union employees to negotiate a prosperous resolution to the current debates.”
• “Verizon technicians receive on average over $50,000 in annual benefits with an average salary upwards of $80,000.”

Obviously VZ is trying to plant the image that all of the people on strike are doing far better than most in these rough economic times. They are also trying to beat around the bush that they have thousands of employees who had walked out of the offices. They position the strikes and a ‘debate’ of some sort.

Corporate is doing a really bad job handling this PR nightmare but in reality…I don’t think they have to. I’ve spoken to numerous people who have Verizon services who had to place support calls in the last few days. Each person told me they were immediately warned it may take a few days (!!!) to solve their issue because of the current labor negotiations. However each person told me their issues were solved in a matter of minutes just like prior VZ problems.

At the same time Corporate is under a huge attack by people like Warren Buffet and others who are absolutely bullshit that the corporation hasn’t paid taxes on their billions of revenue.

The Union

My interaction with the union was brief. I really wasn’t familiar with their purpose for striking but when I saw them outside a local Verizon wireless store picketing I HAD to stop and talk to them. All of the Union workers were EXTREMELY nice. They were a bit concerned when I asked to interview them. Mostly over the idea that I might write some slanderous comments about them it seemed. The local store had a police officer guarding the entry way while the protestors were about 35 feet or so from the entrance.

They where wielding signs and banners and were trying to gather support from the passing cars. I didn’t see a single person say anything to anyone walking into the Verizon store. To be honest I don’t even think they were facing that way while I was observing.

They informed me of some of the following (paraphrased once again all from different union members):

• We are fighting to keep over 20,000 jobs from being outsourced oversees.
• I need this job for me and my family.
• “We are sacrificing our pay right now to try and ensure our livelihood for years to come.”

Then there were some of the members who had more disgruntled views:

• “Verizon is evil, the executives don’t care about anyone but themselves.”
• “Verizon sucks!”
• “They don’t even pay taxes, and they want to get rid of all American jobs!”

Clearly the union doesn’t have quite a defined message. The only real thing that they all agreed about was that they don’t want their jobs to go overseas. I can respect fighting for that for sure! What I don’t get is the people who were so disgruntled who ‘hate’ Verizon. Why they would actually want to go back to work for someone who “doesn’t care for them”. To break it down a little further of everyone I talked to the females were much more clear with their issues while the men seemed divided and angry. Gender communication studies would be sure to recognize this as standard masculine traits. I’m sure if a woman was asking the questions rather than a male the results may have been completely reversed as far as genders go!

All the same I have to commend these union workers. Their flash mob like picketing at various Verizon locations is definitely letting the public know “Hey we are out here…and we need your support!” Typically you only see things like this on TV not at your local stores and kiosks! Their simple gathering and peaceful participation marketing is truely awesome way to spend their *off* days.

Will The Union Win?

Of course. Unions have won wars like this since the early 1900′s. Bottom line is the only thing worse than having 20,000 jobs go over seas, is having 20,000 angry people constantly telling everyone how much you suck for the next 20 years. As far as getting their message out, I think Verizon is clearly winning with their message dissemination but as far as picking sides its hard to turn your back on your neighbors and friends when you see them protesting together.

What do you think about the Verizon strike?

How I Went To Affiliate Summit East Last Year For $75 (TOTAL)

With Affiliate Summit East 2011 coming up in a few weeks I found myself in a similar position as most conferences I attend. Deep in the hole and no hotel room booked yet. With this year’s current expenses already well over $1,200 without a hotel I got to thinking about how awesome of a deal I got last year.

So lets see what happened last year with all my various discounts and freebies.

Transportation

I live in Massachusetts so the drive to New York City was right about 4 hours. As you can see by the mapquest description to the side it was also about 210 miles away. My eco friendly auto gets about 34 MPG. This means round trip I was going to use about 12.5 gallons of gas. I also hit some tolls while driving up but I really can’t remember the exact amounts. I did have to pay for parking which I think was like $50 a night. I arrived early Sunday morning and left around 3:00 Tuesday afternoon.

Total Transportation Costs
Gas – $46.25
Tolls – $10
Parking – $100

Sub Total: $156.25

Conference Pass

Last year Ryan Gray tossed me a freebie Gold Pass to hit up the summit. I had planned to upgrade on site to the Platinum pass which would’ve been an additional $600. At the registration area I was told it was too late and then after a little smooth(…read awkward) talking the staff agreed to let me upgrade for the difference. Of course what I didn’t realize is they were talking the difference in actual purchase price vs pass value. So since the pass was a promotional giveaway its purchased price was $0. In the end I was offered the opportunity to purchase the platinum for $1100 which I declined. It really didn’t make sense to me why the on site staff would’ve opted to decline an additional $600 in revenue at that point. All the same I ended up walking out of registration with the gold pass and kept my wallet with an extra $600 in it.

Total Conference Pass Costs – $0

Hotel Room

When I called to book my room at the Hilton New York, the hotel the summit was held at, all the conference discount rooms were booked. The difference in cost from the conference rate vs standard was like an additional $300. I opted to then and there ask the operator what sort of deals they could offer me, any marketing promotions, etc. The operator basically laughed and said no. Then said to stay on the line for a quick survey…

When the survey came on I spoke to a woman who was trying to get me to give her some demographic info and eventually pulled the “CONGRATULATIONS! We would like to offer you a free stay at a Hilton hotel in Orlando, FL!” … Ok lady lets dance. I told her I had no intention of going to Orlando in the next few years and said the ONLY place I plan to travel to this year is New York. After a lot of back and forth the woman revisited her previous demographic questions. “Sir you had said you earn over $250,000 a year…by chance do you earn over $500,000 a year before taxes?” Haha WTF kind of question is this?!? I joking replied ‘as long as everything goes according to plan yes’. She then told me I qualified for a promotion in New York City.

The condition would be that I had to go look at some new timeshares in Manhatten and I would get a discounted rate. Sweet, done deal. When I showed up to the Hilton NY we discovered that the woman had actually booked me at the Hilton Times Square… Welp that sucked. However they made it right and upgraded me to the 44th Floor of the Hilton NY which is basically a timeshare/executive suite area. The suite was awesome and they had an open breakfast bar and dinner open bar each night on the floor. Total cost for 2 nights…$129 (Super score).

When I went to look at the timeshare I immediately told the guy that my fiance couldn’t be there since she was at home opening our new dance studio (which she was). He quickly realized that this wasn’t good news for him and bluntly asked me “Could you make the decision to put $100,000 down on a timeshare today without your fiance’s here?” I told him no and he promptly ushered me out to the reception desk to reschedule. *I saw others stuck in these little cubicle rooms for like 2+ hours lol. I was supposed to reschedule but I just told the woman I had finished with him. They thanked me for my time, passed me some info, and gave me 20k hilton honors points and a $200 gift certificate to participating local restaurants (BONUS!). All in all I was out in 15 minutes.

As a side note…if you are going to pay $1.2 Million for a two week timeshare in Manhattan, with an annual maintenance fee of $10k….well sir you have WAY TOO MUCH FUCKING MONEY!

Total Hotel Costs – $120

Food

With a combination of street meat and local restaurants I really enjoyed all my food in NY. I hit up Carnegie’s Deli with Shock Marketer which was awesome. My buddy Brian invited me to a dinner event hosted by Ian Fernando and Kitara Media (granted no one told Ian about the +1 but he kindly pulled a chair in for himself lol). Food was perfect, the company was great. Used the restaurant card from the timeshare showing for an amazing dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse with a few affiliates. Lastly I had a few of my day job contacts in New York that I had to meet with so I took them out for some lunch and brunches while I was in their territory. Really once again I spent next to nothing for going out so much.

Food Total – $125

Drinks

Pretty much everywhere I went was open bar. I picked up a few tabs in the hotel lobbies when drinking with friends but besides that it was mostly tips more than anything else that I was paying for.

Drinks Total – $175

Other Items

While cruising the conference floor I stopped by to say hi to my friends over at Qwik Media. They were handing out some promotional scratcher card items. They tossed me one and it was worth $200. Thanks again guys!

While at the conference I was able to meetup with a company that still owed me a small sum of cash but had been not answering emails/phone calls. When confronted they promptly got me $300 that they ‘had been meaning to transfer this to you…’.

While leaving the conference I got tagged for a seat belt violation in my car. This was as I was pulling out of the parking garage. This was a $100 ticket that I never paid so of course its like $250 now or something and I’m still refusing to pay it. Since I refuse to pay it I won’t mark it up as an expense just yet . Also please note, I find it completely disgraceful that New York is completely littered with homeless folks and people constantly walking up to you harassing you for money but the cops find it more important to try and grab visitors who bring in money to the city for seat belt violations. Well played New Yorks finest…

Other Items Total – +$500

Grand Total

$76.25, cheapest conference attendance ever! Combine that with reluctantly saving $600 on the pass upgrade and it was a pretty sweet trip.

Blam Ads! vs. Google Adsense Experiment

Like a lot of people that do marketing, I have my ways that work best for me. One of the few things that I don’t pretend to be good at is SEO. Bottom line I am too lazy to work at it, it bores me, and I’m too cheap to pay people to rank for me. However somewhere along my travels I was grinding on too much soda and was up late at night and spotted a low competition niche and decided to crank out a site for it. So I made some lame long tail ‘.com’ ending blog, did like 3 pages of half ass content and wrote about 5 blog posts. I think I commented on like 5 other blogs to try and grab back links and that was that.

A few months later I was pretty excited to be ranking #2 for my main keyword that got approximately 5k search a month (according to Google).

I was originally running some weight loss ads on the page and eventually switched over to Google adsense ads being displayed on the page. In case you live under a rock, those are part of Google’s content network where other’s ads would then display on a CPC basis on my site. After running the adsense for a few months the cash really wasn’t piling in (not that I expected it) so I jumped at the opportunity to work with ‘Blam Ads!’ to try putting a content locker on my site.

A content locker basically is one of those annoying popups that appear internally on a page until you complete a required action. The actions are usually like filling out an email submit or filling out a survey. The payouts are usually a lot less than you would find at Blam’s sister company EWA (both are long time sponsors of the blog, thanks Ryan!) because the traffic is ‘incentivized’. Its pretty easy to guess that quality will suffer under those conditions.

I had a few issues with the content locker but since this site really wasn’t ‘BIG’ I figured it wouldn’t hurt. You can see them below.

The Myths About Blam Ads!

• Hinder User Experience - I really didn’t want my users to feel like I was trying to ‘use’ them. I then looked at my site and remembered that I hadn’t touched it in about 5 months and proceeded to lock away.
• Piss People Off – I was also worried that people in niche forums that previously would link to me occasionally might just start bashing me. I never saw any negative comments though to be realistic.
• Hurting My Rankings – I had heard that part of what effects your ranking in Google is how long the user is on the page/bounce rate, etc. I was really suspecting Google seeing this code on my page would hurt me. This really didn’t turn out to be any issue at all. The code goes at the bottom of the page in most cases anyway and is a .js insert that will load dynamically so search engine crawlers really don’t seem to care.

The Results

Ok so a few disclaimers here. 1.) I approached my Blam Ads! AM at the time and when I was going to content lock this page up he basically told me he didn’t think this niche would perform well. He suspected that people wouldn’t be willing to complete and offer for this specific content. 2.) When I started working with Blam my site was already being ignored by me and although traffic was starting to suffer its rankings went from a stable #2 to main keyword to bouncing between 3/4. It is currently ranked #6.

Full Stats

Here you can see the full comparison of the traffic as it came in during the dates for each experiment.

Although I really liked the idea of using the content locking gateway to help monetize the traffic to my site it definitely didn’t seem be a viable solution. Its a definite possibility that I could’ve split test some more offers or gateway designs to try and optimize. I’m confident that on my particular site, that a well placed AdSense theme could turn significantly more profit here than it did with its current setup. I do suspect that if you have the right content on your site Blam could definitely be the better choice. I suspect that content that revolves around downloads, tutorials, and media would work very well.

Not that I reached out for much help, but any help from Google would have been of course non-existent. Blam on the other hand always seems to be practically waiting for me to ask for help. I had the fortune of working with Dan Wolfe over at Blam who was always eager to get me to push more traffic any way I could. If you decide to work with Blam I definitely recommend requesting to work with him.

This particular experiment is very small of course. I wouldn’t pretend to know what the outcome would’ve been on a larger volume site. I do think though it gives you a good idea of the basic results you could experience yourself given similar conditions.

Is BLAM Ads! Just Not For Me?

After letting this experiment go on for a while it seemed that this definitely wasn’t going to work for me. I reached out to the Birdman Ryan Eagle himself and asked exactly what is the best use for the content locking gateways. Will they work on any site….should they replace Adsense?

“BLAM Ads monetizes sites that Google don’t monetize well, sites that get mass amounts of traffic from less-than desirable demographics. As you stated  above, sites based around downloads, video content, fan sites, movie related sites always work well. The larger websites use it as an appendage to traditional ad networks to supplement their income and protect more valuable areas of their site also very successfully. Long story short: if you have a micro-niche website that has advertising that can actually pay, I suggest using it as a supplement rather than a replacement.” -Ryan Eagle

Text 107316 to 73774 !!

Internet marketing community, lend me your unlimited texting plans! Ok…so don’t really ‘lend’ them to me but at least send a single test message “107316″ (no quotes needed) to “73774″ (once again no quotes needed). If you take the 5 seconds out of your day to do this you could very well help my wife’s dance studio receive a $10,000 grant from Pepsi. The text message doesn’t cost you anything, assuming you don’t have to pay per text on your cell plan. We are currently ranked 15th and the top 15 will get $10,000 each in our category, so help us stay in the money!

With the grant my wife hopes to let 25 lower income families dance for free at her studio. This includes taking classes, paying for their dance wear, recital tickets for their families, etc. You can also also vote using your computer/facebook account. For full details goto:

http://www.refresheverything.com/spotlightdance

ALSO!

I am collecting power votes which are yellow caps on Pepsi 20oz, 2 Liters, and inside 12 pack cardboard boxes. If you have any feel free to comment the code of email them over to me. Those votes can help even more.